Cuba

CHAPTER TEN

One of the butlers unlocked the bedroom door and took Mercedes to see Colonel Santana, who was standing behind Fidel’s desk sorting papers. He didn’t look up when she first came in. She found a chair and sat.

“The government has not yet decided when or how to announce the death of el presidente. No doubt it will happen in a few days, but until it does you are to remain here, in the residence, and talk to no one. Security Department people are on the switchboards and will monitor all telephone calls. The telephone lines that do not go through the switchboard have been disconnected.”

He eyed her askance, then went back to sorting papers. “After the official version of Fidel’s death is written and announced, you will be free to go. I remind you now that disputing the official version of events is a crime.”

“Everyone swears to your history before you write it?” she snapped.

Santana looked at her and smiled. “I was searching for the proper words to explain the nub of it and they just came to you”—he snapped his fingers—“like that. It is a gift, I think. When you say it so precisely, I know you understand. Ignorance will not be a defense if there is ever a problem.”

Mercedes got up from the chair and left the room.

She wandered the hallways and reception rooms, the private areas, the offices, all now deserted. Every square foot was full of memories. She could see him talking to people, bending down slightly to hear, for he had been a tall man. She could not remember when he had not been the president of Cuba. When she was a girl, he was there. As a young woman, he was there. When she married, was widowed, when he took her to be his woman … always, all her life there was Fidel.

Such a man he had been! She was a Latin woman, and Fidel had been the epitome of the Latin man, a brilliant, athletic man, a commanding speaker, a perfect patriot, a man who defined machismo. The facets of Fidel’s personality that the non-Latin world found most irritating were those Cubans accepted as hallmarks of a man. He was self-righteous, proud, sure of his own importance and place in history, never admitted error, and refused to yield when humiliated by the outside world. He had struggled, endured, won much and lost even more, and in a way that non-Latins would never understand, had become the personification of Cuba.

And she had loved him.

In the room where he died the television cameras and lights were still in place, the wires still strung. Only Fidel’s body was missing.

She stood looking at the scene, remembering it, seeing him again as he was when she had known him best.

Still magnificent.

Now the tears came, a clouding of the eyes that she was powerless to stop. She found a chair and wept silently.

Her mind wandered off on a journey of its own, recalling scenes of her life, moments with her mother, her first husband, Fidel ….

The tears had been dry for quite a while when she realized with a start that she was still sitting in this room. The cameras were there in front of her, mounted on heavy, wheeled tripods.

These cameras must have some kind of film in them, videotape. She went to the nearest camera and examined it. Tentatively she pushed and tugged at buttons, levers, knobs. Finally a plate popped open and there was the videocassette. She removed it from the camera and closed the plate. There was also a cassette in the second camera.

With both cassettes concealed in the folds of her dress, Mercedes strode from the room.

A wave breaking over the deck doused Ocho Sedano with lukewarm water and woke him from a troubled, exhausted sleep. Angel del Mar was riding very low in the water. Even as he realized that the bilges must be full, another wave washed over the deck.

Ocho dashed below. The old fisherman slumped over the pump, water sloshed nearly waist-deep in the bilge. Ocho eased him aside, began pumping. He could feel the resistance, feel the water moving through the pump. He laid into it with a will.

“Sorry,” the old man said weakly. “Worn out. Just worn out.”

“Go up on deck. Dry out some, drink some water.”

The old man nodded, crawled slowly up the steep ladder. He slipped once, almost smashed his face on one of the steps. Finally his feet disappeared into the wheelhouse.

Three rain showers during the night had allowed everyone on board to drink their fill, to replenish dehydrated tissue, and when Ocho last looked, there were several gallons of water in the bucket under the tarp that no one could drink.

Ocho was no longer thirsty, but he was hungry as hell. There had been no more fish. Without line, hooks, bait, or nets they were unable to catch fish from the sea. Unless the creatures leaped onto the deck of the boat they were out of reach. So far, there had been no more of those.

The tarp they caught the water in gave the liquid a brackish taste, which everyone ignored. Still, water on an empty stomach made one aware of just how hungry he was.

Ocho pumped, felt his muscles loosen up, enjoyed the resistance that meant the pump was moving water. After fifteen minutes of maximum effort he could see that the water level was down about six inches. He settled in to work at a steady, sustainable pace.

The horizon remained empty. Empty! Not a boat or sail. Endless swells and sky in every direction.

It was almost as if the Lord had abandoned them, left them to die on this leaky little boat in the midst of this great vast ocean, while planes went overhead and boats and ships passed by on every side, just over the horizon.

