Cuba

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The submariners put the computer in a plastic garbage bag to keep it dry, then put bag and computer into a backpack that one of the sailors had for his liberty gear. William Henry Chance put on the backpack and the sailors adjusted the straps.

“You should be okay, sir,” they said. At a nod from the sound-powered telephone talker, Chance started up the ladder with Tommy Carmellini right behind him. They came out of the hatch on the submarine’s deck forward of the island. The deck wasn’t much, merely wet steel that curved away right and left into the black ocean.

Hovering in the darkness overhead was a helicopter — the downwash from the rotor blades made it hard to breathe. Amid the flashing lights and spotlights, his eyes had a hard time adjusting — Chance felt almost blind. One of the sailors on the deck put a horse collar over his head and he went up into the chopper first. Then Carmellini.

A strong set of hands pulled him into the chopper. After a wave at the officers in the sail cockpit, Carmellini used hands and feet to get over to the canvas bench opposite the open door where Chance had found a seat.

Forty-five minutes later the helicopter landed on the flight deck of USS United States. As the rotors wound down, an officer in khakis came to the chopper’s door, and shouted, “Mr. Chance? Mr. Carmellini?”

“Right here.”

“My name is Toad Tarkington. Will you gentlemen come with me, please? The admiral is waiting.”

Tommy Carmellini felt completely out of place, completely lost. After the submarine and the helicopter, the strange sounds, smells, and sensations of the huge ship underway in a night sea seemed to max out his ability to adjust.

The compartment where Toad took the two agents was packed with people, all talking among themselves. Still, compared to the flight deck and the sensations of the helicopter, it was an oasis of calm. Toad led them to a corner of the room and introduced them to Rear Admiral Jake Grafton.

Grafton was a trim officer about six feet tall. The admiral’s gray eyes captured Tommy’s attention. The eyes seemed to measure you from head to toe, see all there was to see, then move on. Only when the eyes looked elsewhere did you see that Grafton’s nose was a trifle too large, and one side of his forehead bore an old scar that was slightly less tan than the skin surrounding it.

Toad Tarkington was several inches shorter than the admiral and heavier through the shoulders. He was a tireless whirlwind who dazzled a person meeting him for the first time with quick wit and boundless energy, which seemed to radiate from him like the aura of the sun. He smiled easily and often, revealing a set of perfect white teeth that would have made any dentist proud.

Jake Grafton and William Henry Chance stood behind Toad watching him work Alejo Vargas’s computer. Toad stared at the screen intently while his fingers flew over the keys.

Soon they were plotting positions on a chart. “Those missiles have to be at these locations, Admiral,” Toad said, pointing at the places he had marked on the chart, “or the data in the computer is worthless.” He looked over his shoulder at Chance. “Could this computer be a plant?”

Chance glanced at Carmellini, who was sitting in a chair against the wall studying the layout and furnishings of the planning space and the knots of people engaged in a variety of tasks. The roar of conversation made the place seem greatly disorganized, which Tommy realized was an illusion. Charts on the wall decorated with classified information, planning tables, file cabinets sporting serious padlocks, battle lanterns on the overhead, copy machines, burn bags — the place reminded him of the inner sanctums of the CIA’s headquarters at Langley.

“Very doubtful,” Chance answered, and bent over to study the chart Toad was marking.

“I make it six sites,” Toad said.

“Could there be more missiles?” Jake Grafton asked. He too glanced at Carmellini, then turned to Chance. “You see the pitfalls if there are missiles we don’t know about?”

“Yes, sir. I can only say we have seen evidence for at least six.”

“Six silos,” Toad mused, studying the locations.

“There is a warhead manufacturing facility someplace on that island,” Chance said. “The viruses would have to be dried out, put in whatever medium the Cubans believe will keep them alive and virulent and dormant until the warhead explodes, then the medium sealed inside the warheads. The facility will not be large, but it will have clean rooms, air scrubbers, remote handling equipment, and I would think a fairly well equipped lab on site.”

“Any ideas?” Jake Grafton asked.

