Chapter 7
Before nightfall Carlos handed Linda a decision to make. Lieutenant Remora, the guerrilla band's leader, wanted to leave her at a village near the main highway. Before capturing the horses, the rebels would have been hard-pressed to make their rendezvous with the rest of their column, scheduled four days away. Mounted, with food, ammunition, and medicines from the bandits' cave, the men all agreed on a sweep around the meeting area. Remora thought they could make two, perhaps three widely separated attacks on government outposts and still link up with the Sixth Column in time to attack the caravans Batista's forces sent along the roads. If she wanted to stay with the rebels rather than risk being taken back to the Moncada prison, she would have to fight alongside them. Even then, there was no guarantee that the officer in charge of the column would allow her to remain after the rendezvous. Earlier in the war several young Americans had been sent out of the mountains because they couldn't keep up with the hardened guerrillas.
It was difficult. Linda felt a stab of homesickness when she thought of her parents, but home seemed impossibly far away. The sexual abuse of her body by the bandits, Batista's men, and even by her dead friend had changed her ideas about herself. She wasn't sure that Akron was where she belonged.
But where did she belong? Even if she did attempt to skirt the police in Havana and made it as far as the boat to Key West, where would she go? She was nineteen years old and felt ninety. Linda snorted bitterly when she thought of her old goals, marriage and motherhood. Any man who would want her now certainly wouldn't be a good husband or father. Every part of her body had been defiled ... and she'd felt shameful excitement each time. For one desperate moment, Linda considered finding Meyers in Havana.
As for staying with the guerrillas, that seemed impossible, too. She hadn't prepared herself, physically or mentally, the way Judy had. Judy had died before she'd been in Cuba for twenty hours. She couldn't shoot a gun, in fact, Carlos had kept Almieda's pistol pending her decision. She could barely keep up with Carlos in the forest. She'd been frightened half to death when the battle erupted at the bandits' camp. True, her Spanish was improving, but the troop medic who'd looked her over had a hard time understanding her answers when he asked about her pain. Being the only woman in an all-male force had a pussy-shivering appeal, but the embarrassment of cleaning blood and semen from her skin while the column prepared to move out was a recent tender spot in her memory. Linda brooded until dusk. Her empty stomach churned into an acid mass. One look at the homey little whitewashed houses of the village below decided her. The column pulled up around Remora.
"I'll stay until we reach Column Six," Linda quavered. She looked at the guerrillas bravely, her lower lip trembling with anxiety. Lieutenant Remora looked doubtful. Linda felt her chances slipping. Before he could speak, she blurted, "Up the revolution! We'll win!"
"Venceremos!" Carlos replied, and the rebels joined in.
"Venceremos!" The medic tugged the pack mule closer, grabbed a captured rifle from the lashings, and handed it to Linda. She slung it over her shoulder, blushing beet-red in the dusk. The rebel cavalry started down the hill to the village.
And in the village it began. Remora reminded the squad on the way in," 'The people are the sea in which the guerrilla swims.' " He didn't remind them seas can run high.
A single peasant, only a little better-dressed than the rest, looked at Linda with great interest. She attributed his interest to the novelty of such a tall woman traveling with the soldiers, or perhaps to her red hair. Linda forgot about the man until he returned when the squad's medic, a wiry fifty-year-old with silver hair and a constant smile, had finished making the rounds of the complaining villagers. Now the peasant's eyes were calculating, wary. He stayed in the back of the crowd. When the squad mounted up again, he was right beside Remora, wishing them safety in their march.
The little troop returned to the hills. Fed and properly tended, Linda slept well for the first time since she'd come to Cuba. At first light they moved out.
A convoy of trucks was due to pass sometime during the morning. In other parts of the island, the rebels controlled the roads, but near Havana the government forces still ran armed convoys nearly every day. Remora and Carlos agreed on a likely spot for an ambush.
The guerrillas were on the east side of the mountains, some thirty miles from Havana. The coastal plain reaches up against a series of foothills in that region, and the main highway skirts the edge of the hills. Less than an hour's ride from their overnight billet a pair of hummocks stepped out onto the plain. The highway ran between the two hills and the main slope of the mountains' rolling border.