We won’t have to wait long, Ocho thought. Our fate is very near. If the chain on this pump breaks, if we run out of energy to pump, if the swells get larger and waves start coming aboard, the boat will break up and the people will go into the sea. That would be our fate, to drown like all those people who went overboard that first night.

They are dead now, surely. Past all caring.

Amazing how that works. Everyone has to die, but you only have to do it once. You fight like hell to get there, though, and when you arrive the world continues as if you had never been.

As he pumped he wondered about his mother, how she was doing, wondered if he should have told her he was going to America.

An hour later Ocho was still pumping, the water was down several feet and the boat was riding better in the sea. And he was wearing out. He heard someone coming down the ladder, then saw feet. It was Dora.

She clung to the ladder, watched him standing in water to his knees working the pump handle up and down, up and down, up and down.

“It’s Papa,” she said.

He said nothing, waited for her to go on.

“I think he has given up.”

Ocho kept pumping.

“Speak to me, Ocho. Don’t insult me with your silence.”

Ocho switched arms without missing a stroke. “What is there to say? If he has given up, he has given up.”

“Will we be rescued?”

“Am I God? How would I know?”

“I am sick of this boat, this ocean!” she snarled. “Sick of it, you understand?”

“I understand.”

She sobbed, sniffed loudly.

Ocho kept pumping.

“I don’t think you love me,” she said, finally.

“I don’t know that I do.”

She watched him pump, up and down, rhythmically, endlessly.

“Doesn’t that make you tired?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

He wiped the sweat from his face with his free hand. “All of us, sooner or later, yes.”

“I mean now. This boat is going to sink. We’re going to drown.”

He looked at her for the first time. Her skin was stretched tightly over her face, her teeth were bared, her eyes were narrowed with an intensity he had never seen before.

“I don’t know,” he said gently.

“I don’t want to die now.”

He lowered his face so that he wouldn’t have to look at her, kept the handle going up and down.

She went back up the ladder, disappeared from view.

Ocho paused, straightened as best he could under the low overhead and looked critically at the water remaining in the boat. He was gaining. He stretched, crossed himself on the off chance God might be watching, then went back to pumping.

The CIA’s man in Cuba was an American, Dr. Henri Bouchard, a former college professor who lived and worked inside the American Interest Section of the Swiss embassy, a complex of buildings that in former days housed the American embassy and presumably someday would again. The Cubans watched the American diplomats very closely, so this officer had no contact with the agency’s covert intelligence apparatus on the island. He kept himself busy watching television, listening to radio, collecting Cuban newspapers and publications and writing reports based on what he saw, heard, and read. His diplomatic colleagues were congenial and the life was semi-monastic, which he found agreeable.

The man who ran the covert side of the business was a Cuban who had never set foot inside the U.S. Interest Section and probably never would. He owned a wholesale seafood operation on the waterfront in Havana Harbor. Every day the fishing boats brought their catch to his pier and every day he purchased what he thought he could sell. Both the price he paid and the price he charged were set by the government: had there not been a black market for fish he would have starved.

The cover was decent. A Cuban fishing boat could meet an American boat or submarine at sea, passing messages or material in either direction. The spymaster’s delivery trucks visited every restaurant, casino, and embassy in the capital. With people and things coming and going, the old man could keep his pulse on Cuba. He was called el Tiburón, the Shark.

William Henry Chance had no intention of ever meeting el Tiburón unless disaster was staring him in the face. The CIA man in the American Interest Section was another matter.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Chance. Delighted to meet you, of course.”

Dr. Bouchard shook hands with Chance and Carmellini as he peered at them over the top of his glasses. He led them down several narrow hallways to a tiny, windowless cubicle in the bowels of the building.

“Sorry to say, this is the office. Security, you know. They used to store food in here. Damp but quiet.” He took a stack of newspapers off the only guest chair and moved them to his desk, extracted a folding metal chair from behind his desk and unfolded it for Carmellini, then settled into his chair.

The knees of all three men almost touched. “So how are you enjoying Cuba?”

“Fascinating,” Chance muttered.

“Yes, isn’t it?” Professor Bouchard beamed complacently. “Six years I’ve been here, and I don’t ever want to leave. I don’t miss the snow, I’ll tell you, or the faculty politics, feuds, dog-eat-dog jealousy over department budgets — thank God I’m out of all that.”

Chance nodded, unwilling to get to the point.

“We met once or twice before, I think,” Chance reminded Bouchard.

“Oh, yes, I do seem to recall ….”

They discussed it.

“My associate, Mr. Carmellini. I don’t think you’ve met him.”

The pleasantries over at last, Chance edged around to business. “You have a few items in your storeroom that we need to borrow, I believe.”