“I was hoping that the satellite reconnaissance people might be able to find the site if we tell them what to look for.”

“We’ll have them look, certainly, but you have no independent information about where this facility might be?”

“No.”

Jake motioned to Carmellini, who leaned in so that he could hear better. “Here is the situation,” the admiral said. “The White House has ordered us to go get those missile silos as soon as possible. Bombing the silos is out — we are to remove the warheads and destroy the missiles. What my staff and these other folks here tonight are trying to decide is how best to go about doing what the president wants us to do. Obviously, if we had enough time we could bring in forces from the States and assault the silo locations with forces tailored for the job. If we had enough time we could even do a dress rehearsal, make sure everyone is on the same sheet of music. Unfortunately, the White House wants the silos taken out as soon as possible.”

“How soon is possible?” Chance asked.

Jake Grafton took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “That’s the sixty-four dollar question. We must find out what’s there before we go charging in.”

He stood, walked over to a chart of Cuba that was posted on the bulkhead. He was looking at a penciled line on the chart that went through the Windward Passage and along the northern coast of Cuba, all the way to the narrowest portion of the Florida Straits. The cruisers should be in position by six o’clock this evening.

Jake turned from the chart and gestured at the people at the planning tables. “These folks are just looking at possibilities. We must assemble sufficient forces to do the job, yet we run huge risks if we take the time to assemble overwhelming force. There is a balance there. When we see the latest satellite stuff we’ll have a better idea.”

“I would be amazed if there are any troops around these silos,” William Henry Chance said. “Their existence has been overlooked by two generations of photo interpretation specialists. The Cubans know that the whole island is painstakingly photographed on a regular basis — we’ve been looking at those damned silos for forty years and didn’t know what they were. They must be underground and well camouflaged.”

“I’m not sending anybody after those things until I know what the opposition is,” Jake said bluntly. “I don’t launch suicide missions.”

“Are the silos your only target?” Chance asked.

Jake Grafton examined the tall agent with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean?”

“The Cubans grew the viruses for their warheads in a lab in the science building of the University of Havana. If we walk off with the warheads in the missiles, there is nothing to prevent the Cubans from cooking up another batch and putting it in planes to spray all over Florida and Georgia and wherever.”

“You are suggesting that we target their lab?”

“I highly recommended it. Chances to step on cockroaches are few and far between: we better put Alejo Vargas out of business while we have the chance.”

“All I can do is make a recommendation to Washington,” the admiral said.

“And the processing facility. If we are going to take Cuba out of the biological warfare business, we should do it right.”

“Can we bomb any of these places?” Toad Tarkington asked.

“Oh, no,” Chance said. “A bomb exploding in a lab full of poliomyelitis virus would be the equivalent of a biological warhead detonating. The virus would be explosively liberated. Everyone downwind for a couple hundred miles, maybe even farther, would probably die. No, the only way to destroy the virus is with fire.”

Jake Grafton scratched his head.

“The temperature would have to come up really quickly to kill the viruses before the place started venting to the atmosphere,” Chance added. “A regular old house fire wouldn’t do it. We need something a lot hotter.”

“The fires of hell,” Toad said, and his listeners nodded.

The first batches of satellite imagery began coming off the printers within an hour after the suspected silo locations were encrypted and transmitted. The air intelligence specialists were soon bent over the images, studying them with magnifying glasses. Before long Jake Grafton was shoulder to shoulder with the experts.

“This first location looks like it’s smack in the middle of a sugarcane field,” the senior Air Intelligence officer groused.

Jake Grafton didn’t have to think that over very long. “Let’s assume that our global positioning is more accurate than the Cubans’.”

“You mean they don’t know the silos’ exact lat/long locations?”

“Precisely.”

“Well, the nearest building to this sugarcane field is this large barn, which is about three-quarters of a kilometer away.” The specialist pointed. Jake used the magnifying glass.

“That could be it,” he muttered. “Let’s see what we can dig out of the archives. How long has this barn been here, have there ever been any large trucks around — let’s look in all seasons of the year — and are Cuban Army units nearby? I’m really interested in army units.”