It would have been better, perhaps, if Batista's forces didn't know the squad was mounted ... if they could strike outposts daily, more than infantry distance away, the Army would have worried more. The villagers had informed them, though, that the government seemed to be building up the garrison near a pair of sugar mills several miles further east. Before full light the plan was laid and all nine of the little band were in position.
Carlos and three others were in cover at the foot of the road's embankment. Remora, the medic, two guerrillas, and Linda hid among the rocks on the side of the first hill the trucks would pass. One of the soldiers in Remora's party watched the road from the top of the hummock. As soon as the convoy was sighted, he slithered down and reported. Six trucks with one jeep ahead and two behind made up the column. He'd seen no sign of air cover.
Remora glanced up. "Good. We will wait for the first truck to pass the curve, then immobilize it. Shift your fire immediately to the jeep, and when it is finished, we retreat. Before the road is clear again, we will be up that hill," he said, pointing across the road. "We go northwest, and cut off anyone trying to return to Havana."
A thousand frantic butterflies flapped in Linda's stomach. Yes, the road was narrow, but if the truck rolled off the edge ... She craned her neck, but Carlos' group and their horses were well hidden.
Motors grew louder in the distance. All the weapons they'd taken from the bandits' cave were loaded and ready, three to a person. The youngest of the guerrillas rechecked the big Browning automatic rifle.
Now the lighter sound of the jeeps' motors could be heard. Linda squinted her head down the barrel of the shotgun. The front trigger was for the driver's window. The second barrel went for the gas tank, just behind and below the cab. Linda drooled copiously. If the convoy didn't show soon, she would vomit.
The tiny sounds of knees digging into dirt underlay the noise of the approaching vehicles. The whine of straight-cut gears in the truck axles all but drowned the crunch of gravel. A jeep, bouncing on its springs, growled around the corner. The heavy machine gun mounted on the rear pointed toward the clear, unmarked sky.
Linda watched the driver and the two other soldiers. The gunner was leaning over the seats, gesturing to the passenger. The detail astonished her. The driver had a small, pencil-line mustache. The gunner showed semicircles of perspiration under his arm.
The jeep was ten yards, then twenty yards past the bend. It would be around the next kink in the road in seconds. Linda ached all over. Her muscles were tied in knots. After so much drooling, her mouth was oddly dry.
The truck pulled around the corner. Its canvas sides were down, but someone had forgotten to tie the flaps. They fluttered in the wind. Linda waited. The rusty, once-silver ball of the gunsight blocked the lower half of the driver's face. "Ahora!" Remora shouted.
The huge "BOOM" of the shotgun deafened Linda. She was still fighting the recoil when she pulled the rear trigger. "BOOM!" again, even louder.
The brutal hammering of the Browning made every other sound a whisper. Linda dropped the shotgun and fired a rifle blindly at the jeep. Puffs of dust erupted all around it. The driver and the gunner jerked. The passenger half-rolled out on the far side.
Soldiers poured out the back of the truck. The cab was on fire. Some fell where they leapt. The truck rolled, then stopped with a cloud of dirt rising around the rear wheels.
More soldiers ran away from the blazing truck. Plumes of black smoke rose over orange-red flames. A few government soldiers ran to the embankment, but no further. The rest, firing wildly in every direction, dashed around the bend in the road.
Linda ran across the road in a nightmarish panic. Behind the burning truck the other jeeps were jockeying to come up to road. Dozens of soldiers milled like ants. Linda, Remora and the others dashed down the bank. Their arms, weighted with weapons, windmileld for balance. A guerrilla brought the horses forward from the trees.
All the gunfire had stopped. Linda heard herself sobbing. All around her the rebels panted, while bodies of Army ranks struggled briefly in the road and expired. Nine horses and nine riders joined instantly and galloped off toward the trees.
Distant, not as deafening, the heavy clatter of the government machine guns started up. Leaves and branches disintegrated around them. Linda bent low over her horse's neck and looked back.
