Cuba (47 page)

“Someone in Cuba mightthe information is in the public

domainbut I doubt that Alejo Vargas knows much

about U.s. naval capability.”

“You hope he doesn’t, because if he does, they

might launch before the cruisers get in

range.”

Tater Totten nodded affirmatively.

“This Grafton, I’ve heard that he goes off

half-cocked, doesn’t obey orders, isn’t a

team player.”

“I don’t know who said that, but Jake ‘Grafton

is the best we have. War is his profession. Alejo

Vargas is an amateur playing at warthere is a

vast difference.”

“Grafton has enemies,”

“Who doesn’t?”

“What if the Cubans launch their missiles and the

cruisers miss?”

“Then the shit will really be in the fan, Mr.

President. Americans will die, a lot of them.

You’ll have to decide. how much of Cuba ybu want

to wipe off the face of the earth.”

“We’re going to hold a news conference to reply

to Vargas this afternoon.”

“I wouldn’t mention biological weapons, if I

were youea”…Tater Totten advised. “Let your

audience assume the Cuban missiles still have

nuclear warheads. Germs scare people more than bombs,

perhaps because they are invisible. And we’ve lived with the

bomb for fifty years.”

The president pursed his lips thoughtfully.

Autrey James, Petty Officer Third

Class, USN, always watched the ocean from his station

in the door of the helicopter. It was a point of

pride with him. He once spotted two fishermen

whose boat had sunk off Long Island and was given a

medal and had his name and photograph in the

newspapers, but the part of that adventure that he

remembered best was his grandmother’s reaction when she

read of his exploits. “You

save

people, Autrey, what a marvel-

ous professionff”…Grandmom’s comment somehow said it all

for Autrey James; whenever his helo was

airborne, he watched the ocean. Maybe someday

he would save another life.

So that was the reason Autrey James spotted the

tiny object on the surface of the immense ocean and

called it out to the pilots on the ICS.

“Yo, Mr. P., looks like a man in the water

at ten o’clock, two milesea”…Autrey James said.

“Are you kidding me, James? You got eyes that

good?”

“Looks like a man to me, sir, but I could be

wrong.”

“Well, we’ll motor over that way just to find out

if you are.”

The helicopter was an SH-60But Seahawk from

USS

Hue City,

one of the two Aegis-class cruisers that Jake

Grafton had sent charging northwest. The cruisers

were doing just that right now, running abreast of each other a

mile apart, making 32 knots, twenty-five

miles east of the helicopter’s position.

Hue City’s

commanding officer had launched his helo so the crew could

get some flight time and he could find out what was over

the horizon, beyond the range of his surface-search

radar.

“Dog my dingies, James, danged if that ain’t

a survivor. Is he alive, do you think?”

“His head’s still up, sir. Give me a hover and

I’ll put the basket in the water.”

The basket was just that, a basket on the end of a winch

cable. All the survivor had to do was crawl in,

then James could winch the basket up to the chopper and

help the survivor out.

Unfortunately, with the basket in the water just in

front of him, the survivor made no

attempt to get in.

“He ain’t gettin” in, Mr. P.ea”…Autrey

James told the pilot. He was leaning out the door

of the helicopter so that he could see the survivor and the

basket.

“I don’t think so. Looks like his head is out of the

water. Dead men don’t float like that.”

“You wanna jump in and help?”

“On my wayea”…sd Autrey James. The pilot

lowered the chopper to just a few feet above the water and

James jumped into the sea.

One look at the survivor’s face told him the

man was near death, too weak to help himself. With some

pushing and pulling, James got the survivor into the

basket. The other enlisted man in the chopper winched

him up, then dropped the basket for James.

When James had his helmet on again, he informed the

pilot, “We’d better head back quick, Mr.

P. This guy is in real bad shape. His eyes

don’t focus.”

“Try to give him some water.”

“I’ll try, but we need to get him to a doc.”

Autrey James leaned over the survivor, who was

deathly cold, and shouted to make himself heard above the

loud background noise, “Hey, man,

you’re one lucky dude. You’re gonna be okay.

Just hang on for a few more minutes.”

“Blanketsea”…James said to the other crewman.

Both of them wrapped the survivor in wool

blankets.

“Gracias,”

said Ocho Sedano, anil tried to smile. Then

exhaustion overcame him and he passed out

The carrier and her battle group got under way at

dawn.

Kearsarge

stayed in Guantanamo Bay and began loading the

marines that had been guarding warehouse number nine.

The last of the warheads were going aboard the cargo ship

this afternoon, then it would sail. When it left,

Kearsarge

would also get underway with the marines, all nineteen

hundred of them.

The battle group steamed south from Guantanamo

bay. For about an hour the southern hills of Cuba

were visible from the decks of the ships, but they soon

dropped over the horizon and all that could be seen in

any direction was

the eternal ocean, always changing, always the same. It

was then that the carrier launched an E-2

Hawkeye, which carried its radar up to 20,000

feet. Everything the Hawkeye’s early warning radar

saw was datalinked to the carrier’s computers, where

specialists kept track of the tactical

picture.

Toad Tarkington took Jake aside and showed him

the latest message from the National Security

Council. He was directed to destroy the viruses

in the laboratory in the University of Havana’s

science building, find and destroy the

warhead-manufacturing facility, and to remove the

warheads from the six missiles and destroy them in their

silos.

As Jake read the message, Toad said, “They

don’t want much, do they?”

