Freedom Fighters

53. Run

"So what?! It just disappeared?!" Dario shouted into the handset. "It's been a day!"

"Sorry, General," the terrified voice replied. "The scheduled plane never returned. We contacted the airfield in Santiago. They said that the plane did take off on schedule."

Dario slammed the handset back down in fury, his other arm on the verge of pulling his hair out. He shot to his feet, and began pacing around the room, his heart twisting and turning, sending excruciating surges of pain through his veins. 

He tried to control his breathing. It worked for a few seconds before he wheezed. It felt as if he were inhaling shards of glass through his throat. 

"Camilo..." he whispered to himself, voice laced with desperation. "Oh, Camilo, what happened?"

His best friend was supposed to have returned to Havana yesterday night. At first, the men at the airport thought that there had been some delay, and so they did not report the case. Only when a few hours had passed did they then go through the chain of command to report the case.

Only this morning, as Dario prepared to leave his house, the phone in his house rang. The official conveyed the news as delicately as he could, being the unfortunate messenger. Dario had ridden the car to his office in stunned silence. It was only when he sat down in his desk when the whirlwind of emotions swept through him. Hoping against hope, he had picked up the phone to dial the airport office, only to receive expected answers.

The plane simply... vanished.

How? How could it happen that a plane could disappear without a trace? Did it crash? 

Dario's mind cleared up as he realised he needed to do all he could to find out what happened before jumping to conclusions.

He picked his phone up again, this time to request from his telephone operator a direct line to the Santiago office. Finally, after a few minutes, he managed to reach the personal line of the city's governor. 

A low voice answered the line. "Governor Ortiz here. General, how may I help you?"

"I'm going to cut straight to business, Governor," Dario said dryly, restraining to urge to let his raging panic show in his voice. "The missing plane of Chief of Staff Camilo Cienfuegos."

"Of course!" the voice perked up. "I have sent rescue teams out to comb the immediate area around the city."

"How about the other cities on the air route to Havana? It could have crashed at any point."

"I have considered that too, General, not to worry. I have assembled a team to work on the matter right now. It is of the utmost priority."

"Thank you, Governor, do inform me immediately of any news at all. Is that clear?"

"Yes, definitely so!"

Dario hung the call up, sighing. His mind pictured the possibilities. Something definitely happened. It somehow crashed. It could only be confirmed when they found the crash site. Dario shuddered at that thought. He knew that the pain of discovering that his friend was truly dead would far exceed the dreadful anticipation of that discovery. 

Or... 

A dark thought surfaced from the depths of his thought. A thought that, all this, was far too... coincidental. Fidel sent Camilo to Santiago, and then his plane conveniently disappears? Could it be that Fidel had a hand in this?

The more he thought about it, the larger the possibility it seemed. He grit his teeth, and hot tears streamed down his cheeks. If Fidel did this... if he did this...