Intercept by Patrick Robinson

America.
    To pass the time, he hummed the famous song made popular by the folk singer Pete Seeger, “Guantanamera!” written way back in the 1940s by Jose Fernandez, for the cheerful little town that had now been off-limits to U.S. military personnel for so long.
    Biff had been flown over by an elderly marine helicopter, since it was impossible to drive to town through the vast minefield that surrounds the inland border of the U.S. base. There is no land exit or entrance from the base to Castro’s Cuba. The helicopter was now parked on the edge of the
runway that was so hot, you could have easily fried an egg on the fuselage. “Let ’em work up a little sweat, right?” muttered Biff to no one in particular. Adding, with a flourish, “Sons-of-bitches.”
    Another ten minutes and the Cessna came in. Staff Sergeant Ransom met the passengers with military precision. Not knowing whether either Myerson or Renton had ever served as commissioned officers in any branch of the military, he saluted them smartly and led the way to the helo, which was right now doing a passable imitation of a metal incinerator.
    “She’ll cool off in a minute,” said the Sergeant cheerfully, “once we get some air flowing.” He was wrong, of course. The helo stayed hot. Ferociously hot, and James and Bobby were soaking wet by the time they reached the compound and landed next to the red-brick wall surrounding the white granite slab that proclaimed in big letters: CAMP JUSTICE—Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
    This guarded the entrance to the high-security courtroom, where both pre-trial hearings and military tribunals had been held for many years. Only very rarely did a man walk free from this building—unless he truly was just a school teacher or a wandering naturalist who somehow managed to be caught up in the general panic of Baghdad, Basra, Kabul, or the Hindu Kush mountains.
    Tom Renton’s father, as a judge advocate general, had spoken and advised in here, almost always in cases where non-military illegal combatants were trying to plead they were as much regular army as Hitler’s Panzers or the Coldstream Guards. Colonel Renton had both thought and said this was nothing more than pure rubbish, and treated it with the contempt it deserved. He always quoted directly from the Geneva Conventions, instructing the presiding officer that no one could be permitted to hurl a bomb into a supermarket or a hotel, kill several dozen people, and then plead they were some kind of a quasi-explosives officer to a modern-day Islamic General Patton, in order to be treated with honor, like a bona fide prisoner of war.
    It represented, of course, the most profound irony, that Colonel Renton, a true-blue old school military lawyer, determined to incarcerate all enemies of the United States, should have an attorney son, right down here in Cuba, trying his best to liberate them.
    “Times have changed,” was the often-stated view of Renton Junior. His father would undoubtedly have kicked him straight in the ass had he known where young Tom was, which he most definitely did not.

    Sergeant Ransom walked the two lawyers straight to the office of the Joint Detention Group commander, Colonel Andy Powell, who greeted them cooly, and offered iced tea. Right now, either overheated lawyer would have settled for iced swamp water, and they sat back to hear the restrictions that would be placed on them during their stay.
    “First of all, since we do not judge you are here to act in our best interest,” said Colonel Powell, “you will stay in the Guantanamo Hotel. The place is surrounded by bars and restaurants, and I’ve booked you a couple of rooms. Do not, however, go out looking for a cheap native fuck, or you’ll probably go home with mould growing out of your pecker.”
    James Myerson nodded sagely. Renton laughed. “How do we get to the hotel, sir?”
    “Same way you arrived. Helicopter.”
    “Thank you, sir. We intend to stay two nights if that’s okay, and then