“Power lines,” the senior AI officer mused. “Strikes me that there ought to be a large power feed nearby.”

“It sort of fits,” Toad Tarkington said to Jake. “If they built the barn first, then they could dig the silo inside the barn and truck the dirt out at night, pour concrete, do all the work at night.”

“Install the missile at night when the thing is finished,” the AI officer said, continuing the thought, “and if they had no unusual activity near the barn, no one would ever be the wiser.”

“Prove to me that that is what they did,” Jake said. “And prove that we won’t be sending troops into an ambush.”

The admiral stood amid the banks of computers and watched the operators trade data via satellite with the computers at the National Security Agency in Maryland.

The CIA agents were fed and given bunks to sleep in. They went without protest. Someone brought Jake Grafton a cup of coffee, which he sipped as he walked around the intel and planning spaces thinking about intermediate-range ballistic missiles with biological warheads.

Dawn found Ocho Sedano still afloat, still hanging grimly on to the milk jug and treading water. He had stopped thinking hours ago. Hunger and exhaustion had sapped his strength and thirst had thickened his blood. He was not asleep, nor was he awake, but in some semiconscious state in between.

He found himself looking into the glare of the rising sun as it rose from the sea. The realization that he had made it through the night crossed his mind, as did the certainty that today was the last day.

Today, someone must find me today ….

The television lights were on and the cameras running when Alejo Vargas walked to the podium in the main reception room of the presidential palace in Havana. For forty years Fidel Castro had used this forum to speak to the Cuban people and the world — now it was Alejo’s turn.

“We are here,” he began, “at a desperate hour in our nation’s life. The greatest Cuban patriot of them all, Fidel Castro, died here five days ago. Everyone listening to my voice knows the details of his career and the greatness of the leadership he provided for Cuba. I was with him when he died”—here Vargas wiped tears from his eyes—“and I can tell you, it was the most profound moment of my life.

“Yesterday the Council of State elected me interim president, to hold office until the next meeting of the National Assembly, which as you know elects members of the Council of State and selects its president. I swore to the ministers and the Council of State that I would uphold the Constitution and defend Cuba with all my strength. Now I swear it to you.”

He paused again and gathered himself. “Today there are people on the streets who accuse me of murdering Fidel. May God strike me dead if I am guilty of that crime.”

He paused, took several deep breaths, and since God didn’t terminate him then and there, continued:

“Fidel Castro died of cancer. His body shall lie in state for the next three days. If you love Cuba, I invite you to pay your respects to this great man, and to look at his corpse. See if there is a single mark of violence on the body. My enemies have accused me of many things, but the murder of Cuba’s greatest patriot is the most vicious cut of all. I too worshiped Fidel. Look at the body carefully — let the evidence of your own eyes prove the falsity of these accusations against me.”

Here again he had to pause to wipe his eyes, to steady himself before the podium.

“I have been accused of other crimes, so I take this opportunity to bare my soul before you, to tell you the truth as God Almighty knows it, so you will know the lies of my enemies when you hear them. My enemies are also whispering that I killed Raúl Castro at a meeting of the Council of State yesterday, when the facts of his brother’s death were first announced. The truth is Raúl was murdered as he stood at the table discussing the hopes and dreams of his dead brother, by Hector Sedano. Raúl Castro was shot down before a dozen eyewitnesses, myself included. I swear to you this day that Hector Sedano will pay the price the law requires for his crime.”

He paused again here, referred to his notes. Someone had to take the fall for shooting Raúl, so why not Hector?

“The story of our country is a story of struggle, a struggle between the socialist people of Cuba and the evil forces of capitalism, forces controlled and dominated by the United States, the colossus to the north. The struggle was not won by Fidel, although he fought the great fight — it continues even today. For example, while they are representing to the world that they are destroying their inventory of chemical and biological weapons, the United States has introduced these weapons to Cuban soil.”

The camera panned to the artillery shell resting on its base on a table beside the podium.

