Arsenal

EIGHT

Computers atop the two rows of desks arrayed in the traditional horseshoe pattern beeped in sequence. The muted chirrup traveled from left to right, sounding at each computer terminal in turn until it leaped from the last desk in the semicircle, leaped past the long, now vacant anchor desk centered in front of the arc, leaped to the producer’s console in the glass-walled control room the bridge.

The alert immediately began making its rounds again, the circulating sound designed to jar even the most preoccupied reporter into attention. Flashing letters danced across the top of each monitor screen, identifying the incoming message as a breaking news bulletin from the Associated Press.

Only a few of the workstations were occupied at this hour. The two o’clock news program was a cut-in, and the anchors had already done their five live minutes of reading the news and fled the scene. So had the production crew, leaving the message alert to echo forlornly inside the dark, empty bridge. The instant the live portion gave way to the taped news rerun, giving them fifteen minutes of “free” time, nearly everyone ran for coffee, snacks, the bathroom.

Only a few of the writers remained in the quiet, soundproofed newsroom, working on scripts for the next show, getting on the telephone to finish gathering information for their assigned stories, using their terminals to check facts.

The computer beeped insistently, demanding that the operator attend to the incoming message traffic. Electronic transmission had long ago replaced the old yellow teletypes that chattered away in newsrooms.

“Will you look at this?” the reporter whistled quietly, hitting the keys which scrolled the full text of the bulletin down his screen.

“But I guess we should have expected it.”

He looked over at the producer who’d just walked in and motioned her over. “We’re going into Cuba. And you won’t believe who’s going to do the shooting.”

“Who the hell told the press?”

Batman stormed. The conference room was deadly silent.

“All right, all right, I know it wasn’t anyone here.” He turned to the SEAL team leader. “Can you get them out?”

“We know where the pilot is at least, we think we do.

With the right support, we can extract him.”

“When?”

The SEAL team leader shrugged. “We’ve been ready since Thursday.”

“We’re going to have to move you. Miss Drake,” the colonel said. He bowed slightly, and smiled.

“Of course, with your permission.”

“Why? What don’t you want me to see now?”

“You miss our point entirely. I know you’ve been watching the television coverage of this little conflict. Your country is planning on launching an attack. Staying where we are would be inadvisable at best.”

She glared at him. “You’re moving me to safety?” Scorn dripped out of her voice. “Because if that’s what you have in mind, forget it. I don’t run from a story not ever.”

“Not at all,” the colonel said smoothly, ignoring the tone of voice.

“In fact, we’re going to give you an opportunity to see the futility of it firsthand.”

Pamela stared up at the maze of girders, trying to discern a pattern.

The metal beams angled out in odd ways, no two exactly parallel. There must be major sections of it still missing, she thought, tracing out the pattern in her mind and trying to match it to any other military equipment she’d ever seen before. Nothing immediately sprang to mind except She turned to the colonel. “These are missile launchers, aren’t they?” It was more of a statement than a question.

A small frown crossed his face. “What is it to you?”

“Large missile launchers,” she insisted. “In fact, the only thing comparable I’ve seen was in Germany, the housings for the short-range tactical nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union.” She watched his face carefully, searching for the confirmation she wanted. She found it.

“You will tape the next report from here,” the colonel ordered. “This will make a fine background, will it not?” he said, gesturing at the girders.

“They’ll know you’ve got them. You know the United States will never tolerate this.”

“They already know. Do you believe that we do not understand your satellite operations?”

“Then if they know, this will be one of their first targets.”

In fact, I suspect that this little trick you’re trying to pull off is behind the whole conflict. That Cuban plane that was shot down it came too close, I bet. She studied the colonel, new respect in her eyes.

“Your report,” he said, his voice harsh.

She nodded to the cameraman, stepped away from the girders, studied the scene to find the perfect position to report from, then nodded her head. “There, over by those boxes.” With the girders on one side of her and the boxes on the other, it would make an impressive show of military readiness. Besides, her report might provide additional confirmation to the U.S. intelligence sources on the nature of Cuba’s weapons. She gestured for the cameraman to follow her.

