Cuba (2 page)

listened to what the old man had to say, then went

away, not to reappear for another three months.

Before the major there had been a colonel. Before the

colonel another major… In truth, he

didn’t get to know these occasional visitors very

well and soon forgot about them.

Every now and then he would get a visitor that he could not

forget. Fidel Castro had come three times. His

first visit occurred while the Russians were still here,

during construction. He looked at everything,

asked many questions, didn’t pretend to know anything.

Castro returned when the site was operational.

Several generals had accompanied him. The old

man could still remember Castro’s green uniform, the

beard, the everpresent cigar.

The last time he came was eight or ten years ago,

after the Soviet Union collapsed, when spare

parts were so difficult to obtain. That time he had

asked questions, listened carefully to the answers, and the

necessary parts and supplies had somehow been delivered.

But official visits were rare events, even by the

thoughtful major? Most of the time the old man was left

in peace and solitude to do his job as he saw fit.

Truly, the work was pleasanthe had had a good life,

much better than anything he could have aspired to as a

technician in the Soviet Rocket Forces,

doomed to some lonely, godforsaken, windswept

frozen patch of Central Asia.

The old man left the power on to the consolehe would

begin the tests in just a bit, but first he opened the

fireproof stee] door to reveal a set of stairs

leading downward. Thirty-two steps down to the

bottom of the silo.

The sight of the missile resting erect on its

launcher

always took his breath for a moment. There it sat, ready

to be fired.

He climbed the ladder to the platform adjacent to the

guidance compartment. Took out the six screws that

sealed the access plate, pried it off, and used a

flashlight to inspect the wiring inside. Well, the

internal wiring inside the guidance unit was getting

old, no question about it. It would have to be replaced

soon.

Should he replace the guidance wiringwhich would take

two weeks of intense, concentrated effortor should he

leave it for his successor?

He would think about the work involved for a few more

weeks. If he didn’t feel up to it then, it would

have to wait. His health was deteriorating at a more or

less steady pace, and he could only do so much.

If they didn’t send a replacement for him soon,

he wouldn’t have enough time to teach the new man what he

needed to know. To expect them to find someone who already

knew the nuts and bolts of a Scud I missile

was ridiculous. These missiles hadn’t been

manufactured in thirty years, were inaccurate,

obsolete artifacts of a bygone age.

It was equally ridiculous to expect someone

to remove this missile from the silo and install

a new, modern one. Cuba was poor, even poorer

than Russia had been when he was growing up.

Cuba could not afford modern missiles and the new,

postcommunist Russia certainly could not afford

to give them away.

Not even to aim at Atlanta.

Those were the targeting coordinates.

He wasn’t supposed to know the target, of course,

but that rule was another example of military

stupidity. He took care of the missile,

maintained it, tested it, and if necessary would someday fire

it at the enemy. Yet the powers that be didn’t want

him to know where the missile was aimed.

So when he was working on the guidance module he had

checked the coordinates that were programmed in,

STEPHEN COONTS

compared them to a map in the village school.

Atlanta!

The gyros in the guidance module were 1950’s

technology, and Soviet to boot, with the usual

large, forgiving military tolerances. No one ever

claimed the guidance system in a Scud I was a

precision instrument, but it was adequate. The

guidance system would get the missile into the proper

neighborhood, more or less, then the warhead

would do the rest.

The old warhead had an explosive force equal

to one hundred thousand tons” equivalent of

TNT. It wouldn’t flatten all of

AtlantaAtlanta was a mighty big place and

getting biggerbut it would make a hell of a dent in

Georgia. Somewhere in Georgia. With luck, the

chances were pretty good that the missile would hit

Georgia.

The new warhead… well, he knew nothing about it.

It was a completely different design than the old

one, although it weighed exactly the same and also

seemed to be rigged for an airburst, but of course

there was no way for him to determine the altitude.

Not that it mattered. The missile had never been

fired and probably never would be. Its

capabilities were mere speculation.

The old man took a last look at the interior

of the control module, replaced the inspection plate

and inserted the screws, then carefully tightened each

one. Then he inspected the cables that led to the

missile and their connectors. From the platform he could

also see the hydraulic pistons and arms that would

lift the cap on the silo, if and when. No leaks

today.

Carefully, holding on with both hands, he climbed

down the ladder to the floor of the silo, which was just a

grate over a large hole, the fire tube,

designed so the fiery rocket exhaust would not cook

the missile before it rose from the silo.

The rats may have got into the silo when he had the

cap open, he thought. Yes, that was probably it.

They got in-

side, found nothing to eat, began chewing on wire

insulation to stay alive.

But the rats were dead.

His woman was dead, and he soon would be.

The missile…

He patted the side of the missile, then began

climbing the stairs to the control room to do his

electrical checks.