So far none of the rebels had been wounded. The pack mule was less than a mile away, and the troop ran for it. The medicine and supplies on the mule were nearly as important as the attack. Before the impact of the skirmish had sunk into Linda, they were there. The rebels reined up and Carlos dismounted. He untied the mule. Remora looked around. "Everyone is all right?"
The chorus of "Si, buenos," died out as Carlos remounted. They were surrounded by a unit of Batista's army, guns at the ready. Faces fell and hands rose. Linda leaned over her horse's neck and wept.
In the center of the village Captain Morales ranted and raved. He gave the greatest speech of his life to the stolid peasants. The horrors of Communism, the duty of a citizen, even the role of the Church were grandly expounded. He then personally executed the eight rebels.
The peasants' expressions scarcely changed. When they saw the battered, bleeding guerrillas dragged into town the execution was inevitable. When the ring of soldiers around them broke to throw the corpses into a truck, the peasants slowly returned to the fields. The cane and tobacco needed work, whether it was bandits, Batistianos, or rebels who died in the square.
The well-dressed man sidled up to Morales and muttered a question. The captain looked at Linda and smiled. "Como no, Ignacio?" He waved, and the soldiers let go of Linda.
Why not what? she wondered. The peasant approached with a swagger, and she knew.
"Half an hour only," Morales called as the peasant led Linda toward a small house. Her wrists were tied in front of her. The peasant led her by the end of the rope like an ox.
The house was a single room, perhaps ten feet on a side. The floor was split logs, the chinks stuffed with straw and mud. The whitewash on the inside was wearing as thin as the lipworn picture of the Madonna on the side wall. A low pallet in a rear corner was the largest piece of furniture ... the table was hardly larger than the two skillets that lay on top of it.
Ignacio closed the wooden door and let go of the rope. He dragged an old rice sack across the window. Linda stood still in the middle of the room, watching mutely.
She was numb, as unfeeling as a lump of stone. Even without being recaptured, the emotional impact of the battle would have left her inert. The execution of her new compadres had been the last slash at her senses.
Ignacio smiled and spoke softly to her. "You are very much of a woman," he said, circling her. His eyes roamed greedily all over her. He took the battered cap from her head and sucked air through his front teeth. Her long red hair cascaded down her back.
I'll die soon anyway, Linda thought. She looked over his head while Ignacio unbuttoned her shirt. She heard him hiss again at the bruises on her high, full breasts. It didn't matter to her.
Fingers wrestled with the ropes on her wrists. Linda held her hands slightly higher, and the ropes fell away. Ignacio peeled her shirt away and started on her pants.
Linda looked down incuriously. It was novel to have only one man stripping her. The faded shadow of a smile pulled the corners of her mouth.
Her pants fell around her ankles. Ignacio sat back on his heels and stared at the rich, coppery red of her cunthairs. Linda knew that the outer edges of her labia were visible, and that the central strip between her cuntlips was still dark from the bruising-gallop of the horse she'd ridden. She watched his face.
Ignacio was impressed. He was perhaps two inches shorter than Linda, and six or eight years older. His eyes devoured the long taper of her thighs, the wide, inviting bowl of her pelvis, and the tight triangular gap just below her pussy. Linda's smile was sadder, but wider. She shifted her feet slightly.
Ignacio reached for the knife at his belt. Satisfied seconds later that it wasn't an attack, he relaxed. "Muy sensuosa," he decided. "Muy, muy sensuosa!" He stood and undid his belt.
Linda looked into his eyes instead of down toward his rampant erection. She began to find it amusing ... a single peasant was rewarded with her body. Neither the bandits nor the army had made her feel like a prize. She ran her hands languidly up her hips, stretching the tight skin. Her fingertips slipped along her narrow waist. She cupped her breasts, offering them to Ignacio. "Le gustaf she asked.
He was on guard again. Ignacio stripped his shirt over his head and nodded toward the pallet. Linda decided not to speak any more. She turned and walked to the cot, her hips rolling sensuously. The notion that she should make it worth his time fluttered through her head.