“Here is an American artillery shell loaded with the bacteria that causes anthrax, one of the deadliest diseases known to man. This shell was stored in a warehouse at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, which is sacred Cuban soil. The Americans were unwilling to keep their poisonous filth in their own country, so they exported it to ours.

“I have this day asked the ambassadors of five of the nations who keep embassies in Havana to send their military attachés to inspect this warhead. Here is a sworn document these officers executed that states the shell is as I have represented, a biological warhead.” He fluttered the paper, then held it up so the camera could zoom in.

“The revelation here today of the United States’s perfidy will undoubtedly provoke a reaction from the bandits to our north. Fidel always knew that the day might come when we would have to defend ourselves again from American aggression, so he installed a battery of intercontinental ballistic missiles in Cuba for defensive purposes. These missiles are operational and ready now to defend our sacred soil. Rest assured, my fellow Cubans, that we shall resist American aggression, that we shall fight to defend Cuba from those who would destroy her, and we shall make her great for the generations to come.

“Thank you.”

As a speech to a Cuban audience accustomed to Fidel’s six-hour harangues full of baroque phrases and soaring rhetoric, Alejo’s little effort seemed underdone. He had actually made a conscious effort not to sound like Fidel. Watching the tape of the speech, he thought it went well.

“Air it immediately,” he said to the television producer, and walked back toward Fidel’s old office.

Alba and Delgado were there to meet him. They had known that Vargas intended to blame Raul’s murder on Hector Sedano when he made this speech: indeed, they had already signed eyewitness affidavits swearing that they saw Hector shoot the man. That Alejo Vargas had the cojones to make the big lie stick meant a lot to these men who had spent their lives in an absolute dictatorship and knew that the man at the top had to be completely ruthless, without scruple of any kind, to survive. Fidel had been willing to crush his enemies any way he could; Vargas seemed to have the same talent, so perhaps he had a chance.

The two military men shook Vargas’s hand. “Tell us, Señor Presidente, what the Americans will do.”

“I have thrown the ballistic missiles in their face,” Vargas said. “I expect the Americans to go to the United Nations Security Council and ask for sanctions, perhaps a world trade embargo sanctioned by the UN. Now that the missiles have been discussed in public, the American government cannot ignore them, even if they want to.”

“Do you anticipate an attack?”

“I do not, but we must take precautions. The missiles sit in hardened silos impervious to air attack, or nearly so. It is possible that the Americans might attempt commando raids. I suggest you move troops to the sites, have them dig in around the silos.”

“And if the Americans attack and we cannot repulse them?”

“This dog will bite. Fire the missiles.”

Alba grinned. His hatred of the Yanquis was common knowledge. “If the Americans do attack, when would you expect it?”

“They will try diplomacy first. Only if that fails will they try military action.”

“Still, I would like to move the troops immediately.”

“By all means,” said Alejo Vargas. “We will have television cameras film your men digging in to defend Cuba.”

“And the missiles? Are you going to film them?”

“Of course. Cuba is a sovereign nation. The world has changed since the 1962 missile crisis. We have an absolute right to defend ourselves, and if necessary we shall. Any noise the Americans make will rally the Cuban people to us.”

Even as Vargas talked to his military men, the president of the United States’s advisers were arguing for diplomatic initiatives before military options were weighed. “We must go to the United Nations first,” the secretary off state stated forcefully.

“What if the UN turns us down?” the president asked in reply.

“We need political cover,” the secretary shot back. “A significant percentage of Americans think Castro was a hero, a champion of the downtrodden, and we unfairly bullied him. The fact that he was an absolute dictator with zero regard for human rights means very little to the political left. Then there is the casualty problem — the American people won’t tolerate seeing their soldiers killed while fighting for oil or corporate profits in foreign wars.”

“What bullshit!” snapped Tater Totten. “I’m really sick of listening to Vietnam draft evaders tell us that Americans don’t have the guts to fight for civilization.”

“I am not a draft evader,” shouted the secretary of state, her face red, her cheeks quivering. “I demand an immediate apology!”

“Shut up, both of you,” the president growled.

“I apologize,” Tater Totten muttered, almost as if he meant it.

