Cuba

CHAPTER NINETEEN

While Alejo Vargas and Colonel Santana were conferring in Havana, the Americans opened fire. Three Spruance-class destroyers that had sailed from Mayport soon after sunrise were now fifty miles off the Florida coast headed south, well away from the coastal shipping lanes. They began launching Tomahawk cruise missiles from the vertical launchers buried in the deck in front of their bridges. Although each ship carried forty-eight Tomahawks in their vertical launch tubes, they only launched twenty missiles each.

On the bridge of USS Comte de Grasse the captain watched with binoculars as his missiles leveled out from their launch climb and disappeared into the sea haze. One of the missiles dove into the ocean, making a tiny splash.

“There went three million bucks,” he muttered.

After the launch was complete, he called down to Combat on the squawk box. “How many successfully launched?”

“Nineteen, sir.”

“And the other ships?”

“Twenty and eighteen, Captain.”

“What is the time of flight?”

“An hour and twenty minutes, sir.”

“Very well. Report the launch.”

Not bad, the captain thought, and gave orders to secure from General Quarters.

God help the Cubans, he thought, then turned to the navigator to discuss the voyage to the Florida Straits, where Comte de Grasse and her sister ships would join the Aegis cruisers already there.

Aboard USS United States, Jake Grafton seated himself in the admiral’s raised chair in Combat and surveyed the computer displays. Gil Pascal, the chief of staff, was also there along with the ship’s air wing commander, the Combat Control Center officer and the members of his staff.

Jake leaned over and whispered to Pascal. “See if you can find me some aspirin, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

He was looking over the plan and watching the display of commercial traffic going in and out of José Martf International Airport in Havana when a chief petty officer handed him the encrypted satellite phone.

“Admiral Grafton, sir.”

“This is the president, Admiral. How goes the war?”

“We already have Tomahawks in the air, sir, but the Cubans won’t know what’s coming for an hour or so.”

“We’re sweating the program here in Washington,” the president continued. “Our feet are getting frosty. If we chicken out, could the airborne Tomahawks be intentionally crashed?”

Jake Grafton took a deep breath and exhaled before he answered. “Yes, sir. That is possible.”

“Let’s hold on to that option. I’m sitting here with General Totten and the senior leadership of the Congress. I want your opinion on this question: Should we postpone this show for a day or two? Or indefinitely? What are your thoughts?”

Jake Grafton licked his lips. In his mind’s eye he could see ballistic missiles rising from their silos on pillars of fire, and sailors, just like the ones manning the computers here in Combat aboard United States, sitting in front of radar scopes and computer keyboards aboard the Aegis cruisers.

“Mr. President, I have also been thinking about the risks. The only thing I can promise is that we will do our best. No one can guarantee results. Still, in my opinion, considering just the military risks, we should go now, without delay.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” the president said.

“Jake, this is Tater Totten.”

“Good evening, sir.”

“Just wanted to say good luck,” the general said, then the connection broke.

Jake Grafton handed the handset to the chief.

“Here is your aspirin, Admiral,” Gil Pascal said, holding out water and three white pills.

Four EA-6B Prowlers sat on the ramp at NAS Key West. Their crews stood lounging around the aircraft. They had flown in just an hour ago, and now the fuel trucks were pulling away. The crews had huddled with the crew of the two C-130 Hercs parked on the ramp, studying charts and checking frequencies. Now it was time to man up.

As the marines in full combat gear filed aboard the Hercs, the crews of the Prowlers strapped in and started engines. Two of the Prowlers carried three electronic jamming pods on external stations and two HARM missiles. HARM stood for high-speed anti-radiation missile. The other two Prowlers carried four HARMS and one jamming pod on the center-line station.

With the engines running, the pilots closed the Prowlers’ canopies and taxied behind the Hercs toward the duty runway. No one said anything on the radio.

The flight deck of USS United States came alive. A small army of people in brightly colored shirts swarmed around the airplanes that packed the deck as the flight crews manned up and started engines.