Ignacio jammed his hand into her crotch from behind. Linda jumped, seesawing on the fingers that had skidded past her cuntmouth to her clit. The little pellet hardened in two quick pulses. When Ignacio let her down from tiptoe, she turned to look at him. Her face was melting with the slack, eager look of horny womanhood.
Ignacio shoved, and the pallet caught her calves. Linda fell against the wall. Her asscheeks stung. Grit ground into her skin. She slid down to a sitting position. Linda started to lie back, raising her feet from the floor, but he wouldn't have it.
Ignacio grabbed her wrist and yanked. Linda groaned at the shock that went up her arm. Her shoulders hadn't recovered yet from being hung by her wrists. He's going to hurt me, Linda thought, and she felt a clammy chill of sweat start on her skin.
Ignacio thrust his hips at her, and Linda had no choice. She felt the goo-dripping tip of his prick touch her cheek. Without looking away from his face, she opened her mouth.
The fleshy hood of his foreskin was bitter-salty in her mouth. Linda kissed the covering. Her lips pressed tight around it. Slowly, fear growing in her, she touched the end of his glans with her tongue. Linda pulled her mouth back and looked up at Ignacio.
He grinned cruelly. Ignacio took a handful of her hair and twisted. He pulled her face back toward his cock. His other hand went under her chin. His tumb dug into her cheek like a hammer-claw. He put his index finger into the corner of her mouth and pulled.
The harsh stab and the painful stretching worked. Linda couldn't keep her jaws closed if she'd wanted to. Every time she tried to pull her head back even a fraction, Ignacio yanked her hair forward again. Shaking with fear and pain, Linda took the end of his prick into her mouth again.
The thick, dusty odor of his unwashed balls filled her nostrils. Linda thought she would suffocate on the scent. She tried to lavish erotic tonguework on his prick, but he jabbed the spongy knob against the roof of her mouth. Linda gagged.
Ignacio swore. He moved his hand from her jaw to her tits and twisted her nipples. Linda moaned around his cockhead. Juice gushed in her pussy when he mauled her tit. She squirmed on the gritty blanket. Her heart pounded. The salty taste of his prick made her mouth pucker. Fighting revulsion, Linda slipped, the tip of her tongue under his foreskin and -rimmed the ridge of his knob. Ignacio hummed contentedly.
He bent his knees, tugging her forward. Lind's tits hung into his hand. She felt his fingers spiderwalk over to her other breast. She waited an instant, then inhaled more cock to stifle her moan as he attacked the other nipple.
Linda began bobbing her head desperately up and down on his cock. She sucked on the outstroke and rolled her tongue on the instroke. The loose, salty warmth of his foreskin moved around her tongue like a living thing.
Ignacio's hand dove into her pussy. He wiggled his fingers down the center of her twat. His thumb pressed the outer edge of one cuntlip. Linda spread her thighs slightly, and thick, sausage-like fingers crept over her asscheeks. She stopped moving her head for a moment, and Ignacio fucked his prick into the top of her throat.
His knee knocked her legs open wider. Linda wondered if Ignacio would come soon. She was becoming more frightened, and simultaneously her body was becoming more eager. She hoped that he could shoot in her mouth before too much lust built up in her pussy.
Ignacio slipped a finger into her cunt, then another. Linda felt his ragged fingernails scrape at the sensitive sides of her cuntal tube. She tried to open wider, bearing down, but that only allowed his probing digits to slip further into her cunt. He jabbed harder, and she lost sensation as he went past the sensitive lower part of her cunthole.
Linda tried to squirm away. She imagined ghastly scraping nails clawing at her inner surfaces. She moaned and gathered saliva around his prick. With the strength of fear, she pulled away from his hand.
Ignacio pulled her off his cock by her hair. He glared into her eyes. Without a word, he slapped her, then chopped the back of his hand across her other cheek.
"Linda started to cry. "Please," she whimpered in English. "Please, just be nice!"
Ignacio replied in Spanish, wrapping his face around each word. "Then eat my cock! I want to feel those sweet lips sucking and working up and down while I shove my entire first into your cunt! I will fuck you until you can't stand up!"