“Certainly. The inventory is in the safe. If you gentlemen will step into the hall for a moment …”

They did so and he fiddled with the dial of the safe. When he had the file he wanted and the safe was closed and locked, he seated himself again at his desk. Chance sat back down. Carmellini remained standing.

“This is the inventory, I’m sure. Yes. What is it you want?”

“Two Rugers with silencers, ammunition, two garroting wires, two fighting knives, a dozen disposable latex gloves, two self-contained gas masks—”

“Let’s see …” The professor ran his finger down the list. “Guns, check. Ammo, okay. Knives … knives … oh, here they are. Wires, garroting, check … gloves … masks. Yes, I think we have what you need. Do you want to take this stuff with you?”

“I think so. In a suitcase of some kind, if you can manage that.”

“I’ll have to give you one of mine. You can return it or pay me for it, as you prefer.”

“We’ll try to return it.”

“That’s best, I think. The accounting department is so difficult about expense accounts. You gentlemen wait here; I’ll see what I can do. While you’re waiting, would you like a cup of coffee, a soft drink?”

“I’m fine,” Chance said.

“Don’t worry about me,” Carmellini said.

“This will take a few minutes,” the professor advised. “Would you like to wait in the courtyard? The flora there is my hobby, and the eagle from the Maine Memorial is a rare work of art.”

“That’s the big eagle over the doorway?”

“Yes. After the revolution Castro demanded it be removed from the Maine Memorial. That was about the time he announced he was a communist, before the Bay of Pigs. Difficult era for everyone.”

“Ah, yes. We’ll find our way.”

“I’ll look for you in the courtyard when I have your items,” the professor said, and scurried off.

The eagle was huge. “Quite a work of art,” Carmellini muttered.

“Too big for you,” Chance said.

“I don’t know about that,” Carmellini replied, and glanced around to see if there was any way to get the thing out of the mission ground with a crane. “Run a mobile construction crane up to the wall, send a man down on the hook, haul it out. I could snatch it and be gone in six or seven minutes.”

Chance didn’t even bother to frown. Carmellini had a habit of chaffing him in an unoffensive way; protest would be futile.

“The professor is the most incurious man I’ve ever met,” Tommy Carmellini said conversationally a few minutes later.

“He doesn’t want to know too much.”

“He doesn’t want to know anything,” Carmellini protested. “People who don’t ask obvious questions worry me.”

“Hmmm,” said William Henry Chance, who didn’t seem at all worried.

The professor came looking for them a half hour later. After he had scrawled an illegible signature on a detailed custody card, Chance offered the professor a photo of a man that his surveillance team had taken outside the University of Havana science building. The man was in his sixties, slightly overweight, balding, and looking at the camera almost full face. He didn’t see the camera that took the picture, of course, since it was in the van.

“If you could, Professor, I would like you to send this to Washington. I want to know who this man is.”

“American?” Dr. Bouchard asked, accepting the photo and glancing at it.

“I have no idea, sir. We’ve seen him around here and there and wondered who he might be. Would you have the folks in Langley try to find out?”

“Of course,” the professor said, and put the photo in his pocket.

Toad Tarkington was in a rare foul mood. He snapped at the yeomen, snarled at the flag lieutenant, fumed over the message board, and generally glowered at anyone who looked his way.

This state of affairs could not go on, of course, so he went to his stateroom, put on his running togs, and went on deck for a jog. The tropical sea air, the long foaming rollers, the puffy clouds running on the breeze, the deep blue of the Caribbean — all of it made his mood more foul.

None of the leads to find the Colón had borne fruit. The ship was still missing, the captain and crew had stayed aboard her all the time she was tied to the pier in Guantánamo, the gloom seemed impenetrable. The air wing was still searching, but as yet, nothing! And of course the temperature of the rhetoric coming from the White House and Pentagon was rising by the hour.

Toad was jogging aft from the bow when a petty officer from the admiral’s staff flagged him down. “The AIs have a photo of the Colón!”

“Where is she?”

“Aground on a reef off the north shore of Cuba.”

Toad bolted for the hatchway that led down into the ship, the petty officer right behind.

The photo was of the Colón, all right. The ship looked as if it were wedged on some rocks, almost as if it grounded during a high tide. Now the tide was out and the Colón was marooned.

“When was this picture taken?” Toad demanded of the air intelligence officers.

“Yesterday.”

“And no one recognized it?”

“Not until today.”

Toad growled. “Have you passed this to the admiral?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Show me the location.”

The AI pinpointed the location on a sectional chart.

Toad called Jake Grafton. “I want to see that ship,” Jake said. “As soon as possible. We’ll take an F-14 with a TARPS package.” TARPS stood for tactical air reconnaissance pods. Each pod contained two cameras and an infrared line scanner.