Light from the setting sun came in at a low angle like a bright spotlight, illuminating,the towering cumulus which dotted the surface of the sea, and made everyone facing west squint or shade their eyes.

Soon the plane guard rescue helicopter engaged its rotors and lifted off the deck as the first airplanes began taxiing toward the bow and waist catapults.

Aboard USS Hue City and USS Guilford Courthouse, the two Aegis cruisers on station in the Florida Straits, the afternoon had been a busy one. Twenty-five miles of ocean separated the two ships, but they were linked together electronically as tightly as if they were wired together at a pier.

As the Hercs and EA-6Bs taxied at Key West, and United States prepared to launch her air wing, the weapons officers aboard the cruisers checked the ships’ inertial systems one more time, compared the GPS locations yet again, then gave the fire order.

The first of the Tomahawk missiles rose vertically from their launchers on fountains of fire. The wings of the missiles popped out, then the missiles began tilting to the south as they accelerated away into the evening sky.

The first missiles from each ship were still in sight when the second ones came roaring from the launchers. Each ship launched sixteen missiles, then turned to stay in the race-track pattern they had been using to hold station.

Sitting in the Combat Control Center aboard United States, Jake Grafton felt the thump as the first bow catapult fired. A second later he felt the number-three cat on the waist slam a plane into the air. His eyes went to the monitor, which was showing a video feed from a camera mounted high in the ship’s island superstructure. Each catapult stroke was felt throughout the ship as the planes were thrown into the sky, one by one.

A half dozen planes were still on deck awaiting their turn on the catapults when the destroyers in the carrier’s screen began launching Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The television cameraman in the ship’s island swung his camera to catch the fireworks. The picture captured the attention of the people in Combat, who paused to watch the missiles roar from their launchers on fountains of reddish yellow fire, almost too brilliant to look at.

When the last of the missiles was gone, the camera returned to the launching planes.

Gil Pascal said to Jake, “It’ll go well, Admiral.”

Jake nodded and took another sip of water.

The sun seemed to be taking its good ol’ time going down, Lieutenant Commander Marcus Gillispie thought.

He was at the controls of an EA-6B Prowler that had just launched from United States. He had worked his way around towering buildups reaching up to 10,000 feet and was now above them, looking at the evening sky. The last of the red sunlight played on the tops of the clouds, but the canyons between them were purple and gray shading to black. As Gillispie climbed he delayed the sun’s apparent setting for a few more minutes. Soon the last of the red and gold faded from the cloud tops below.

A very high cirrus layer stayed yellow and red for the longest time as Marcus circled the carrier at 30,000 feet. Two F/A-18 Hornets came swimming up from the deepening gloom to join on him.

“You guys all set?” Marcus asked his three crewmen.

His crewmen counted off in order.

The Prowler was the electronic-warfare version of the old A-6 Intruder airframe. While the Prowler bore a superficial resemblance to its older brother, the electronic suite in the aircraft could not have been more different: the Prowler was designed to fight the electronic battle in today’s skies, not drop bombs.

The airframe was also longer than the old A-6, lengthened to accommodate four people and a massive array of computerized cockpit displays. The people sat in ejection seats, two in the front, two in the back. Only one of the crewmen was a pilot, who sat in the left front seat: the other three were electronic-warfare specialists. And they were not all men. One of the guys in back tonight was a woman, a lieutenant (junior grade) on her first cruise.

Marcus looked at his watch, then keyed his mike. He waited while his encryption gear timed in with the ship’s gear, then said, “Strike, this is Nighthawk One. I have my chicks and am ready to leave orbit. Request permission to strangle the parrot.”

“Roger, Nighthawk One. Call feet dry.”

“Wilco.”

Marcus Gillispie rolled the Prowler wings level heading northwest for the city of Havana. Then he engaged the autopilot. When he was satisfied that the autopilot was going to keep the plane straight and level, he flashed his exterior lights, then turned them off, leaving only a set of tiny formation lights illuminated on the sides of the aircraft above the wing root. Finally he reached down and turned his radar transponder, his parrot, off. The Prowler and the two Hornets on her wing were no longer radiating on any electromagnetic frequency.

