Cuba

CHAPTER TWENTY

“There are several hundred troops and three or four tanks around silos one and two, Admiral, and at least two tanks and a squad of soldiers around three. Four and five appear to be unguarded. The recon team checking out silo six seems to have been dropped in the wrong place — only two of the four have reported in; they estimate they are three miles from the silo. We haven’t been able to contact the other two men.”

The briefer was an Air Intelligence officer who zapped the map with a laser flashlight pointer whenever he mentioned a silo.

Jake Grafton wasn’t paying much attention to the map, which he had memorized. He glanced at his watch, compared it with a clock on the bulkhead.

“Lab site Alpha is a dairy farm. The recon team checking out Bravo reports jackpot, but not many troops — no more than a dozen. The Osprey will be there in less than ten minutes.”

The admiral got up from his chair, stretched, rubbed the back of his neck. So far it was going better than he expected it would. So far. Nobody shot down yet, only one recon team lost …

“Is someone monitoring Cuban radio and television?”

“Yes, sir. The National Security Agency. They will keep us advised.”

“Ummm.”

“What are we going to do about silo six, Admiral?” Gil Pascal asked.

“Nothing we can do. The assault team will have to go into the landing zone blind.”

“The Cuban Army may be waiting.”

“They might,” Jake Grafton agreed.

He put on his headset and switched between radio channels. By simply flipping switches he could monitor the aircraft tactical channels. In addition, with the new tactical com units, he and his staff could hear everything that was said on the helmet radios worn by marine officers and NCOs.

Since the signals were rebroadcast and ultimately picked up by the satellite, they were also being monitored in the war room of the White House. One of Jake’s concerns was that the politicians or senior officers would be tempted to step into the middle of the operation. Although the Washington kibitzers could not communicate on the nets, they could quickly get in touch with someone who could, and an order was an order, even if ill-considered.

He would worry about the politicians when the meddling started, he decided, not before.

Doll Hanna was the recon team leader at dairy Bravo. He was sitting on a biological warhead assembly plant and he knew it. There wasn’t a cow in sight, two clean, modern dairy trucks sat near the entrance to the barn, and Hanna could hear air conditioners running. And the Cuban Army was guarding the place.

From where he lay he could see two soldiers in cloth hats with rifles in their arms standing in front of the main entrance. He knew that there were men on the door in the rear of the building and in the old thatch-roofed farmhouse nearby.

Doll Hanna touched the transmit button on his radio. “Willie, you take the two guys on the north side. Fred, you got the farmhouse. Goose, these two on the main entrance.”

All three men acknowledged.

Doll was wearing his night-vision goggles so he could see Goose crawling behind the milk trucks, then under them, working his way toward the entrance. It was eerie watching Goose sneak along, knowing the guards couldn’t see him.

Taking out two men was a challenge. Either one could raise the alarm.

Goose moved like he had all night.

He didn’t, Doll Hanna well knew. The Osprey was out there now circling, but it wouldn’t come in until he called the area clear. Still, the plane only had so much fuel and the Cubans wouldn’t stay quiet forever.

In fact, a truckload of soldiers could come rolling in here any minute. The troops in the Osprey, when they arrived, would set up a perimeter to keep the Cuban military away.

“Doll, this is Fred. I’m going to make some noise over here.”

“Okay.”

No doubt Goose and Willie heard that transmission. Noise would cause the guards to do something. If necessary, Goose and Willie could just shoot them down.

Hanna heard the faint sound of a slamming door come from the direction of the farmhouse.

The guards near the main door to the dairy got to their feet, looked at each other, then started toward the house. One stopped, told the other to stay, then went on with his weapon at the ready. As he went around the truck out of sight of the guard at the door, Goose got him with a knife.

Then Goose waited.

The man at the door called out to his friend.

Nothing.

The guard looked worried. He called again, got no answer, then walked forward twenty feet or so. He stopped, cocked his head, stood looking into the darkness and trying to hear over the hum of the big air conditioners.

He was standing like that when Goose stepped out from behind the truck and threw a knife. The guard dropped his rifle and pitched forward on his face.

Hanna got up, trotted for the door of the barn. He passed Goose, who was bending over the second guard checking to make sure he was dead. Carefully Doll eased the door open and looked inside.

