Free The Prisoner of Guantanamo by Dan Fesperman Page A

wants you to accompany Captain Lewis when he goes to retrieve the body. I gather they’re a little upset over there.”
    Damn right they were. Unless centuries of wind and current patterns had suddenly reversed course, or Ludwig had gone on some sort of record endurance swim, it should have been impossible for him to have ended up on the Cuban side.
    So much for quick resolutions.
    â€œLead the way, soldier. It’ll be just like old times.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    The North East Gate is a reminder of the intent and capability of our adversaries to gain our operational information. Those adversaries can see us easily and clearly, hear us through sophisticated signal devices, and continually attempt to manipulate and distort our true purpose at Joint Task Force Guantánamo.
    â€”From “OPSEC Corner,” a regular feature
of JTF-GTMO’s weekly newspaper,
The Wire
    T HE NORTH EAST GATE was tucked in a remote corner of the base. It was a backwater Checkpoint Charlie with palm trees, the biggest difference being that its confrontations occurred well out of public view.
    During the Cold War both sides had booby-trapped the approaching roads and spiked the plains with mines. Sometimes they exchanged gunfire. More often the tension escalated into something resembling frat house pranks. The Cubans used to get their kicks by tossing stones at Marine Observation Post 31, a small concrete barracks and watchtower overlooking the gate from a facing hill. They especially liked to do it at night, figuring that a direct hit would awaken any soldier trying to sleep. The Marines answered by blocking the line of fire with a forty-foot fence, just like the ones that driving ranges put next to highways to keep golf balls from hitting cars. The Cubans counterattacked by climbing the new fence to mount coat hangers, which clanked and rang through the night like wind chimes. Then they lit up the barracks with a spotlight, which the Americans extinguished without firing a shot by unveiling a huge red-and-gold Marine Corps emblem on the illuminated hillside.
    Falk had sometimes patrolled the area as a Marine, walking the nearby roads in the swelter of full combat gear—weapon, flares, radio, food rations, and eight clips of ammo. It was a strange little world that turned spooky after dark, glowing a phosphorescent green through the lenses of his night-vision goggles. Every banana rat stirring in the brush had sounded like the advent of a commando raid.
    During the first year of his posting the Berlin Wall came down, and for a few weeks the fenceline was tense. The last known exchange of gunfire took place the following month. But by the end of his third year the crumbling Soviet Union had cut Cuba loose from its purse strings, which left the enemy with more important worries than a few jeering Marines. Cuban bodies had sometimes washed up on the American side in those days, but they were civilians, not soldiers—would-be refugees who had drowned or were shot while swimming for freedom. No one ever made a big deal about it as long as the Americans sent the bodies back, and every now and then someone made it through alive.
    Today the atmosphere was calmer than ever. The Americans had dismantled the booby traps and cleared their mines, replacing them with noise sensors and motion detectors. And for all the talk about OPSEC and renewed vigilance, they no longer staffed the observation post 24/7, relying instead on motorized patrols. Recently General Trabert had ordered the removal of a few coils of razor wire.
    The Cubans had never gotten around to clearing their own mines, and whenever there was a brush fire a couple dozen more cooked off, exploding like bullets tossed into a campfire. The few remaining coat hangers had rusted into place.
    But the North East Gate was still the one point along the perimeter where the two old adversaries regularly came face-to-face. It was the turnstile for the few aging Cubans who still commuted