Cuba is an island surrounded by islands, over sixteen hundred of them. Most of the islands on Cuba’s north shore are small, uninhabited, rocky bits of tropical paradise, or so they looked to Jake Grafton, who saw them through binoculars from the front seat of an F-14.

The ship was about three miles offshore, stranded on rocks that just pierced the surface of the sea. The breaking surf looked white through the binoculars.

The freighter was plainly visible, listing slightly. Some of the weapons containers were visible on the main deck. Jake checked the photo in his lap, which was taken yesterday by an F/A-18 Hornet pilot with a hand-held 35-mm camera. Yep, the containers visible in the photo were still in place aboard the ship.

Although the Cubans claimed a twelve-mile territorial limit, the United States recognized but three. Nuestra Señora de Colón was stranded on a reef in international waters, the AIs assured Jake. They had checked with the State Department, they said.

South of the ship was the entrance to Bahia de Nipe, a decent-sized shallow-water bay.

Was the ship on her way into the bay when she went on the rocks?

Jake was making his initial photo passes a mile to seaward of the Colón. In the event the Cubans chose to send interceptors to chase him away, he had a flight of F-14s ten miles farther north providing cover. Above them was an EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare airplane, listening for and ready to jam any Cuban fire-control radar that came on the air. According to the electronic warfare detection gear in Jake’s cockpit, he was being painted only by search radars. That, as he well knew, could change any second.

He had just completed a photo pass from west to east and was turning to seaward when the E-2 came on the air. “Battlestar One, we have company. Bogey twenty miles west of your posit, heading your way. Looks like a Fulcrum.” A Fulcrum was a MiG-29.

Jake keyed his radio mike. “Roger that: I’ll make one more photo pass before he gets here, then exit the area to the north.”

He tucked the nose down and let the Tomcat accelerate. The plane was alive in his hand — the descending jet bumped and bounced in the swirling, roiling tropical air under the puffy cumulus clouds drifting along on the trade wind.

“Cameras are on and running,” Toad Tarkington said from the back seat.

Staying just outside the three-mile limit, Jake flew past the stern of the stranded freighter one more time, which meant he was probably getting fine views of her stern and oblique views of her flanks.

“Since we’re here …” he muttered, and dropped a wing as he eased the stick and throttles forward.

In the back seat, Toad Tarkington was monitoring the recon package. “I sure am glad we’re staying out of Cuban airspace,” he told Jake. “I’d feel a lot more comfortable outside the twelve-mile limit, but that’s asking too much of this technology. A ship sitting on the rocks like this, looks like a setup to me. They’re looking to mousetrap some dude flying by snapping pictures and perforate his heinie.”

“Yeah,” said Jake Grafton, and leveled off at a hundred feet above the water. He had the F-14 flying parallel with the axis of the ship, offset with the ship to his right since the recon package was mounted under his right engine.

“Got the cameras and IR scanner going?”

“Oh, yeah, looking real good,” Toad said, just as he picked up the seascape passing by the canopy with his peripheral vision. He looked right just in time to see the freighter flash by, then Jake Grafton pulled back on the stick and lit the afterburners. The Tomcat’s nose rose to sixty degrees above the horizon and it went up like a rocket, corkscrewing back toward the ocean, as the E-2 Hawkeye radar operator called the bogey for the Showtime F-14 crews who were Jake’s armed guard. Both RIOs said they had the bogey on radar.

“Like I said,” Toad told Jake, “sure is great we’re staying outside Cuban airspace.”

“Great,” his pilot agreed.

“Don’t want to piss anybody off.”

“Oh, no.”

“Wonder why that ship ended up where it did?”

“Maybe the photos will tell us.”

“Bogey is six miles aft, Battlestar One,” the E-2 Hawkeye radar operator said, “four hundred knots, closing from your eight o’clock.”

“You wanna turn toward him, Admiral, let me pick him up on the radar?” Toad asked this question.

“No, let’s clear to seaward.”

“I got him visual,” Toad said as the Tomcat climbed past fifteen thousand feet. “He’s a little above us, pulling lead.”

“Pulling lead?” Jake looked over his left shoulder, found the MiG-29.

“He could take a gunshot anytime,” Toad said.

“He’s rendezvousing,” Jake said, “Gonna join on our left wing, looks like.”

And that is what the MiG did. He closed gently, his nose well out in front, his axis almost parallel, a classic rendezvous. The MiG stabilized in a parade position, about four feet between wingtips, stepped down perhaps three feet. Despite the bumpy air the MiG held position effortlessly.

Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington sat staring at the helmeted figure of Carlos Corrado in the other cockpit. Toad lifted his 35-mm camera, snapped off a dozen photos of the Cuban fighter and the two air-to-air missiles hanging on the racks.

“Think he knows we were inside the three-mile limit?” Toad asked Jake.

“His GCI controller told him, probably.”

Corrado stayed glued to the F-14. He paid no attention to the other Tomcats that came swooping in to join the formation, didn’t even bother to glance at them.

Jake Grafton slowly advanced his throttles to 95 percent RPM. The MiG was right with him. Leaving the power set, he got the nose coming up, began to roll away from the MiG, up and over to the inverted and right on through, coming on with the G to keep the nose from scooping out … a medium-sloppy barrel roll.

Now a barrel roll to the left. The two F-14s behind Carlos Corrado moved into trail position, behind and stepped down slightly, to more easily stay with the maneuvering airplanes, but Corrado held his position in left parade as if he were welded there.

Now a loop. Up, up, up and over the top, G increasing down the backside, the sea and sky changing position very nicely, the sun dancing across the cockpit.

“This guy’s pretty good,” Toad remarked grudgingly.

“Pretty good?”

“Okay, he’s a solid stick.”

Now a half loop and half roll at the top, fly along straight and level for a count of five, roll again and half turn into a lopsided split S, one offset from the vertical by forty-five degrees. Coming out of the dive Jake let the nose climb until it was pointed straight up; he slowly rolled around his axis, then pulled the plane on over onto its back and waited until the nose was forty-five degrees below the horizon before rolling wings level and beginning his pullout. Through it all Carlos Corrado stayed glued in position on Jake’s wing.

Coming out of the last maneuver, Jake Grafton turned eastward. The MiG-29 stayed with the American fighters for fifteen more minutes, until the flight was near the eastern tip of Cuba, Cape Maisi, and turning south. Only then did Carlos Corrado wave at Jake and Toad and lower his nose to cross under the F-14.

Out of the corner of his eye Jake saw Toad salute the MiG pilot as he turned away to the west.

“Wonder why that ship ended up on those rocks?” Toad Tarkington mused aloud. Jake Grafton, Gil Pascal, Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt, Toad, and several of the photo interpretation specialists were bent over a table in the Air Intelligence spaces studying the photographs from the F-14’s reconnaissance pod.

“Maybe the person at the con was lost,” the senior AI speculated.

“Or didn’t know the waters,” the marine suggested.

“Maybe the Cubans wanted it there,” Gil said.

Jake Grafton used a magnifying glass to study photos of the island closest to the stranded freighter.

“Here’s a crew setting up an artillery piece,” he said, and straightened so everyone could see. “If they planned to strand the ship on those rocks, one would think they would have set up guns and a few SAM batteries in advance.”

“Maybe that’s what they want us to think.”

“How far is the ship from the nearest dry land?”

“Three point two nautical miles, sir.” That was one of the photo interpretation specialists, a first class petty officer. “If you look at this satellite photo of the main island, Admiral, you will see that there are two SAM batteries near this small port ten miles south of where the Colón went on the rocks.”

“That’s probably where the ship was going when it hit the rocks,” Jake said. “Or where it had been. So how many artillery and missile sites are in the area?”

“Four.”

“We’ll have EA-6B Prowlers and F/A-18 Hornets overhead, HARM missiles on the rails, F-14s as cover. The instant one of those fire-control radars comes on the air, I want it taken out.”

“When do you want to land aboard the ship?” Eckhardt asked.

Jake Grafton looked at his watch. “One in the morning.”

“Five hours from now?”

“Can we do it?”

“If we push.”

“Let’s push. I talked to General Totten in the Pentagon. He agrees — we should inspect that ship as soon as possible. For me, that’s five hours from now. We will go in three Ospreys. The lead Osprey will put Commander Tarkington and me on the ship; Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt will be in the second bird leading a rescue team to pull us out if anything goes wrong. The third Osprey will contain another ten-man team, led by your executive officer.”

Captain Pascal zeroed in immediately. “Do the people in Washington know that you intend to board that ship, Admiral?”

“No, and I’m not going to ask.”

“Sir, if you get caught — a two-star admiral on a ship stranded in Cuban waters?”

“The ship is in international waters. We must find out what happened aboard the Colón after it left Guantánamo. The stakes are very high. I am going to take a personal look. While I’m gone, Gil, you have the con.”

“Admiral, with all due respect, sir, I think you should take more than just one person with you. Why not a half dozen well-armed marines?”

“I don’t know what’s on that ship,” Jake explained. “There may be people aboard, there may be a biological hazard, it may be booby-trapped. It just makes sense to have a point man explore the unknown before we risk very many lives. I am going to be the point man because I want to personally see what is there, and I make the rules. Understand?”