There were people inside, all right, behind transparent plastic curtains that formed biological seals. They were wearing full body-and-head CBW suits, so they looked like spacemen walking around in there between trays of cultures and rows of worktables.

They had apparently heard nothing above the noise of the air-ventilation system, which was a loud, steady hum.

Doll eased his head back. The people in there would have to wait until the experts arrived.

Major Carlos Corrado walked onto the runway of the Cienfuegos Air Base. The runway lights were off and the night was fairly dark considering that two hangars and at least five aircraft were ablaze. He could hear people shouting, about fire, about water, about missiles, about staying under cover. Straining hard he could hear several cruise missiles — and airplanes — up there in the darkness — American airplanes, because in order to save money, the Cuban Air Force, the Fuerza Aerea Revolucionaria, did not fly at night.

What was happening? Where was the war?

Carlos Corrado had no illusions about the difficulties involved in engaging the American military. His MiG-29, a stripped Soviet export version, had only the most rudimentary of electronic detection equipment and lacked any active countermeasures. And his GCI site was probably in the same condition as the burning hangars behind him.

If he left his radar off he would not beacon on the Americans’ detection equipment. And he would be electronically blind.

Perhaps if he stayed low …

Another cruise missile roared overhead and dove into the last undamaged hangar. The 750-pound warhead rocked the base, then the hangar collapsed outward, its walls silhouetted black against the yellowish white fireball caused by the warhead.

Well, if the Americans were pounding Cienfuegos, they must be pulverizing Jose Marti International in Havana.

Havana. The war would be in Havana, so that was where he would go.

The V-22 Osprey twin-engine tiltrotor assault transport was the ultimate flying machine, or so Rita Moravia liked to tell her husband, Toad Tarkington. It hovered like a helicopter and flew like an airplane, operated from the deck of an airborne assault ship, and was at its best after the sun went down.

So here she was, in the pilot’s seat of a V-22 on her way to a ballistic-missile silo in the Matanzas Province of central Cuba with 24 combat-ready marines, loaded for bear. She had made a vertical takeoff from Kearsarge and was now thundering along at two thousand feet over the Cuban countryside at 250 knots, navigating by GPS and monitoring the forward-looking infrared display (FLIR), which revealed the countryside ahead as if the sun were shining down from a cloudless sky.

Rita’s copilot was Captain Crash Wade, USMC, who earned his nickname in an unfortunate series of ski adventures, not flying accidents. Wade paid careful attention to the multi-function displays (MFDs), computer presentations of everything the pilots needed to know, on the instrument panel in front of him.

Rita was paying careful attention to the voice on the radio, which was that of Asel Tyvek, NCO in charge of the marine recon team at silo number two. Rita didn’t know his real name, just his call sign, Blue One.

“Old Rover, this is Blue One. I want you to hold four minutes out while we get some ordnance on this LZ. It’s sizzling hot.”

“Old Rover, Roger.” Rita keyed the intercom. “Okay, Crash, do a holding pattern.”

“How come we got the hot LZ?” Crash wanted to know.

“Just lucky, I guess,” Rita replied, and selected an intercom button that would allow her to talk to the lieutenant in the cargo bay with his troops.

Asel Tyvek and Jamail Ali were side by side in the ditch, just thirty yards or so from the barn. The other two members of the team were also in the ditch, but well left and right.

“We ought to get in the barn,” Ali whispered, “in case the Cubans want to get in there too.”

“Man, those little boards ain’t gonna protect anybody from anything. You just be ready in case the Cubans start diving into this damned ditch with us.”

“Listen, I can hear our guys coming.”

Tyvek strained his ears. Yep, he could just detect the distinctive beat of chopper rotors. “Snake One, Blue One,” he whispered into his radio. “Cuban troops all around the barn. At least two tanks, eight or nine trucks, a couple hundred men. We’re in a ditch near the barn.”

“Got your head down?”

“Yeah.”

Tyvek could hear the choppers distinctly now. He eased his weapon up, put his finger on the safety. The Cubans were going to be looking for cover very shortly, and he didn’t want to share the ditch.

The SuperCobras eased up over the tree line, barely moving. Tyvek knew what was going to happen next, and it did. He heard the roar as Hellfire antiarmor missiles screamed toward the tanks, and he heard the explosions as they hit.