The pilot looked back past his wingtips at the Hornets. One was on each wing now. Like the Prowler, their missile racks were loaded with HARMs. The Hornets also carried two Sidewinders, heat-seeking air-to-air missiles, one on each wingtip, just in case.

Already the displays in the Prowler were alive with information. The electronic countermeasures officer, ECMO, in the seat beside the pilot, was really the tactical commander of the plane. His gear, and that of the two electronic-warfare officers in the back cockpit, provided a complete display of the tactical electronic picture. The information the computers used was derived from sensors embedded all over the aircraft in its skin, and from the sensors of one of the HARM missiles, which was already on line.

The ECMO with Marcus Gillispie was Commander Schuyler Coleridge, the squadron commanding officer, who wound up in the right seat of Prowlers because his eyes were not quite 20/20 uncorrected when he graduated from the Naval Academy. The truth of it was, he thought he had the better job. Pilots, he liked to say, just drove the bus — ECMOs fought the war.

He had one to fight tonight. The Cubans were going to get really riled when those Tomahawks started popping, he thought, and then the fireworks would start.

Just now Coleridge was busy running his equipment through its built-in tests. Everything was working, as usual. That routine fact was the greatest advance of the technological age, in Coleridge’s opinion. In his younger days he had had a bellyful of fancy equipment that couldn’t be maintained.

He was sweating just now, even though the cockpit temperature was positively balmy. And he knew his fellow crewmen were sweating — this was the first time in combat for all of them.

It will go all right, he thought. After the tension he had suffered through this afternoon and evening, Schuyler Coleridge actually welcomed the catapult shot. Let’s do it and get it over with.

All four of the squadron’s EA-6Bs were aloft just now, and the other three also had pairs of Hornets attached.

As Coleridge looked at the search radars sweeping the Cuban skies, he wondered if there were going to be MiGs.

“Okay, people,” Coleridge told his crew, “let’s go to work.”

A search radar on the southern coast of Cuba drew his attention. The signal was being received by the HARM sensors, which routed the electronic signal through the plane’s computer and displayed it on the tactical screen.

Coleridge checked his watch. “Any second now,” he muttered to his crewmen.

The Cubans had their search radars wired into sector facilities, which performed the functions of air traffic control (ATC) for civilian aircraft and early warning and ground control interception (GCI) for military aircraft. ATC radars in developed countries rarely searched for non-transponder-equipped targets, but due to the dual usage of these radars, such sweeps were routine. Consequently one of the controllers in the Havana sector was the first to notice a cloud of skin-paint targets closing on the Cuban coast from the south.

His call to the supervisor was echoed by a call from a controller looking at targets headed south toward the north coast of the island.

The shift supervisor stood frozen, staring over the operator’s shoulder at the radar screen. He had wondered if something like this might not happen after Alejo Vargas’s television speech, but when he asked the site manager about the possibility of Cuba being attacked by the United States, the man had laughed. “The world has changed since the Bay of Pigs, Pedro. You are safe — have courage.” The response humiliated the shift supervisor.

Now the supervisor picked up his telephone, called the manager in his office. “You’d better come see this,” he said with an edge on his voice. “Come quickly.”

The manager was looking over the supervisor’s shoulder when the first Tomahawk crashed into the antenna of the main search radar on the southern coast. In seconds three more radars went off the air.

The stunned men turned their attention to the radars on the north coast, and were just in time to watch the blip of a Tomahawk from Hue City fly right down the throat of the radar and knock it out.

The supervisor turned to the manager and calmly said, “Apparently the war you didn’t believe would happen is happening now.”

The stunned manager watched in horror as screen after screen went blank.

“The Americans rarely leave things half-done, or so I’ve heard,” the supervisor continued. “I would bet fifty pesos that this building is also a target of a cruise missile. If you gentlemen will excuse me, I think I will go home for the evening.”