Ten minutes later, they were ready. She took a deep breath, made the last cursory pass of fingers through hair, and nodded.

“This is Pamela Drake, reporting live from western Cuba.

We have just received notification that the United States intends to execute a tactical strike on Cuba. While no doubt one of the factors that figured into its planning was minimizing collateral damage, my sources here tell me there is little chance the United States will be able to achieve that objective.”

She took a deep breath. Her voice felt unexpectedly shaky this was going to be harder than she thought. She looked upward, wondering if a satellite was staring down on her as she taped this scene.

“This missile installation will undoubtedly be first on the United States’ target list. As you can see, I am standing only fifteen yards away from what is probably the aim point. My sources here inform me” she paused, taking a moment to make eye contact with the cameraman and nod at him, putting him on alert that something unexpected would happen” that I will not be allowed to leave this area until the attack is over. Isn’t that correct. Colonel?”

She smiled approvingly as the cameraman swung around to get a shot of her senior-most guard.

The Cuban officer appeared startled, and his face contorted in a flash of fury. “This was not part of” From off camera, Pamela persisted.

“Isn’t that correct?

You’re leaving me here as a hostage or as the first civilian collateral damage. How can you justify that, given your party’s consistent insistence on human rights policies in Cuba? Doesn’t using foreign nationals as hostage shields, as was done in Desert Storm, cast doubts on the legitimacy of your claims to represent the real Cuban interests?”

The colonel covered the distance to the cameraman in five quick steps.

He yanked the video cam out of the man’s hands and threw it to the ground, then stomped on it. Pamela could hear delicate mechanical structures twisting, cracking, and snapping.

As though nothing had happened, she held the microphone back up to her mouth. “This is Pamela Drake, no longer reporting live from Cuba.”

“Come!” The colonel walked over to her, grabbed her roughly by the upper arm, and started steering her back toward the battered jeep.

“What? You’re not leaving me here?”

He smirked. “And this is why women should not be involved in military planning. There is no further need for that. Your live report convinced them that you were here, and the satellite undoubtedly confirmed it. They may see us move you, but they won’t take the chance that it’s permanent. If they shoot now, they must do so believing that they will kill you.”

The ocean churned against the carrier, disrupted in its orderly sea state two march toward the coast by the presence of the massive gray hull. While the carrier barely deigned to acknowledge the long, slow swells, the SEALs Special Forces boat tethered to the aft landing platform was another matter.

“Catch.” Sikes heaved his backpack down into the boat, flexed his knees, and leaped lightly from the stable carrier into the pitching boat. He took the impact mostly in his knees, consciously keeping his body loose and relaxed as he hit, sticking the landing like an Olympic gymnast.

“Catch, yourself,” Huerta snapped, thrusting the pack out toward him.

“Back in the old days” “I know, I know you weren’t sissies back then,” Sikes interrupted, taking the pack. He slipped his arms through the strap, buckled the waistbelt, then turned back up to face the admiral on the platform. “We’re ready. Admiral.”

Batman nodded. “Get some good pictures. I want to be able to send something home besides postcards from the ship’s store.”

“You’ve got it, sir.” Sikes turned to the rest of the boat crew and assessed their readiness one last time. Everything was on board it had to be. There was no running back to camp during the middle of a mission to retrieve forgotten batteries or repair parts for neglected equipment. Satisfied with the still, taut readiness he saw in his teammates, he made a sharp hand motion to the coxswain.

The low thrum of the engine increased slightly, but not much, since every orifice was sound-muffled. The engine noise was barely audible over the sound of water slapping against the carrier, but that would change all too soon. As soon as they put some distance between themselves and the massive mother ship, every decibel of noise would increase the possibility that they would be detected.

Sikes turned back toward the carrier, snapped off a last sharp salute at the admiral, then settled into his seat. There was no need for further orders. The mission had been thoroughly briefed, just as thoroughly talked through and committed to memory. The team was working like a well-oiled machine.