He lifted his head above the ditch line for a quick peek. The tanks were smoking hulks. Even as he watched, more missiles tore into the trucks.

Not a standing figure could be seen. Everyone was on the ground, crawling or lying still.

The two SuperCobras came closer. The noise of their engines was quite plain now. The flex three-barreled 20-mm cannons opened up and rockets shot forward from the pylons under the stubby wings.

The men in the yard realized they couldn’t stay where they were — the area was a killing zone. Some jumped up and ran for the ditch. Fortunately few of them seemed to have weapons in their hands — the attack had caught them by surprise.

“Here they come,” Tyvek shouted, and opened up on the men closest to the ditch. He couldn’t shoot them fast enough. Men dashed for the cover of the ditch as he and Ali and the other two poured fire into them and the SuperCobras lashed the area with ordnance.

Tyvek spoke into the voice-activated mike on his helmet-mounted radio. “We’re gonna need some help, Old Rover. Whenever you can get here.”

Something heavy fell across Tyvek’s legs. He spun and fired at the same time, but the man was already dead: Ali had shot him.

“They’re going into the barn!” Ali shouted. He fired a whole magazine at three men trying to get through the front door. One of the men disappeared inside.

Jamail Ali scrambled over the edge of the ditch and ran for the barn while Tyvek screamed at the SuperCobra gunners not to shoot him.

“Snake One Four, this is Orange One.” Richard Merriweather let go of the mike and waited for an answer from the SuperCobra inbound to silo six.

“Orange One, Snake One Four.”

“Man, we’re on the wrong side of this river or creek five or six clicks south of the LZ. How about seeing if you can find us.”

“Are you standing up?”

“In plain sight.”

Merriweather and his partner, Kirb Handy, stepped away from the trees. With their night-vision goggles, the SuperCobra crewmen should have no trouble seeing two men standing in an open field, and they didn’t.

Both the helicopters settled to earth and the marines on the ground ran to them.

The pilot of the lead chopper opened his canopy as Merriweather ran over. “Where are the other guys?”

“Haven’t seen them or talked to them. Don’t know.”

“Seen any bad guys?”

“Nope. How about a ride over toward the barn?”

“Sit on the skid and grab hold. We run into trouble, you gotta get off if we drop down low.”

Merriweather gave the pilot a thumbs-up and arranged himself on the skid. Handy was clinging to the skid on the other side.

The chopper came slowly into a hover, then dipped its nose and began moving forward. Merriweather held on for dear life as the rotor downwash and slipstream tore at his clothing, helmet, and gear, and threatened to rip the night vision goggles from his head.

What a stupid idea this was! How in hell had they ended up four miles south of the goddamned landing zone? If he ever again laid eyes on that son of a bitch who flew the Herc, he was going to stomp his ass.

Bryne and McCormick — those two were missing. If they were okay surely they would have checked in on the radio. Maybe their parachutes didn’t open. Maybe they fell into that river. Maybe the Cubans captured them as soon as they hit the ground. Maybe, maybe, maybe …

He could see the barn now. The chopper was just a few feet above the trees, making an approach to the area right in front of the damn thing. The other chopper was flying over the trees, three or four hundred yards away — close, but not too close.

Nobody in sight around the barn. Not a soul.

Merriweather jumped when the chopper was three feet off the ground, and fell on his face. He got up, staggered out from under the rotor blast.

Handy appeared at his elbow.

The glow of a cigarette tip showed in the door. Someone sitting there!

Merriweather froze, his M-16 at the ready.

A marine sat in the open door smoking a cigarette. His face and neck were coated with green and brown camo grease. His helmet and night-vision goggles lay in the dirt beside him.

Merriweather walked over to the man, who said, “No one around.”

“Where’s Bryne?”

McCormick nodded toward the east. “Over there about a hundred yards. Parachute streamed, backup didn’t open.”

“Your radio?”

“Broke. Bryne’s got smashed.” McCormick stood, took a last drag on the cigarette, and tossed it away. “Been sitting here waiting for you. The place is deserted, quiet as a graveyard.”

“Too bad about Bryne.”

“Left two little kids. Too fucking bad.”

The interior of the barn was large, empty, and dark. Merriweather used a flashlight, looked in every corner, inspected the ceiling, the floor, the nooks and crannys.