"Please, please," Linda whined. Ignacio yanked her face into his crotch again, and her mouth opened automatically. Linda sniffled and wept as she sucked, memorizing every cell of the lathesome prick in her mouth. She shook like a leaf. Linda was covered with cold sweat. Ignacio kneaded her cuntlips with one hand and shoved his cock harder into her mouth with each passing second.
Linda tried to match his rhythm, but Ignacio made it hard. His hand would work at her pussy, then go back to her face. Cream smeared on her cheeks and chin. He held her head still for a long, deep stroke. Linda realized that Ignacio wanted her to miss the rhythm so she would suck his prick longer.
Ignacio let go of her hair, but a warning thrust of his prick told her not to miss a stroke. He put his hands on her tits and ran his thumbs over her nipples. The coral tips stood up like fat grapes, and each flick sent shimmering vibrations all through her body.
Ignacio delighted in touching the responsive nuggets. He rubbed his thumbs back and forth on them like windshield wipers. Linda hated the feelings, hated the reaction that the rough handling sent to the pit of her belly. She felt her pussy moistening more.
Ignacio dropped his left hand to her crotch again. He trailed his fingers through the coppery nest of her cunthair. He tugged, and the abused skin of her cuntlips hurt. Every follicle on her pussy seemed to stand up and scream. Hairs ripped out.
Linda's pussy was raw inside and out. Her clitty stood up like a pencil stub. She sucked as lasciviously as possible at his prick, hoping that he would shoot in her mouth before her arousal became too obvious.
More juice flowed from her cunt. Linda could smell the aroma of her own arousal even over the reek of Ignacio's balls. Dread chilled her belly.
Her bladder felt the strain. It had been a long time since she'd pissed, and Ignacio's fingers worked to make it worse. The back of his hand brushed across her belly. It was all Linda could do to keep from wetting herself. She concentrated on his prick, wrapping her tongue around the edge of his knob like a tiny snake. Was she imaginging it, or was his prick swelling up in her mouth?"
Linda licked into the slit at the tip. The tiny cockmouth was widening. She felt the spongy flesh around it firm up. Linda put one hand around the base of his prick. She jacked slowly up and down. She did her best to hurry the rush of seed up from his balls. She cupped his sac in her other hand and massaged the rock-hard eggs of his balls.
Ignacio shoved his prick against the back of her mouth in short, hard strokes. Linda slurped faster. She felt a flutter in the shaft. One vein went into spasm. She felt her pussy puffing up with the tension. She sucked voraciously at his knob, hoping ... hoping....
Ignacio jammed two fingers into her cunt. Another finger speared in. Her bladder was about to burst. She didn't know how long she could stand the pressure. The hand in her pussy wiggled against the back wall of her bladder. Ignacio gripped her head again, holding her mouth steady for his savage fuckstrokes. Linda gargled prick, trying to force his jism out with her buzzing voice.
Ignacio let go of her head. He slipped his hand down across her tits. Linda was surprised. He didn't grab the aching mounds. His palm went across the smooth skin of her belly. He tugged at the very top of her cunthair, then slipped his fingertips back up. They centered just above her pubes, just where his other fingers worked in her cunt. Pressure built up in Linda's bladder. She moaned, hoping he would stop.
Ignacio jabbed his fingers into her belly. He whipped his prick out of her mouth. He shouted at Linda, and her body obeyed.
A dam burst, and piss flooded out. A wave of shame covered her. Hot, reeking fluid covered Ignacio's wrist. The yellow stream burned the aroused tissues of her cunt like liquid fire, spattering from the pallet to her thighs, her knees, even pooling under her asscheeks. Linda wanted to die from the shame of it. Wouldn't it ever stop?
Before the last trickles had gushed out of her pussy, Ignacio yanked Linda off the bed. He spun her around and forced her to kneel on the floor. His hands locked on her hips like two steel vises. His fingertips gouged into her belly, and Linda felt the hard, steely heat of his cockhead graze along her piss-soaked trough.
With a single ramming jab, his cockhead popped past the constricted ring of her cuntmouth. Linda felt the foreskin peel back, then slip into her cunt along with the rest of his prick. She collapsed.