The president had done some hard thinking since Tater Totten demanded that the presence of the Cuban missiles be addressed before any other matter with Cuba was put on the table. Six missiles with biological warheads aimed at the southeastern United States — Cuban missiles today were every bit as serious as when John F. Kennedy had to deal with them, he decided. If the administration asked for the blessing of the UN Security Council and didn’t get it, he would be worse off than if he ordered military action immediately.

The lab and processing facility worried him too. If Cuba could manufacture polio virus and put it in an aerosol solution, any plane that could fly across the Straits of Florida could attack the United States.

By the time Alejo Vargas’s broadcast was translated and replayed for the National Security Council, the president strongly believed that the American people would react angrily to the presence of missiles in Cuba. The outrage of the congressmen and senators who heard the speech convinced him.

He called on Tater Totten again. “I’m getting the cold sweats just thinking about this crap. Tell me what we are going to do to make sure the Cubans don’t shoot those missiles.”

“Sir, the best insurance is to go after the missiles, the lab, and the processing facility as soon as humanly possible, before the Cubans get troops in there to defend them.”

“When is humanly possible?”

“Tomorrow night would be the earliest possible date. Every day we wait allows us to assemble more forces. Conversely, every day we wait the risk increases: Tomorrow Vargas can move more troops to guard those silos; he could get wind of what’s coming and threaten to release polio virus by airplane, by missile, or have somebody with an aerosol bomb in a suitcase turn it loose God knows where.”

“So why not go tomorrow night?”

“We must put enough people and firepower in there to get the job done. It’s a nice calculation.”

“Do you want me to make that decision?”

“I recommend that you leave the decision to the military professional who is there, Rear Admiral Grafton. He’s spent thirty years in uniform training for this moment, for this decision.”

The president grunted.

The Chairman continued, “By tonight we will have two Aegis cruisers in the Florida Straits between Cuba and Florida. Jake Grafton ordered them there on his own initiative. He’s a good man. The cruisers have the capability of shooting down ballistic missiles coming out of Cuba.”

“Do the Cubans know that?”

“Someone in Cuba might — the information is in the public domain — but 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 war — there 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 you 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 you,” 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 marvelous profession!” 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 miles,” 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-60B 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.,” Autrey James told the pilot. He was leaning out the door of the helicopter so that he could see the survivor and the basket.

“Maybe he’s dead.”

“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 way,” said 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.”

“Blankets,” James said to the other crewman. Both of them wrapped the survivor in wool blankets.

“Gracias,” said Ocho Sedano, and 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 Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo 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 silos,” 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 know,” 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 out.” 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?”

“No,” 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 specifications — they 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 could be eliminated as a possible site for the warhead factory.

“We’ll do ’em both,” 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-2s could fly a photo recon mission and get the very latest enemy troop positions.

“Vargas made a speech today,” 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 Straits,” 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 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 to tackle the lab after the missiles are destroyed.”

“Okay.”

“If the troops assaulting the silos run into more Cubans than they can handle, we must either add more forces or extract our men. If we elect to extract our people, we still have the problem of the missile in the silo and we will have handed the Cubans a victory in a fight we cannot afford to lose.”

“What do you propose?”

“We won’t be able to go back later with more people. We get one bite of the apple, sir. I propose that you authorize me to use whatever force is required to accomplish the mission, short of nuclear weapons.”

Jake Grafton heard the president loudly say, “I’m not giving him or anybody else the authority to risk a catastrophic release of toxins. No.”

“We’ll call you back,” General Totten said, and hung up.

Mercedes went to stay with Dona Maria Vieuda de Sedano, to cook for her and clean and do whatever needed to be done. She had stayed with her mother-in-law in the past, after her husband, Jorge, died — fortunately the two women genuinely liked each other.

She and Dona Maria ate lunch on the little porch of the bungalow so they could enjoy the breeze blowing in from the sea. It was strong today, whipping the palm fronds and rippling the sugarcane. Little puffy clouds threw severe shadows that raced over the ground.