Then he spoke into his boom microphone. “Let’s get the Osprey into the LZ, set up a perimeter.”

Through her night-vision goggles, Rita Moravia could see the silo two landing zone and the hovering SuperCobras plain as day as she made her approach in the Osprey. She saw bodies lying everywhere, still-warm bodies radiating heat, and she saw living men. She transitioned to hovering flight and lowered the Osprey toward the ground between the choppers. A cloud of dirt and dust rose up, obscuring everything. She went on instruments.

On the intercom she told the lieutenant to get ready.

As soon as the wheels hit, the marines in back charged out the door of the Osprey and kept right on going for fifty yards, when they went down on their stomachs with their rifles at the ready.

Rita didn’t wait to see what was going to happen next. As soon as her crew chief said the last marine was out, she lifted the Osprey into the air, climbed straight up out of the dust cloud and only then began the transition to winged flight.

The lieutenant was named Charlie Herron, and he had his orders. His primary responsibility was to ensure that the missile in that silo never left the ground. As his feet hit the ground, he flopped on his belly and waited while the roaring Osprey climbed away. When the dust began to clear, he spotted the barn and went for it on a run.

Bodies and body parts lay scattered everywhere. The living men he passed sat in the dirt with empty hands reaching for the sky. Herron shouted over the radio, “Cease-fire, cease-fire. They are surrendering.”

Inside the barn he found Asel Tyvek standing over a dead Cuban.

“Over here, Lieutenant. I think this wooden thing is a door.”

Tyvek and Herron opened the wooden door, which revealed a steel door with built-in combination lock. “Think there’s anybody in there?” Herron asked. After all, Tyvek had been here longer than he had.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, we gotta get in there. Let’s blow the door.”

A charge of C-4 took less than a minute to rig. The two men took cover behind a wooden stall.

The explosion was sharp, a metallic wham that rang their ears.

The demolition charge cut the lock clean out of the door and warped it. The two men pried the door open. A stairway lit by naked light bulbs led away downward. Herron and Tyvek took off their night-vision goggles and let them dangle around their necks. With Herron in the lead with his pistol in his hand, the two of them descended the stairway.

Aboard United States Jake Grafton was getting the blow-by-blow update. Air Intelligence officers annotated the maps and briefers told him of every report from the silos.

“Heavy firefight around silos one and two.”

“No opposition at sites four, five and six.”

“Ospreys on the ground at sites two, three, and four.”

“SeaCobra hit and in trouble at site one.”

“Team leader into silo two.”

“Recon leader into silo six.”

Each report was entered on a checklist: there were eight of them, one for each silo and dairy site.

First Lieutenant Charlie Herron and Asel Tyvek found the control room of silo two empty. A series of stairs and more steel doors led downward to the bottom of the concrete structure. The doors weren’t locked. When he opened the last door, there was the missile towering upward. The shiny, painted fuselage reflected pinpoints of light from the naked bulbs arranged around the top and sides of the concrete silo.

Under the missile was a steel grate over a black hole. That was the flame pit, to exhaust the flame and gases when the missile was launched.

A circular steel stairway led up to a catwalk. From the catwalk it appeared a person could reach over and gain access to the missile’s warhead and control panel.

Herron holstered his pistol and turned to Sergeant Tyvek. “See if you can figure out a way to safety this bottle rocket so they can’t fire it from Havana while I’m working on it.”

“Lieutenant, I’ve got bad news for you. I don’t know shit about guided missiles.”

“Well, you sure as hell don’t want to be standing here with your thumb up your butt if they light this thing off. Now go look for a switch or something.”

“Yes, sir,” Tyvek said, and disappeared back up the stairway.

Herron took the steps two at a time. He hoped he would find what he expected when he got to the catwalk, although he thought a lot of the old Russian engineer’s explanation had been pure bullshit. Somebody had found an engineer in Russia who said he helped design these missiles — the guy was in his eighties. They had him on television for an hour explaining how the business end of the missile was put together. The engineer spoke not a word of English so a translator did the talking. The man had a hell of a memory or was lying through his teeth. Herron was about to find out which was the case.

“If it’s typical Russian stuff,” the American briefer said, “you’ll be able to work on it with pliers and screwdrivers. American designers could learn a lot from Russian engineers, who design for ease of maintenance.” They gave each officer and NCO who might get near a missile a small tool pouch.

