Cuba

STEVEN COONTS

CUBA

Admiral Jake Grafton is overseeing a

shipment of nerve gas being transferred from a

top-secret U.s. stockpile at

Guantanamot Bay. But a power struggle inside

cuba has ignited an explosive plot and

turned a horrific new weapon on the U.s.

Now, Jake must strap himself into the cockpit of a

new generation of American aircraft and fly blind in

to the heart of an island that is about to blow — and take

the whole world with x*

St. Martin’s Paperbacks

NOTE:

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be

aware that this book is stolen property. It was

reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the

publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has

received any payment for this “stripped book.”

CUBA

Copyright [*copygg’1999 by Stephen Coonts.

Ml

rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or

reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written

permission except in the case of brief quotations

embodied in critical articles or reviews.

For information address Still Martin’s Press, 175

Fifth Avenue, New York, N.y.

10010.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number

ISBN: 0-312-97139-7

Printed in the United States of America .

St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition still

August 1999 St. Martin’s Paperbacks

edition still May 2000

Still Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St.

Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New

York, N.y. 10010.

To Tyler

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In theory a speculative work of adventure

fiction has the same requirement for technical

accuracy as a story about space aliens set in the

thirtieth century, yet as a practical matter

many readers demand that this author at least stay in

reality’s neighborhood while spinning his tales.

For their aid in contributing to technical accuracy the

author wishes to thank Michael R. Gaul,

Captain Sam Sayers USN Ret., Mary

Sayers, Captain Andrew Salkeld USMC, and

Colonel Emmett Willard USA Ret., as

well as V-22 experts Colonel Nolan

Schmidt USMC, Lieutenant Colonel Doug

Isleib USMC, and Donald L. Byrne

Jr. As usual, the author has taken liberties

in some technical areas in the interest of readability

and pacing.

Emestina Archilla Pabon de Pascal devoted

many hours to helping the author capture the flavor

of Cuba and earned the author’s heartfelt thanks.

A very special thank-you goes to the author’s

wife, Deborah Buell Coonts, whose wise

counsel, plot suggestions, and endless hours of

editing added immeasurably to the quality of this tale.

Cultivo una rosa blanca, Enjulio como en

enero, Para el amigo sincere Que me da

su mano franca.

y para el cruel que me arranca El

corazon con que vivo, Cardo ni oruga

cultivo; Cultivo la rosa blanca.

Jose Marti

I grow a white rose

In July the same as January,

For the sincere friend

Who gives me his open hand. And for the cruel one who

pulls me

away

from the dreams for which I live,

I grow neither weeds nor thistles,

I grow the white rose.

V8I9

PROLOGUE

His hair was white, close-cropped, and his skin

deeply tanned. He wore only sandals,

shorts, and a paper-thin rag of a shirt with three

missing buttons that flapped loosely on his

spare, bony frame. A piece of twine around his

waist held up his shorts, which were also several sizes

too large. His dark eyes were restless and bright behind his

steelframed glasses, which rested on a large,

fleshy nose.

The walk between the house and barn winded him, so he

sat on a large stone in a bit of shade cast by a

cluster of palm trees and contemplated the gauzy

blue mountains on the horizon and the puffy clouds

floating along on the trade wind.

A man couldn’t have found a better place to live out

his life, he thought. He loved this view, this

serenity, this peace. When he had- come here as a young

man in his twenties he had known then that he had found

paradise. Nothing in the first twenty-six years of his

life had prepared him for the pastel colors, the

warmth and brilliance of the sun, the kiss of the eternal

breeze, the aroma of tropical flowers that filled

his head and caressed his soul.

Cuba was everything that Russia wasn’t. After a

lifetime in Siberia, he had wanted to get down and

kiss the earth when he first saw this land. He had

actually done that, several times in fact, when he had

had too much to drink. He drank a lot in those

days, years and years ago, when he was very young.

When the chance to stay came he had leaped at it,

begged for it.

“After a time you will regret your choiceea”…the colonel

said. “You will miss Mother Russia, the sound of

Russian voices, the young wife you left

behind….”

“She is young, intelligent, ambitious.;..”…he

had replied, thinking of Olga’s cold anger when

informed she could not accompany him to Cuba. She was

angry at

him

for having the good fortune to go, not angry at the state

for sending him. She had never in her life been

angry at the state for anything whatsoever, no

matter how bleak her life or prospectsshe

didn’t have it in her. Olga was a good communist

woman, communist to the core.

“She will be told that you have died in an accident. You

will be proclaimed a socialist hero. Of course,

you may never write to her, to your parents, to your

brother, tor anyone in the Soviet Union.

All will believe you dead. For them, you will be dead.”

“I will have another life here.”

“These are not your peopleea”…the colonel observed pointedly

a bit later in the discussion, but he didn’t listen.

“Olga is a patriotea”…he remembered telling the

colonel. “She loves the state with all her soul.

She will enjoy being a widow of a socialist hero.

She will find another man and life will go on.”

So he stayed, and they told her that he was

dead. Whether she remarried or stayed single, got

that transfer to Moscow that she dreamed about, had the children

she didn’t want, he didn’t know.