And her head lit right in the draining pool of her own piss. Linda still tasted the head of Ignacio's cock, like a load of oily dust in her mouth. Saliva and piss and the sweat of pure terror covered her face. She felt Ignacio plumb the depths of her cunt with his cock, and she started to come.
Linda couldn't stop herself. The jailers and the bandits had trained her too well. Now all she needed was pain and shame and a single swift thrust of prick to make her start clenching and clasping around any cock that could part her twatflesh. The ripples of release sped along her nerves in a series of erotic shudders.
The first orgasm ended quickly. Ignacio was stroking in and out, moaning praises of the tight, hot sweetness of her cunt. His prick nudged against her cervix and his belly found her ass. Linda bent forward further, turning her head to the side.
Ignacio loved fucking, and Linda felt his excitement infect her. He rolled his hips lasciviously against the mounds of her ass. His hands came around her body. One of them locked onto her tits, massaging first one, then the other. Her nipples begged for more.
His other hand found the diamond-hard spike of her clitty and rubbed. He pushed the pink pellet down toward the shaft of his plunging cock, then rubbed it up and away. Linda shivered with lewd sensation. She couldn't stop the exquisite train of feeling.
And she didn't want to. The constant rolling of her clitty made her cunt tighten deliciously around Ignacio's prick. She moved in counterpoint to his rolling, swiveling, luxurious strokes. Her asscheeks came alive, feeling every hair on his belly. Even the tight ring of her asshole opened and shut in time to his strokes, trapping cockhairs with each push. Every time the frolicking Cuban pulled away again, the hairs threaded out, sending obscenely delicious sensations to Linda's brain.
Linda felt Ignacio tensing behind her. Was he finally ready to come? She worked harder against him. Every cell in her ass, every juicy nerve in her pussy was ready for him. She rolled and moaned, fucking back at his hard, cream-coated prick with everything she had.
Ignacio panted and gasped behind her. His tit-fondling hand tensed, mashing the firm masses of her boobs into her ribs. Linda could hardly breathe with the sheer excitement of the moment. She felt his balls swinging free, touching her cuntlips, and she wanted his come as badly as she'd wanted to get away from him.
Ignacio was ready. Linda felt the slight hitch in his motions, the swelling of his cockhead. He pulled out until the flange of his knob tugged against her cuntring. He plunged in again, stripping the nerves in her crotch with the speed and power of his fuckstroke.
Her clit was on fire! Ignacio grabbed the tight triangular fold of her clittyhood and pinched it between his fingernails. Linda panicked. A wall of lust crumbled over her. The lancing pain in her clit made her cunt start collapsing around his plunging meat. She screamed and wailed. Her voice rose and fell like a siren. The sheer excess of heat in her crotch drove her crazy. She beat her fists in the piss on the bed. She kicked her feet against the floor. She tore her breasts away from his hand, arching like a hooked swordfish.
Linda bent forward again. She shoved her ass back at him. The redhead bucked, all but throwing him off. Only the crowbar-hard grip of his arm around her waist held Ignacio on her. His cock pounded back and forth, blistering the walls of her cunt.
Linda spasmed over and over. She was coming so frantically that her teeth chattered. She moaned and swore, begging Ignacio to fuck harder, to come faster. She battled with him, flinging her clasping cuntmouth against the base of his jizz-heavy cock. Linda went insane.
Ignacio's powerful strokes drove her forward onto her face. Linda swiveled away from the pallet in passionate ecstasy. She lay now on her belly. Dust rose around her. She arched back again, clutching for his ass. Linda found the tensed cheeks and drove him into her cunt even harder.
She lost all track of time. Linda fucked on and on and on, rolling and groveling even after Ignacio had shot. With a last, heavy sigh, she shuddered into silence. Ripples of unwinding tension chased over her body.
Ignacio pulled out, amazed. He rolled away from the prone redhead. His juice-greased prick flopped across his thigh. "Much woman .. much, much woman," he whispered. "No wonder the Castristos looked so tired." He slowly stood and stepped into his pants. It was best not to keep the Army waiting.