The news about the loss of a ship loaded with biological weapons arrived in Washington with the impact of a high-explosive warhead on a cruise missile.

When the National Security Council met to be briefed about the ship the president was there, and he was in an ugly mood.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, interrupting the national security adviser, who was briefing the group. “We decided to remove our stockpile of biological and chemical warheads from Guantanamo Bay when we heard Castro might be developing biological weapons of his own. Is that correct?”

“The timing was incidental, sir. They were scheduled to be moved.”

“Scheduled to be moved next year,” the president said acidly. “We hurried things along when the CIA got wind that El Gato might be shipping lab equipment to Cuba. Will you grant me that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just for the record, why in hell were those damned things in Gitmo in the first place?”

“A computer error, sir, back when the Pentagon was prepositioning war supplies at Guantánamo. Somehow the CBW material got on the list, and by the time the error was discovered, the stuff was on its way.”

The president’s lip curled in a sneer. “Did this circle jerk happen under my administration?”

“No, sir. The previous one.”

The president glanced at the ceiling. “Thank you, God.”

He took a deep breath, exhaled, then said, “So we decided to clean up old mistakes. We didn’t want to take the chance Castro knew of our CBW stockpiles at Gitmo when we started fulminating about his.” The president was addressing the national security adviser. “But to cover our asses, you wanted a carrier battle group that just happened to be in the Caribbean to keep an eye on things while you got the weapons out. Just having the navy hanging around would keep the Cubans honest, you said.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now a ship full of weapons from the Gitmo warehouse is on the rocks off the Cuban coast.”

“The ship is on the rocks, but we don’t know if any weapons are still aboard.”

“Are you going to court-martial the admiral in charge of the battle group?” the president asked the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Howard D. “Tater” Totten, a small, gray-haired man who looked like he was hiding inside the green, badged, bemedaled uniform of a four-star army general.

“No, sir. He was told to quote ‘monitor’ unquote the situation in Guantánamo, not escort cargo ships. He actually had the cargo ship that was hijacked escorted out of Cuban waters, but he didn’t direct that it be escorted all the way to Norfolk. No one did, because apparently no one thought an escort necessary.”

“Was the ship hijacked?”

“We don’t know, sir. We’ve been unable to contact it by radio.”

“How are we going to find out if the weapons are still aboard?”

“Send marines aboard tonight to look.”

“I don’t think that ship is stranded in international waters,” the secretary of state said.

“Your department told us it was,” Totten shot back.

“That was a first impression by junior staffers. Our senior people demanded a closer look. We are just not sure. The determination depends on where one draws the line that defines the mouth of the bay. Reasonable people can disagree.”

Totten took a deep breath. “Mr. President, we don’t know what happened aboard that ship. We don’t know if the weapons are aboard. If they have been removed, we need to learn where they went. Now is not the time to split hairs over the nuances of international law. Let’s board the ship and get some answers, then the lawyers can argue to their hearts’ content.”

“That’s the problem with you uniformed testosterone types,” the secretary of state snarled. “You think you can violate the law any time it suits your purposes.”

The president of the United States was a cautious man by nature, a blow-dried politician who had maneuvered with the wind at his back all his life. His national security adviser knew him well, General Totten thought, when he said, “Preliminary indications are that the stranded ship is in international waters, Mr. President The naval commander on the scene has the authority to examine a wreck in international waters if he feels it prudent to do so. Let him make the decision and report back what he finds.”

“That’s right,” the president said. “I think that is the proper way for us to approach this.”

“Will you pass that on to the battle group commander?” the national security adviser asked General Totten.

The general reached for an encrypted telephone.

Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington went aboard the V-22 parked at the head of the line on the flight deck of USS United States. Marines filed aboard the second and third airplane. Tonight the carrier was thirty miles northeast of Cape Maisi — the distance to the stranded freighter was a bit over a hundred miles.

Jake was more nervous than he had been in a long, long time. Before he left the mission planning spaces this evening, he looked again at the chart that depicted the threat envelope of the two surface-to-air missile sites on the Cuban mainland just a few miles from the stranded freighter, Nuestra Señora de Colón. The freighter was well inside those envelopes, and the Ospreys would be also.

Jake had had a long talk with the EA-6B electronic warfare crews and the four F/A-18 Hornets that would be over the Ospreys carrying HARMs. HARM stood for high-speed antiradiation missile. Enemy radars were the targets of HARMs, which rode the beams right into the dishes. HARMs even had memories, so if an enemy operator turned off his radar after a HARM was launched, the missile would still fly to the memorized location.