With that, he turned and walked briskly from the room.

“Everyone out,” the facilities manager shouted. “Outside, everyone outside.”

The men at the consoles needed no urging. They bolted for the doors.

The shift supervisor was outside, walking quickly for the bus stop, when he heard a Tomahawk. He fell to the ground and covered his head with his hands as the missile dove into the roof of the sector control building and its 750-pound warhead exploded with a thundering boom. Within the next fifteen seconds, two more missiles crashed into the building.

After waiting another minute just to be sure, the supervisor stood and surveyed the damage. Clouds of tiny dust particles formed an artificial fog, one illuminated by flame licking at the gutted building. The stench of explosives residue and smoke lay heavy in the night air.

One hundred fifty missiles swept across central Cuba, some coming from the north, some from the south. The targeting had been done quickly, but the information that made it possible had been mined from databases painstakingly constructed from satellite and aircraft photo and electronic reconnaissance over a period of years.

Four dozen Tomahawks were targeted against every known radar dish within a hundred miles of the missile silos — search, air traffic, antiaircraft missile, and artillery radars — all of them, two missiles for each antenna.

Another fifty Tomahawks attacked every Cuban Air Force base along the five-hundred-mile length of the island. Some of the Tomahawks carried bomblets instead of high-explosive warheads: these swept across aircraft ramps, scattering bomblets over the parked MiGs, damaging them and setting some on fire. Other cruise missiles dove headfirst into the Cuban Air Force’s hangars, weapons storage facilities, and fuel farms. Fixed antiaircraft surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites received two or three missiles each.

Alejo Vargas learned of the American attack when the telephone he was using went dead in his hand. He frowned, jiggled the hook, then replaced the handset on its base. Only then did the dull boom of the explosion in the central Havana telephone exchange reach him. A Tomahawk had dived through the roof.

More explosions followed in quick succession as two more cruise missiles hurled themselves into the telephone exchange. One of the problems the Americans faced with the employment of cruise missiles was assessing damage after the attack. The solution was to fire multiple missiles at the same target to ensure an acceptable level of damage.

The thought that the presidential palace might be a target never occurred to Alejo Vargas. He went to the nearest window and stood listening to the roar of Tomahawks overflying the city on their way to radar and antiaircraft gun and missile installations sited around José Martí International Airport. The five-hundred-knot missiles were invisible in the darkness, but they weren’t quiet.

The missiles had passed when someone near the harbor opened up with an antiaircraft gun firing tracers. The bursts of tracers went up like fireworks and randomly probed the darkness as the hammering reports echoed over the city.

Colonel Santana came into the room and joined Vargas at the window. “The telephone system in the city is out.”

“It’s probably out all over Cuba,” Vargas replied.

“They are attacking much sooner than you thought they would.”

“No matter. The results will be the same. Get a car to take us to Radio Havana. I will make an address to the nation.”

“The Americans may use missiles on the radio stations or power plants.”

“It is possible, but I doubt it. Get the car.”

Santana went after a car as Vargas thought about what he would say to fan the fires of patriotism in every Cuban heart.

The two C-130s Hercs and four EA-6B Prowlers that had left Key West were level at ten thousand feet when they crossed the northern shoreline of Cuba. The C-130s actually were flying with their wingtip lights on so that the Prowlers could easily stay in formation with them. Inside the Hercs the pilots were using global positioning system (GPS) units to navigate to the missile silo sites.

The Prowler crews watched their computer displays and listened to their emission-detection gear, waiting for the Cubans to turn on a radar, any radar. The night was deathly quiet. The Tomahawks had done their work well.

As the Hercs crossed over the first of the dairy farms, two men leaped from each plane. Forty seconds later two more went as they crossed over the second possible lab site. Then the Hercs made a gentle, lazy 270-degree turn to get lined up for the run-in to the missile silos.