Looking at the blue mountains, smelling the wind,

he tried to conjure up the picture of her in his mind

that he had carried all these years. Olga had been

young then so he always remembered her that way. She

wouldn’t be young now, of course, if she still lived; she

would be hefty, with iron gray hair which she would wear

pulled back in a bun.

His mind was blank. Try as he might, he couldn’t

remember what Olga looked like.

comPerhaps that was just as well.

He had found a woman here, a chocolate brown

woman who cooked and washed for him, lived with him,

slept with him and bore him two children. Their son died

years ago before he reached manhood, and their daughter

was married and had children of her own. His daughter cooked

for him now, checked to make sure he was all right.

Her

face he could remember. Her smile, her touch, the

warmth of her skin, her whisper in the night…

She had been dead two years next month.

He would join her soon. He knew that. He had

lost seventy pounds in the last twelve

months and knew that something was wrong with him, but he

didn’t know just what.

The village doctor examined him and shook her

head. “Your body is wearing out, my friendea”…the

doctor said. “There is nothing I can do.”

He had had a wonderful life here, in this place in

the sun in paradise.

He coughed, spat in the dirt, waited for the spasms

to pass.

After a while he slowly levered himself erect and

resumed his journey toward the barn.

He opened the board door and stepped into the cool

darkness within. Little puffs of dust arose from every

footfall. The dirt on the floor had long ago

turned to powder.

The only light came from sunbeams shining through the

cracks in the barn’s siding. The siding was merely

boards placed on the wooden frame of the building

to keep out the wind and rain … and prying eyes.

In truth the building wasn’t really a barn at

all, though the corners were routinely used to store

farm machinery and fodder for the animals and occasionally

to get a sensitive animal in out of the sun.

Primarily the building existed to hide the large,

round concrete slab in the center of the floor.

The building was constructed in such a way that there were

no

beams or wooden supports of any kind above the

slab. The roof above the slab was merely boards can-

tilevered upward until they touched at the apex of the

building.

The white-haired old man paused now to look

upward at the pencil-thin shafts of sunlight which

illuminated the dusty air like so many laser beams.

The old man, however, knew nothing about lasers, had

never even seen one: lasers came after he had

completed hjs schooling and training.

One corner of the building contained an enclosed

room. The door to the room was locked. Now the old

man fished in his pocket for a key, unlocked the

door, and stepped inside. On the other side of the

door he used the key to engage the lock, then

thoughtfully placed the key in his pocket.

He was the only living person with a key to that lock.

If he collapsed in here, no one could get in

to him. The door and the walls of this room were made of

very hard steel, steel sheathed in rough, unfinished

gray wood.

Well, that was a risk he had agreed to run all

those years ago.

Thirty-five … no, thirty-eight years ago.

A long time.

There was a light switch by the door, and the old man

reached for it automatically. He snapped it on.

Before him were stairs leading dewji.

With one hand on the rail, he went down the stairs,

now worn from the tread of his feet.

This door, these stairs … his whole life. Every day

… checking, greasing, testing, repairing …

Once rats got in down here. He had never found

a hole that would grant them entrance, though he had

looked carefully. Still, they had gotten in and eaten

insulation off wiring, chewed holes in boards,

gnawed at pipes and fittings. He managed

to kill three with poison and carried the bodies out.

Several others died in places he couldn’t get to and

stank up the place while their carcasses

decomposed.

God, when had that been? Years and years ago …

He checked the poison trays, made sure they were

full.

He checked consoles, visually inspected the

conduits, turned on the electrical power and

checked the warning lights, the circuits.

Every week he ran a complete set of

electrical checks on the circuitry, checking every

wire in the place, all the connections and tubes,

resistors and capacitors. Occasionally a tube

would’be burned out, and he would have to replace it. The

irony of burning up difficult-to-obtain

electrical parts testing them had ceased to amuse him

years ago. Now he only worried that the parts would

not be available, somewhere, when he needed them.

He wondered what they were going to do when he became

unable to do this work. When he died. Someone was going to have

to take care of this installation or it would go to rack and

ruin. He had told the Cuban major that the last

time he came around, which was last month, when the

technicians came to install the new warhead.

Lord, what a job that had been. He was the only one

who knew how to remove the old nuclear warhead, and

he had had to figure out how to install the new one.

No one would tell him anything about it, but he had

to figure out how it had to be installed.

“You must let me train somebodyea”…he said to the

major, “show someone how to take care of this thing. If

you leave it sit without maintenance for just a few months

in this climate, it will be junk.”

Yes, yes.-The major knew that. So did the people in

Havana.

“And I am a sick man. Cancer, the doctor

says.”

The major understood. He had been told about the

disease. He was sorry to hear it.

“This thing should be in a museum nowea”…he told the

major, who as usual acted very military, looked

at this, tapped on that, told him to change a

lightbulb that had just burned outhe always changed dead

bulbs immediately if he had good bulbs to put inthen

went away looking thoughtful.

The major always looked thoughtful. He hadn’t an

idea about how the thing worked, about the labor and cunning

required to keep it operational, and he never asked

questions. Just nosed around pretending he knew what he

was looking at, occasionally delivered spare parts,