“If the Cubans turn on the SAM radars, open fire,” Jake told his guardian angels. “Don’t wait until their missiles are in the air.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jake had heard nothing from Washington waffling on the assertion that the Colón was in international waters, so as far as he was concerned, that fact was a given. The Cubans had no right to fire on ships or planes in international waters. If they did, Jake Grafton would shoot back. Of course, if the Cubans shot first, they would probably kill a planeload or two of Americans, Jake Grafton included. The crews of the EA-6B Prowlers and Hornets were well aware of that reality.

As he sat in the Osprey Jake Grafton wondered if the enlisted marines in the other two planes understood the risks involved in this mission. He suspected they didn’t know, and in truth probably didn’t want to. Their job was to obey their officers; if the officers led them into action, fretting about the odds wasn’t going to do any good at all.

That thought led straight to another: Did he understand the risks?

“You okay, Admiral?”

That was Toad.

Jake Grafton nodded, smiled. A friend like Tarkington was a rare thing indeed. He hadn’t asked Toad if he wanted to risk his life on this mission; the commander would have been insulted if he had.

The warm noisy darkness inside the plane seemed comforting, somehow, as if the plane were a loud, safe womb. After takeoff Jake sat for five minutes with his eyes closed, savoring the flying sensations, recharging his batteries. Then he made his way toward the cockpit and squatted behind the pilots, both of whom were wearing night-vision goggles. From this vantage point Jake could see the computer displays on the instrument panel. The flight engineer handed him a helmet, already plugged in, so that he could talk to the pilots and listen to the radio.

He heard the Prowler and Hornets checking in, the F-14s, the S-3 tankers.

He heard Rita call twenty miles to go to the mission coordinator in the E-2 Hawkeye. She had the Osprey flying at a thousand feet above the water, inbound at 250 knots.

“Visibility is five or six miles,” she told Jake over the intercom. “Some rain showers around. Wind out of the west northwest.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll do it like we planned,” she continued, making sure Jake, the copilot, and her crew chief all understood what was to happen. “I’ll hover into the wind, then back down toward the ship, put the ramp over the fantail.”

“Ten miles,” the copilot sang out.

Jake took off the aircraft helmet and donned a marine tactical helmet, which contained a small radio that broadcast on one of four tactical frequencies. Repeaters in the Ospreys picked up the low-powered helmet transmissions and rebroadcast them so that everyone on the tactical net could hear, including the mission coordinator in the E-2, the people aboard the carrier, and the pilots of the airborne planes.

Jake pulled on a set of night-vision goggles and looked forward, through the Osprey windscreen. The night was gone, banished. He could see the stranded freighter, still several miles away, see the surf breaking on the rocks, the containers stacked on deck, the empty sea in all directions. He looked toward the nearest land, an island just over three miles away; he could just make out the line of breaking surf.

The Osprey was slowing: Rita rotated the engine nacelles toward the vertical position as she transitioned from wing-borne cruising flight to pure helicopter operation. Computers monitored her control inputs and gradually increased the effectiveness of the rotor swashplates as flaperons, elevators and rudders lost their effectiveness due to the decreasing airspeed. The transition from wing-borne to rotor-borne flight was smooth, seamless, a technological miracle, and Jake Grafton appreciated it as such.

Jake Grafton kept his eyes on the ship. No people in sight. The bow of the ship was on the rocks. The ship had a small forecastle superstructure, with the main superstructure and bridge on the stern of the ship. The ship’s cargo was in holds amidships, with extra containers stacked between the bridge and forecastle. The ship had two large cranes, one forward, one aft. She had a single stack, and probably — given her size — only one screw.

Jake could see that the containers on the deck were jumbled about, several obviously open and empty. Others, a whole bunch, seemed to be missing.

Now Rita swung into the wind, away from the Colón.

The ramp at the back of the aircraft was open, with Toad and the crew chief waiting there. Jake Grafton walked aft to join them.

The crew chief gave Rita directions on the ICS, back fifty feet, down ten, as she watched her progress on a small television screen that had been rigged in the cockpit for this mission.

Lower, closer to the ship … and the ramp touched the deck.

“Go, go, go,” the crew chief shouted.

Jake spoke into his voice-activated boom mike: “Let’s go!”

The fixed deck of the stranded freighter felt strange after a half hour in the moving Osprey. The wash from the mighty, 38-foot rotors was a mini-hurricane here on the fantail, a mixture of charged air and sea spray, dirt, and trash from the deck and containers.

Jake and Toad crouched on the deck as the Osprey moved away. The ramp had been against the deck for no more than fifteen seconds.