José Martí Airport and the surface-to-air missile sites that surrounded it were only thirty miles west. Not a peep from them. If the Tomahawks missed any of the mobile radars, the operators had not yet screwed up the courage to turn them on, for which the Hercules crews were thankful. The Prowler crews, however, with HARM missiles ready on the rails, were feeling a bit disappointed. After all the sweating, there should be more action.

Aboard USS United States, the datalink from the E-3 Sentry AWACS over Key West revealed the aerial fire drill going on over Havana as commercial flights tried to find their way into José Martí Airport without the aid of air traffic controllers with radar. Some of the flights announced they were diverting, and headed for the United States or Jamaica or the Cayman Islands. The others queued up and landed VFR as Jake Grafton watched the computer displays with his fingers crossed. While he didn’t want to be responsible for the crash of a civilian airliner, he couldn’t delay this operation until there was a temporary lull in civilian air activity.

As the first Here approached silo one, two men leaped from the open rear door. Seconds later, two more leaped from the second transport.

The jumpers fell away from the airplanes like stones.

Over silo two, marines leaped in pairs from each of the Hercs, and so on, until the transports had overflown and dropped recon teams at all six silo sites. Then they turned northward, toward the sea.

The Prowlers followed faithfully.

At that moment a SAM control radar near silo two came on the air, probing for a target.

The Prowlers with the Hercs picked up the signal, of course, and two of them dropped their wings to turn back toward the threat.

Forty miles south of silo two, Schuyler Coleridge also picked up the SAM radar, an old Soviet Fansong. As he slaved the HARM to the signal, his pilot, Marcus Gillispie, turned the plane ten degrees to point at the offending radar. Although the new missiles could be fired at very large angles, a quick turn by the launching aircraft shortened the missile’s flight time by a few seconds.

“Fire,” Coleridge ordered, and Gillispie punched off the HARM, which shot forward off the rail in a blaze of fire.

Coleridge keyed the radio. “Fox Three,” he said, letting everyone on the freq know that a beam rider was in the air.

The HARM zeroed in on the side lobes of the radiating Fansong, whose operator was trying to lock up a Here for an SA-2 launch. The operator never realized the beam rider was in the air.

The missile actually flew into the back of the antenna dish at almost Mach 3 and went several feet through it before the warhead exploded.

The warhead contained thousands of 3/16th-inch tungsten-alloy cubes, which were three times denser than steel. The warhead blasted these cubes in all directions, obliterating the radar antenna and wave guides, shredding the trailer on which the antenna was mounted, and knocking out the equipment in the trailer. The flying cubes also killed the radar operator and severely wounded the three other occupants of the trailer.

Another HARM launched by one of the F/A-18 Hornets on the Prowler’s wing arrived six seconds later and impacted a tree just a few feet from the smoking, gutted trailer. Although the target radar had been off the air for six seconds, the missile’s strap-down inertial allowed it to fly to the place where the computer memory believed the radar to be. The shrapnel from the warhead severed the tree and sprayed the shell of the trailer yet again, killing one of the already-wounded men.

Major Carlos Corrado was sleeping off a hangover when the roar of a Tomahawk going over woke him. His eyes came open. He heard the staccato popping of bomblets from the Tomahawk, but had no idea what caused the sound. He thought the Tomahawk was a low-flying airplane.

Groggy, aching, sick to his stomach, he was hugging a commode when another Tomahawk went over. In ten seconds the sound of the bomblets detonating on the planes parked on the flight line reached him though his alcoholic haze. Then one of the planes exploded with a rolling crash that shook the barracks.

Corrado staggered outside and looked toward the flight line, where at least three planes were burning brightly.

“Holy Mother!”

Suddenly sober, Corrado went back inside and hastily donned his flight suit and boots.

He was jogging toward the flight line when another Tomahawk went over scattering bomblets. The missile flew on, out of sight.

As Corrado rounded the corner and the flight line came into view, the first cruise missile that had scattered bomblets dove into one of the hangars. There wasn’t much of an explosion, but in seconds a hot fire was burning in the wooden structure.