Doña Maria had gone back inside for a nap and Mercedes was sewing a blouse together when a limo drove up and Maximo got out. He came up the short walk, paused at the steps, and looked at her. “I thought I would find you here,” he said.

“Mima’s sleeping.”

“I came to see you.”

She nodded, continued working on the blouse. He stayed on the dirt and scraggly grass, walked around so the porch railing was between them.

“Vargas made a speech this morning. It was on television.”

“Hmm,” she said. Doña Maria did not have a television, and Maximo knew that.

“He is the president now.”

“I have heard.”

“Did he really kill Fidel?”

“No.”

Her thread broke. She got out the spool of thread and rethreaded the needle.

“Would you tell me if he had?”

“What did you come for, Maximo?”

“I need your help.”

She knotted the thread and began a new seam.

“You don’t think much of me, do you?”

“I don’t think of you at all.”

He leaned on the porch railing, crossing his arms. “Where did Fidel hide the gold?”

“I didn’t know he had any,” she said, not looking up from her work. “He didn’t even have gold in his teeth.”

“The gold pesos the government called in after the revolution — that gold.”

“I have no idea,” she said.

“I think you do. I think Fidel told you.”

“Think what you like.”

“He wouldn’t let the secret die with him.”

“Maximo, look at me. If I had a pocketful of gold, would I be sitting here on the porch of a tiny, ninety-five-year-old bungalow with a thatched roof beside the road to Varadero, sewing myself a shirt?”

“I don’t think you have it — I think you know where it is.”

She snorted and went back to the needle and the seam.

“You don’t want the gold for yourself, I know. But I need it. Not all of it, just a little. I must get out of Cuba.”

A strand of hair fell across her face. She brushed it back.

“We could leave together, Mercedes, if we had some of that gold. You could go anywhere on earth you wanted, live the rest of your life without worry, without fear, without need. Think of it! A new life, a new beginning. How much of this heat and dirt and hopeless poverty do you want, anyway?”

“Forget the gold, Maximo. If there is any, it is not for you.”

He backed away from the railing, stood in the sun with the sea wind playing at his hair. “Think about it,” he said. “Vargas is no fool; he wants the gold too. One of these days he will send Santana around to see you. Think about what you are going to say to him when he comes.”

He walked to the waiting limo. The driver turned the car in the road and headed back toward Havana.

Toad Tarkington was the only person in the room with Jake as they waited for the chairman of the joint chiefs to call from the White House.

“What do you want from them, Admiral?”

“I want the authority to do whatever I have to do to destroy those viruses,” Jake Grafton explained. “Once the shooting starts, we have to win.”

“What if the president won’t give you that authority?”

“He has a right to say that. We’ll go do our best, and if we can’t cut it without using Tomahawks or laser-guided weapons, then we’ll call him up and say so.”

“What is the problem here?” Toad demanded. “If there is a toxin release he won’t be the guy responsible. Fidel Castro and Alejo Vargas are the guilty parties. This is their country.”

Jake shook his head. “If there is a toxin release in America, the president must be able to prove that he did everything humanly possible to prevent it. If there is a release in Cuba … well, he will need to show people around the world that he did what he could to prevent it while still eliminating the threat to the U.S. Elimination of the threat is the key here, and I hope they understand that in Washington.” He smacked the wall with his hand. “Dammit, we only get one shot at those viruses.”

“I wonder if anyone in Washington is thinking about the Bay of Pigs,” Toad mused. “That turned into a debacle because Kennedy wasn’t willing to commit enough resources.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Jake Grafton said.

When the telephone rang, General Totten was on the line. “Admiral, we shall word it like this: ‘Your mission is to eliminate the threat to the United States. In completing your mission you are instructed to do everything within your power to minimize the possibility of a toxin release in Cuba. You may use any forces and weapons in your command except nuclear or CBW weapons, and you may request assistance from any command in the U.S. armed forces.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll have that on the wire as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir. I want to thank you and the president. We’ll do our best.”

“I know you will, sailor. When are you going?”

“Tomorrow night, sir. In view of all the factors involved, that is my choice.”