Herron examined the access panel, which was only about six inches long by six inches high, and curved, a part of the missile’s skin. The screws holding it in place looked like Dzus fasteners. They weren’t, though: they were plain old screws. Careful not to drop them, he unscrewed them one by one and put the screws in a shirt pocket. There were a dozen screws, just like the Russian engineer said. Okay! So far so good.

Sweat dripped down his nose, ran into his eyes. He wiped the palms of his hands on his camo pants and used his sleeve to swab his face, then went back to twisting the screwdriver. He worked as quickly as he could. Finally he took out the last screw.

Carefully, ever so carefully, Herron pulled off the access panel and laid it on the catwalk by his feet. He dug a small flashlight from his pocket. Looking through the access panel, he could see lots of wires. And a stainless-steel sphere about the size of a basketball. That, he concluded, must be the biological warhead. The missile had been designed for a nuclear warhead, which would have been round, so the biological warhead had to go into the same space. Yet the warhead was too large to come out this little six-inch access hole.

Charlie Herron reached through the hole to his elbow, felt upward with his ear against the skin of the missile. Yes, he could feel the latch. He opened it. Now down … one there too. Right, then left.

With the last latch open, he pulled at the panel he had his arm in. It came out in his hand, making a hole at least twenty inches across. So the engineer had been telling the truth.

Herron turned to put the panel on the catwalk … and dropped it.

It fell, striking the side of the missile, finally landing on the grate at the bottom with a tinny sound, much like the lid of a garbage can.

Charlie Herron grabbed the rails of the catwalk and held on to keep from falling.

He wiped his face on his sleeves, the palms of his hands on his trousers.

Using a pair of wire snips, the lieutenant began clipping wires, then pulling the ends out of the way so he could see how the warhead was held in place.

William Henry Chance and Tommy Carmellini stepped from their Osprey transport wearing their CBW suits. Two marines similarly clad followed them. Each marine carried a cylinder about six feet long and five inches in diameter balanced on his shoulder.

Doll Hanna was waiting for them as they approached the main entrance. “I count five people in the clean area,” he said. “They don’t know we’re here yet. The air-circulation system is pretty loud.”

Chance went to the partially open door and eased his head around for a peek. He counted the people inside. Five.

He had been thinking about this moment ever since Jake Grafton asked him to take out this facility. If the integrity of the sealed area was broken before the fire got hot enough to destroy the virus, some of the virus might escape. If there were any free viruses in the air inside there, or if one of the culture trays was broken, intentionally or unintentionally …

How much was some? Who could say?

He pulled his head back, looked at Doll Hanna, looked at the marines carrying the cylinders on their shoulders.

Well, it was a hell of a risk. A hell of a risk.

Just then William Henry Chance wished he were back in New York City, eating dinner at a nice restaurant or preparing a case for trial or sitting at home with the woman who had shared his life for the past ten years. Anywhere but here.

“Give me your rifle,” he said to Hanna, who handed him his M-16.

“Is it loaded?”

“Full. Selector is on single shot. This is the safety.” Hanna touched it.

“Okay,” said William Henry Chance.

He turned to Carmellini. “If worse comes to worst, you know what to do.”

Carmellini didn’t say anything. The dumb shit is probably wishing he was safe and snug in a federal pen, Chance thought.

He pointed the rifle at the ground and held it close to his leg, then eased the door open and stepped inside. No Cuban saw him. They were looking intently at something in a sealed unit with remote-control arms. A radio was playing somewhere, playing loudly.

Chance stepped into the air lock, stood there looking at the people while he waited for the interior door to unlock automatically.

He recognized the voice on the radio: Alejo Vargas. The gravelly flat delivery was unmistakable.

“My fellow Cubans, now is the hour to rally to the defense of our holy mother country. Tonight even as I speak the nation is under attack from American military forces, who have leveled the awesome might of their armed forces against the eleven million peaceful people of Cuba.”

Ten seconds passed, fifteen, twenty. After a half minute, the interior door clicked. Chance pushed it open and stepped into the lab.

Racks holding eight or ten culture trays each stood beside the benches. He lifted the rifle, thumbed off the safety, walked forward toward the working figures, who still had their backs to him. The tables on both sides of the aisles contained tools, parts, glassware, specialized instruments.