Corrado’s personal fighter was parked between the burning hangar and another, which would probably be struck within seconds. The maintenance men had been working on the plane today, which was why it was not on its usual parking place at the head of the flight line.

Running men helped Corrado push the plane away from the burning hangar, the wall of which was perilously close to collapse.

“There is no fuel in the plane,” someone shouted.

“Get a truck,” Corrado roared in reply. “And ammunition for the guns.”

The words were no more out of his mouth when the second missile crashed into the untouched hangar.

Corrado seethed as linemen fueled his plane and serviced the guns. He was still on the phone in the dispersal shack talking to someone at the base armory when the truck carrying missiles braked to a squealing halt near the fighter, a silver MiG-29 Fulcrum. Now he called the sector GCI site. The telephone rang and rang, but no one answered.

Corrado stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth and stomped out to the plane. “Careful there, fools. Do it right. Do not embarrass me.”

He was watching the last of the 30-mm cannon shells going into the feed trays when one of the Havana colonels showed up.

“You aren’t going up in this thing, are you, Corrado?”

“We are servicing it as a joke, dear Colonel. Every Saturday night when the Americans attack we put the cannon shells in, then take them out on Sunday morning.”

“Don’t trifle with me, Major. I won’t stand for it.”

“You pompous limp-dick! Go find a whore and let the real men fight.”

“Do not insult me, you sot. You stink of rum and vomit! Show some respect!”

“Why should I? Your putrid face insults you every day.”

The colonel was so angry he spluttered. “I absolutely forbid you to fly this airplane without written orders from Havana.”

“Court-martial me tomorrow.”

“The Americans will destroy this airplane if you take it off the ground. To fly it is sabotage, a crime against the state. If you attempt to fly it, I will shoot you.” The colonel pulled out his pistol and showed Corrado the business end.

Corrado ignored the gun. “You are a traitor,” he roared, “who wants the Americans to win. Defeatist! Coward!”

“I will shoot anyone who helps you defect in this airplane,” the colonel screamed. He pointed the pistol at the troops closing the servicing doors on the MiG-29. “Counterrevolutionaries! Saboteurs!”

Corrado used his fist on the colonel. The second punch, in the ear, did the trick. The man went to his knees, then onto his face. He didn’t get up. One of the linemen picked up the pistol while the major massaged his knuckles. His hand hurt like hell but didn’t seem to be broken,

In truth Corrado wasn’t much of a man. He abandoned a wife and child years ago and hadn’t heard from them since — didn’t want to hear from them, because they would probably want money. What money he got his hands on he drank up; he even sold military equipment on the black market to pay for alcohol. His ability to fly a fighter plane was his sole skill, his only worthwhile accomplishment in thirty-six years of life. Now, unexpectedly, miraculously, he had a chance to use that skill to defend something larger than himself, to make his miserable life mean something — and no strutting Havana rooster was going to cheat him out of it.

Carlos Corrado gestured at the men. “Get the missiles loaded, you lazy bastards,” he shouted. “There’s a war on.”

Richard Merriweather rode his parachute into a cornfield. At least, he thought it was corn — long, stiff stalks, head-high. He checked himself over; he was sore, but nothing broken. He stood and wrestled the chute toward him, then began scooping out a hole to bury it. He was finishing the job when he heard someone coming toward him.

“Sergeant?”

“Yo. You okay?”

“Yeah,” said Kirb Handy.

“Set up the GPS. Figure out where we are.”

With the parachute disposed of, Merriweather put on his night-vision goggles and took a careful look around. He was well out in the center of this field, near as he could tell.

Merriweather sat down in the dirt beside Handy, who was also wearing night-vision goggles. Handy punched buttons on the GPS.

“This thing says we are a mile and a half southwest.”

“I’ll buy that”

“Missed the landing zone by a half mile.”

“Not bad at all.” Merriweather unslung his weapon and checked it over. Then he got to his feet.

“The other two guys should be around,” Handy muttered.

“They’d better be. We don’t have much time.”