“Where in hell is the warhead-manufacturing

facility”…”…Jake groused. He went to find

William Henry Chance to ask him that question. He

found Chance in the wardroom drinking coffee with

Tommy Carmellini. They were the only two people there

at ten in the morning.

“Do you have any idea where we might find this

factory for making biological warheads?”

“Sit down, Admiral. Let me buy you a cup

of navy coffee.”

Jake sat. Carmellini went for the coffee while

Jake repeated the question.

“It has to.be someplace between the science building

and the missile silosea”…Chance said. “No one in their

right mind would want to haul that stuff very far. A

traffic accident of some type …”

Jake Grafton’s brows knitted. He tapped

on the table. “If you were going to haul polio

viruses around, what kind of truck would you use?”

Chance shrugged. “I don’t knowea”…he said.

“I’ve been thinking about it for five hours now, and

I’ve got an idea. We’ll run it though the

recon computers and see what pops ou”…He got up

from his chair.

“Mind sharing your epiphany?”

“I’d haul the stuff in milk trucks. Clean,

sterile, and sealed. A dairy should have a sterile

environment and the equipment to mix the viruses with some

sort of a base, then load them into warheads.”

Jake turned and marched from the room just as

Carmellini approached with the extra coffee cup and

saucer.

“He didn’t stay long, did he?”

“Noea”…Chance grunted, and sipped at the coffee

Carmellini had brought from the urn in the

corner of the room.

“Think Grafton’s big enough for this

job”…”…Carmellini asked..

“Yeah. I think he is.”

Three dairies met Jake’s specificationsthey

were located between Havana and the first of the missile

silos, which were arranged in a line beginning forty

miles east of Havana and going east from there. The

silos were about fifteen miles apart.

“Cows. See if they have cows around them.”

“When?”

“The latest satellite photography. Whenever that

was.”

Two of the dairies no longer had cattle in the

adjacent fields. The one that did was scratched off

the list. The other two were examined minutely by the

carrier’s intelligence center experts and the National

Security Agency photo interpreters in

Maryland, who conferred back and forth via encrypted

satellite telephones. The experts decided that

neither dairy coold be eliminated as a possible

site for the warhead factory.

“We’ll do ‘em bothea”…Jake Grafton said.

By three that afternoon the staff and air wing planners had

come up with a draft plan. Actually the

task, destruction of eight targets, was a

relatively simple military one. Tomahawk

missiles could take out

the

lab and the dairies without muss or fuss. They could

probably also destroy the missiles in their

silos, as the silos were hardened in a simpler age,

when the threat was unguided air-dropped bombs.

With their ability to power-dive straight down on a

hardened target and penetrate ten or twelve feet

of reinforced concrete, Tomahawks were the weapon of

choice.

And they were out of the question. The president absolutely

refused to take the chance that polio viruses might

escape from a bombed lab or silo and kill tens

of thousands of Cubans in their beds. An event like that

would be political dynamite, with repercussions beyond

calculation. No, the politicians said,

American troops were going to have to lay their lives

on the line to prevent just such an occurrence. And,

Jake Grafton well knew, some of them would

die. . He had already put the wheels in motion.

Preliminary messages had been sent to other

commands, asking them for the assistance Jake thought he would

require. A thousand details remained

to be worked out by the various staffs involved, but the

machine was in motion. The primary task Jake still

had to address was setting the day and hour for the attack.

As he stood looking at the charts of Cuba that

covered the wall in the planning space, Jake and his

staff wrestled with the timing question. Captain Gil

Pascal, the chief of staff, argued that the operation

should be delayed until such time as U-2’s could

fly a photo recon mission and get the very latest

enemy troop positions.

“Vargas made a speech todayea”…Jake replied.

The speech and a translation had played several times

on television. Jake had even stopped once

to watch it.

“Hue City

and

Guilford Courthouse

are racing for the Florida Straitsea”…Toad

Tarkington argued. “This battle group is underway.

The Cubans may find out about these ship movements and

put two and two together and get their wind up. They

may be able to put twenty-four hours of delay

to better use than we can.”

“That’s the nub of it, isn’t it”…”…Jake mused, and

stood looking at the charts, trying

to imagine how it would be.

Sure, things would go wrong. People were going to have the wrong

frequencies, go to the wrong places, everything

STEPHEN COONTS

that could go wrong would. Still, the missions were simple.

The real issue, Jake concluded, was the

follow-up. What were you going to do if the troops

ran into more trouble than they could handle? How would you

extract them? How would you destroy the target?

Jake called the Pentagon on the satellite

telephone. He was patched through via land line

to General Totten at the White House.

After the usual greetings, Jake said, “Sir,

two points. First, I would like to address the

proposal to delay the operation until Patriot

SAM batteries can be moved into southern

Florida. If we pop a Cuban missile

over southern Florida the cloud of viruses may

drift over to Miami or Tampa. I don’t

think we gain anything by waiting for Patriot

batteries.”

“We’ve about reached the same conclusion here, but there

has been vigorous debate. What is your

second point?”

“In my view, the key to getting this done

is our willingness to do whatever is required

to accomplish the mission.”

“The president is listening, Admiral. Explain

yourself.”

“As I see it, General, our choice is-to either

wait until we are convinced we can pull it off,

or go now before the Cubans have a chance to garrison these

sites with troops. The lab in Havana presents

problems that the other sites do not. We will have