Twenty minutes later, they were four thousand yards off the coast of Cuba. The sky was just starting to darken in the east, and shadows were creeping away from the buildings he saw ashore. A few guards walked the pier, and there was little chance that they hadn’t seen the gunboat. Would they do anything about it? That was the key question.

Their best estimate had been no. The Cubans weren’t likely to want to provoke an incident just then.

Fine. So much the better. As soon as he established for certain that the Cubans had seen them, they’d head back to the carrier.

And if the Cubans began mobilizing to repel a SEAL force coming ashore on the southern coast of Cuba, even better. Because coming ashore there was the last thing any one of them intended.

Pamela had just started dozing when the sound of her door opening snapped her awake. She resisted the temptation to rub at her eyes, tried to discipline her face into an expression of watchfulness. The last thing she wanted was for the Cuban men to suspect she was tired.

But, oh. Lord, wasn’t she? The last few days, the constant travel at night, the confrontation with the colonel earlier today at the missile launcher it had all taken its toll. After the brutal execution of her cameraman, she’d slipped into a state that wasn’t quite insanity or rationality. It was somewhere in between, a state that mostly consisted of waiting for the world to deal out its next brutal shock.

The colonel stepped into the room, as sharp and nattily dressed as he’d ever been. The hours that had passed seemed to have had no effect on him, hadn’t even darkened his jaw with a five o’clock shadow. She felt his eyes roam over her, note the wrinkles in her clothes and the expression in her face, and she saw a trace of amusement.

“The waiting is almost over, madam.” An odd note of formality was in his voice.

She stood, ignoring the odd popping in her left knee.

“You’re shooting the missiles?”

He shook his head. “No, certainly not. I’ve told you before, Cuba is a peaceful nation. No, it is your countrymen they’re planning on coming ashore. I want you to be there to witness it” “How?”

He stepped into the room, walked slowly to her side, and grasped her gently by the elbow, his fingers brushing across the bruises he’d left there earlier that day. “You’ll know when we get there. Not before.”

“My camera,” she began.

“Has been replaced, with a more reliable operator.” A small sneer tugged at his lips. “You, my dear, are professional enough to work around any technical flaws, I hope.”

“But where are we going?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

“Here it is,” he said as the jeep ground to a shuddering halt.

“Move quietly. No more surprises.”

Covering ten miles along the rough, potholed roads in an ancient jeep without any apparent suspension had taken its toll on her. Every muscle in her body felt as if it had been stretched past any reasonable limits, and her legs felt shaky as she tried to stand. She held on to the side of the jeep, took a deep breath, and tried to gather her strength before attempting a few steps.

“Our conditions are too rough for you?” he inquired solicitously.

“But surely you can continue another hour or so? Especially since this is the most significant story since Desert Storm.” He put one hand out to steady her.

She jerked away. “I’m fine,” she said. Her voice was strong, belying her weariness. “But you still haven’t explained what we’re here for.”

He turned away from her, pointing out to sea, deliberately exposing his back to her. “There. They’ll come ashore from that direction.”

“Who will?”

“SEALs, I think. Or maybe Rangers. Either one it will be Special Forces of some sort.”

“How do you know?”

He turned back to her. With an air of infinite patience, he spread his hands out in front of him, palms up. “Because they were sighted to the south earlier this evening,” he said slowly, as though explaining to a child. “All of our forces on alert there saw them.”

She shook her head, trying to clear out the cobwebs and make sense of his words. If the Special Forces had been sighted to the south, then why were they expected here? It didn’t make she nodded as a trickle of adrenaline energized her thought processes. Of course. What had Tombstone always told her? That the best operation begins with an effective deception.

“So they won’t come ashore there,” she said finally, starting to follow his reasoning. “Because they’re very, very good at what they do. And if they intended to approach from that direction, they would not have been seen. Is that it?”

He nodded. “Perhaps you understand more than I believe.