After a careful check of the GPS unit, the two men started walking northeast toward missile silo number six. They had gone only about a hundred meters when they came to the bank of a stream, a fairly wide stream.

“What the hell is this?” Merriweather demanded, and got out his map. He and Handy huddled behind a tree studying the thing.

“Holy shit,” Handy said. “We’re in the wrong place. We’re at least four miles from the damned silo. Look here.” He pointed to the stream. “That has gotta be this thing in front of us.”

“So where’s the other half of our team?”

“Gotta be over there, near the silo.”

“Let’s get on the phone, give ’em the bad news.”

“Oh, man,” Handy moaned softly. “This ain’t good.”

The four-man recon team for silo number two approached the barn via a large seasonal drainage ditch that ran more or less in the right direction. Fortunately the sides were relatively dry, though the ditch contained a few inches of water and the bottom felt soft.

They stopped moving when they were about fifty meters from the barn where they believed the silo to be. They were completely surrounded by Cuban Army troops. Two tanks stood outside the barn, trucks were parked in a nearby grove of trees, and troops were setting up a cooking tent near the farmhouse’s well. Other soldiers were down in the woods to the left, presumably digging latrines.

“Must be a couple hundred of em,” Asel Tyvek whispered to Jamail Ali, who was lying in the ditch beside him.

“Sure as hell we can’t stay here,” Ali whispered. “It’s just a matter of time before somebody inspects this damn ditch with a flashlight.”

“The silo must be in that barn. Gotta be. If we crawl down this ditch, we should get within thirty yards of the thing. When the shit hits the fan, maybe we can get in there.”

“Let’s spread out, man, fifty yards apart,” Jamail Ali suggested. “If they find one of us, the others will have a chance.” Tyvek nodded and Ali whispered to the other two men, and pointed. They disappeared into the darkness.

Tyvek keyed the mike on his helmet-mounted radio. In seconds he was talking to a controller aboard USS United States, telling her what he saw around the missile silo.

“Twelve minutes,” the female voice from United States said in his ear. “Twelve minutes.”

“Roger that, Battlestar. Twelve minutes.”

Norman Tillman and the three men of his recon team were up to their knees in cow shit. They waded through the barnyard and shoved the mooing dairy cattle out of the way so that they could get to the door of the barn, a possible biological weapons manufacturing site.

“I thought there weren’t any damn cows around here,” Tillman’s number two muttered unpleasantly.

Tillman took off his night-vision goggles, got his flashlight in hand, and took a firm grip on his rifle. He nodded at his number two, who carefully opened the barn door, which creaked on its rusty hinges anyway. Tillman launched himself through the door opening. He slipped on something, fell, and slid for several feet on his chest. Much to his disgust, he could identify the substance he was lying in by its smell.

Tillman stood, used the flashlight. He was standing in a conventional wooden barn that had not been mucked out in several weeks. Two cows turned and stared at the light. They looked nervous, as if they wanted to run, then began bawling. Cursing under his breath, Norman Tillman went on through the building, checking it out.

Five minutes later he stepped outside and keyed his helmet radio. “Battlestar, this is Team One. Negative results. Nothing here but cows.”

“Roger, Team One. Stand by for a pickup.”

“Team One standing by. Out.”

“I thought there weren’t any cows at these sites,” one of the men said.

“Yeah, but the cows didn’t know they were supposed to be on vacation.”

“Maybe we landed at the wrong dairy farm.”

Tillman thought that over. Naw. That would be quite a screwup. More likely, the cows were being held in a nearby field when the recon photos were taken.

“Sarge, somebody coming.”

The men dove facedown into the dirt-and-manure mix at their feet. The person coming turned out to be a farmhand in civilian clothes. The marines made him sit with his back against the barn wall where they could watch him, but they didn’t tie his hands.

At first the man was frightened. He got over it when one of the troops offered him a cigarette and lit it for him.

Tillman crawled over a fence out of the muck and sat down under a tree to wait for the helicopter. One man watched the farmer while the other two posted themselves as sentinels.