“Join with me in fighting the forces of the devil, the forces of capitalism and exploitation that seek to enslave the Cuban people so that the Yanquis can manufacture more dollars for themselves ….”

One of the workers spotted Chance when he was ten feet away, and turned in his direction.

Chance gestured with the rifle, motioned for them to raise their hands. They did so.

I should just shoot them, he thought, acutely aware of the culture trays just beside his elbow, and theirs.

Maybe I won’t have to.

Backing up between two tables, he jerked his head back the way he had come, toward the air lock, gestured with the barrel of the rifle.

“Our hour of glory is now,” Alejo Vargas thundered, “an hour that will live in all of Cuban history as the supreme triumphant moment of our people, that moment in the history of the world when we humble people struck back against the enslaver and oppressor and became forever free ….”

Slowly, watching Chance, the closest man began moving, passed him, kept walking with his hands up.

The second man passed.

The third …

He was turning to look at the fourth man when the man grabbed the barrel of the rifle with one hand and stabbed Chance in the solar plexus with the other.

William Henry Chance looked down at the handle sticking out of his abdomen. A screwdriver! The man had stabbed him with a screwdriver.

The man was fighting him for the rifle!

A shot. He heard a shot over the noise of the air-circulation fans. The man who stabbed him collapsed.

More shots.

Chance fell. His legs didn’t work anymore and he was having trouble breathing.

“Kill the American enslavers wherever you find them, wherever they choose to shovel their odious filth onto a committed socialist people,” Vargas shouted over the radio. “Beloved Cuba, the mother of us all, needs our strong right arms.”

On the floor, his vision narrowing to tiny points of light, fighting for air he couldn’t get, William Henry Chance felt someone roll him over. Through the face plate on the mask of the man who held him, he could just make out Carmellini’s features.

“You should have shot ‘em,” Carmellini shouted. “You. stupid bastard, you should have shot ’em.”

Chance was trying to suck in enough air to reply when his heart stopped.

Carmellini and the two marines in CBW suits carried the aluminum cylinders they had brought from the Osprey into the lab and set them down. There was not a moment to be lost. Bullets had gone through several of the men lying dead on the floor and punctured the transparent plastic walls of the facility.

The two marines went back after more cylinders while Carmellini brought plastic cans of gasoline through the air lock. He didn’t have time to wait for the lock to work, so he jammed the door so it would not close.

Please God, don’t let the viruses out.

With six cylinders on the floor near the cultures and ten gallons of gasoline sitting nearby, Carmellini was ready. The five Cubans who were working in the lab lay where they had fallen. Chance’s body lay where he died. Carmellini ignored the bodies as he worked.

He gestured to the marines to leave, then turned to the nearest cylinder, which was a five-inch-diameter magnesium flare designed to be dropped from an airplane. A small steel ring was taped to the side of the thing — he tore that off and pulled it out as far as it would go, which was about a foot. Then he gave it a mighty tug, which tore it loose in his hand.

He laid the cylinder on the wooden floor and walked for the air lock. As he went through he released the door, allowing it to close.

He still had a few seconds, so he stood in the lock as the suction tore at his CBW suit, trying to cleanse it of dust and stray viruses.

But he was running out of time.

He pushed the emergency button and let himself out of the lock through the exterior door. Walking swiftly, he exited the barn and strode for the waiting Osprey.

Doll Hanna was standing there with a rifle in his arms.

“Let’s get the men—” Carmellini began, but the ignition of the flare stopped him. The glare of a hundred-million-candlepower magnesium fire leaked out of the barn through the door and cracks in the siding.

“Let’s get the hell out of here before it goes up like a rocket,” Carmellini shouted, and trotted for the Osprey.

Three minutes later, with all the people aboard and the plane airborne, he went to the cockpit and looked back. The fire was as bright as a welder’s torch, so brilliant it hurt his eyes to look. The heat of the first flare had set off the second, and so on. The heat from the first few flares probably caused the gasoline cans to explode, raising the temperature dramatically and helping ignite the other flares.

“Think the fire will kill all the viruses?” the pilot asked.

“I don’t know,” Carmellini said grimly, and went back to his seat. He didn’t have any juice to waste on the merely worried.