Jake spoke into his lip mike, made sure the mission coordinator could hear him. Gripping an M-16 in the ready position, Toad led them forward along the main deck. Jake Grafton carried a video camera, which was running, and two 35-mm cameras. The video and one of the still cameras were loaded with infrared film, the other 35-mm contained regular film and was equipped with a flash attachment.

First stop was the main deck, where he inspected the containers there. Many had doors hanging open, some still had the doors closed, but all the containers were empty. Although he wasn’t sure how many containers were supposed to be there, the area around the main hatches was remarkably clear. The hatches themselves were not properly installed. One hatch was ajar.

No people about. None. The ship seemed totally deserted and firmly aground. Jake could feel no motion.

He used a flashlight to look into the hold. This section of the hold didn’t seem to be full. Many of the containers were open.

Filming with the video camera, pausing now and then to shoot still photos, the two men searched until they found a ladder that led down into the hold. Toad waited by the hatchway, his M-16 at the ready.

Jake went down the ladder into the dark bay.

He had his night-vision goggles off now; in total darkness they were useless. He snapped on the flashlight, looked around, fingered the pistol in the holster on his hip.

This hold was half-empty, with the packing material that had been wrapped around the warheads strewn everywhere. The place was knee-deep in trash. The containers that were there were obviously empty.

Jake didn’t stay but a minute or so, then he climbed back up the ladder.

“Let’s check the bridge,” he said to Toad over the tactical radio.

They went aft along the main deck and climbed an outside ladder to the bridge, which stretched from one side of the ship to the other.

“They’ve cleaned her out,” Toad remarked over the tac net. “Yeah,” Jake replied, and kept climbing.

On the bridge Jake again removed the night-vision goggles and used a flashlight. He wanted to see whatever was there in natural light.

What he found were bloodstains. A lot of blood had been spilled here on the bridge; pools of congealed, sticky black blood lay on the deck. People had walked in it, tracking the stuff all over.

“Not everyone was on the payroll,” Jake muttered, and quickly completed his search. He aimed the video camera at the stains, then snapped a couple photos with the regular camera using the flash.

Toad used a flashlight to search for the log book and ship’s documents. “The safe is open and empty,” he told Jake Grafton. He came over to watch the admiral work the cameras.

“Where in hell are the warheads?” Toad asked aloud.

“The Americans are aboard the Colón, Colonel.”

The man shook Santana awake. He held a candle, which flickered in the tropical breeze coming through the screen.

Santana sat up and tossed the sheet aside. He consulted his watch.

He got out of bed, walked out onto the porch of the small house and searched the night sea with binoculars. Nothing.

He lowered the binoculars, stood listening.

Yes, he could hear engine sounds, very faint … jet engines, the whopping of rotors ….

“How long have they been aboard?”

“I don’t know, sir. With this wind it is hard to hear helicopter noises. When I heard the voices on the radio, I came to wake you.”

“Admiral, look at this.” Toad came over to where Jake was standing, showed him the screen of a small battery-operated computer. “I’m picking up radio transmissions, even when we are not using the tactical net. Something on the ship is broadcasting.”

Jake Grafton pulled his mike down to his lips. “Hawkeye, this is Cool Hand. Has anyone been picking up radio transmissions from the target?”

“Cool Hand, Hawkeye. They started about a minute ago, sir, when you went up on the bridge. We have them now.”

“What kind of transmissions?”

“Amazingly, sir, I’m receiving clear channel radio. I’m actually hearing you talk on this other frequency.”

“What the hell? …”

Oh, sweet Jesus!

“This damned ship is wired to blow. The bastards are listening to us right now. We gotta get off!” With that he gave Toad a push toward the door of the bridge. Toad ran. Jake Grafton was right behind him.

Colonel Santana couldn’t see anything through the binoculars, but he heard those American voices coming through the radio speaker. The microphones were on the bridge.

“Any time, Tomas,” he said.

Tomas keyed the radio transmit button three times. A flower of red and yellow fire blossomed in the darkness.

Santana aimed the binoculars and focused them as the last of the explosions faded. He could see the flicker of flames as they spread aboard Nuestra Señora de Colón. These Americans! So predictable! Santana chuckled as he watched.

“Into the ocean,” Jake shouted.

Toad vaulted over the rail into the blackness. As he fell he wondered if there were rocks or salt water below.

Toad Tarkington and Jake Grafton were in midair when the bridge exploded behind them. Jake felt the thermal pulse and the first concussion.

Then the dark, cool water closed over his head and he went completely under.

As he began to rise toward the surface, he felt more explosions from inside the ship. The concussions reached him through the water like spent punches from a prizefighter.

When he got his head above water, flames illuminated the night.

Above the noise of the explosions and flames, he could hear Tarkington cursing.