I will have to remember that.” He turned back to his soldiers and rattled out a harsh stream of commands, the words barely understandable for the speed. She saw men move quickly in response, unpacking an array of equipment from the back of a deuce-and-a-half that had followed them down the rutted road. Metal stanchions, a bar of lights, she realized suddenly. They were an older, less sophisticated version of the very setup she used when reporting from the field. But surely they wouldn’t “I think you will be able to get some exceptional footage of this encroachment on Cuba’s sovereign soil,” he said, motioning to his aide. “Now let’s get you in position. After all, what do they say in America? The show must go on.”

“Hurry up and get back before I run out of gas,” the SEAL at the aft end of the boat grumbled.

Sikes glanced up at him from his position in the water, clinging to the side of the RHIB. “You know what the plan is. If we’re not back in three hours, you scoot back to the carrier. You got that?”

“Yeah, yeah.” The assent was perfunctory. Both men knew that, despite his orders, the SEAL would no more leave his station before the team returned than any one of them would leave a comrade ashore. Giving orders was one thing making sure they were obeyed was another. And Sikes wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

“Let’s go, then.” Sikes slipped his mouthpiece into his mouth and let himself slip below the surface of the water. As the sea rushed up over his mask, he saw the dim forms of the rest of his squad forming around him. The only light was from dim stars overhead and the glowing combination watch and compass on each wrist.

They formed up quickly, each man conducting a last-minute check for safety on his partner, then broke into a single-file line to make their approach to shore. After the first few minutes, Sikes settled into the gentle rhythm. It was barely two miles inland, an easy swim in these waters with flippers and masks. The oxygen tank on his back would be more than enough. Getting in wasn’t the problem getting out was.

“Colonel, I have them.” The Cuban enlisted specialist spoke quietly, a note of excitement in his voice. He motioned toward his screen. “A heat spot.”

Pamela followed the colonel over to the equipment mounted on the ancient jeep. “What are we looking at?” she asked.

“One of the latest advances in technology, my dear.” He pointed to the small screen, which displayed various shades of gray. “It’s a thermal imaging sensor. Superb for noting differences in the heat surface of the water.”

“You can see swimmers?” She hated herself for asking the question as soon as she asked it. Of course they could that was the purpose of this whole evolution.

The colonel reached out and gently touched four white spots on the screen. They almost looked like background noise, and it was only after extended observation that one became aware that they were consistently moving across the screen in a pattern and weren’t part of the random noise generated in the moonless night by the cooling ocean.

“Just one squad more than enough for what they wished to accomplish.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked calmly, dread trickling into her heart. She’d seen war, she’d seen conflict, and she’d seen death and would again, if she ever survived this venture. But she’d never been on the other side, watching her countrymen cold-bloodedly murdered.

“You’ll see.” The Cuban colonel smirked. “It will not involve casualties not unless they provoke us by coming ashore. A peaceful, yet highly effective demonstration of Cuban military capabilities, one they will not forget quickly.”

As the gentle swells turned to chop nearer to shore, the SEALs closed up again, pausing to take their bearings.

According to each of their chronometers, they were exactly on course, creeping in toward land along the least guarded section of the coast.

Another ten minutes and they’d be in.

Sikes motioned to his fellows to stay below water, and gently kicked himself up to the surface to take one last sighting. The landmarks were thoroughly embedded in his memory, as was every target point.

Still, it never hurt to be certain.

He let his head poke up above the surface of the water, maintaining neutral buoyancy with gentle flicks of his flippers. He lifted himself up on the next swell and stared inland, trying to pinpoint the tall tower that was the first landmark. Within a few seconds, he knew he was Kicked.

Lining the shore from one end of the insertion point to the other was light. Large headlights, as though a news crew were awaiting their arrival. And, after Grenada, he knew exactly what that was like.

Fifteen minutes later, they crowded back aboard the RHIB, tired, frustrated, and pissed beyond recovery. The peals of laughter and jeering from the crowd ashore just behind the lights still rung in their ears. Worse yet was the military band that had struck up martial music just as Sikes had poked his head above the water. And the fireworks.

They would hear the sound of laughter all the way back to the carrier, even after they were out of earshot.