Nobody gave a damn about the missile, except

him and maybe the major. The major didn’t really

care all that muchthe missile was just a job for him.

The missile had been the old man’s life. He

had traded life in Russia as a slave in the

Strategic Rocket Forces for a life in

paradise as a slave to a missile that would never be

fired.

He thought about Russia as he climbed the

stairs.

You make your choices going through life,

he told himself,

or the state makes the choices for you. Or God

does. Whichever, a man must accept life as it

conies.

He sat down at the console in the control room,

ran his fingers over the buttons and switches.

At least he had never had to fire the missile.

After all these years taking care of it, that would be

somewhat like committing suicide.

Could he do it? Could he fire the missile if

ordered to do so?

When he first came to Cuba he had thought deeply

about that question. Of course he had taken an oath

to obey disand all that, but he never knew if he really

could.

Still didn’t.

And was going to die not knowing.

The old man laughed aloud. He liked the sound so

much he laughed again, louder.

After all, the joke was really on the communists, who

sent him here. Amazingly, after all the pain and

suffering they caused tens of millions of people all

over the planet, they had given him a good

life.

He laughed again because the joke was a good one.

Guantanamo Bay, on the southeast coast of the

island of Cuba, is the prettiest spot on the

planet, thought Rear Admiral Jake

Grafton, USN.

He was leaning on the railing on top of the carrier

United States’s

superstructure, her island, a place the sailors

called Steel Beach. Here off-duty crew

members gathered to soak up some rays and do a few

calisthenics. Jake Grafton was not normally a

sun worshiper; at sea he rarely visited

Steel Beach, preferring to arrange his day so that he

could spend at least a half hour running on the

flight deck. Today he was dressed in gym shorts,

T-shirt, and tennis shoes, but he had yet

to make it to the flight deck.

Gra bar ton was a trim, fit fifty-three

years old, a trifle over six feet tall, with

short hair turning gray, gray eyes, and a nose

slightly too large for his face. On one temple

was a scar, an old, faded white slash where a

bullet had gouged him years ago.

People who knew him regarded him as the

epitome of a competent naval officer. Grafton

always put his brain in gear before he opened his mouth,

never lost his cool, and he never lost sight of the

goals he wanted to accomplish. In short, he was

one fine naval officer and his superiors knew it,

which was why he was in charge of this carrier group lying in

Guantanamo Bay.

The carrier and her escorts had been running

exercises in the Caribbean for the last week. Today the

carrier was anchored in the mouth of the bay, with two of

her larger consorts anchored nearby. To seaward

three- destroyers

steamed back and forth, their radars probing the skies.

A set of top-secret orders had brought the

carrier group here.

Jake Grafton thought about those orders as he

studied the two cargo ships lying against the pier through a

set of navy binoculars. The ships were small,

less than eight thousand tons each; larger ships

drew too much water to get against the pier in this

harbor. They were

Nuestra Sefiora de Colon

and

Astarte.

The order bringing those ships here had not come from

some windowless Pentagon cubbyhole; it was no memo

drafted by an anonymous civil servant or

faceless staff weenie. Oh, no. The order that had

brought those ships to this pier on the southern coast of

Cuba had come from the White House, the top of the

food chain.

Jake Grafton looked past the cargo ships at

the warehouses and barracks and administration buildings

baking in the warm Cuban sun.

A paradise, that was the word that described Cuba.

A paradise inhabited by communists. And

Guantanamo Bay was a lonely little American

outpost adhering to the underside of this communist island, the

asshole of Cuba some called it.

Rear Admiral Grafton could see the cranes

moving, the white containers being swung down to the pier

from

Astarte,

which had arrived several hours ago. Forklifts took

the steel boxes to a hurricane-proof warehouse,

where no doubt the harbormaster was stacking them three

or four deep in neat, tidy military rows.

The containers were packages designed to hold

chemical and biological weapons, artillery

shells and bombs. A trained crew was here

to load the weapons stored inside the

hurricane-proof warehouse into the containers, which would

then be loaded aboard the ship at the pier and

transported to the United States, where the warheads

would be destroyed.

Loading the weapons into the containers and getting the

containers stowed aboard the second ship was going

to take at least a week, probably longer. The

first ship,

Nuestra Sefiora de Colon,

Our Lady of Col less-than 5n, had been a

week loading, and would be ready to sail this evening.

Jake Grafton’s job was to provide military

cover for the loading operation with this carrier battle

group.

His orders raised more questions than they answered. The

weapons had been stored in that warehouse for years why

remove them now? Why did the removal operation

require military cover? What was the threat?

Admiral Grafton put down his binoculars and

did fifty push-ups on the steel deck while he

thought about chemical and biological weapons.

Cheaper and even more lethal than atomic weapons,

they were the weapons of choice for Third World nations

seeking to acquire a credible military

presence. Chemical weapons were easier to control

than biological weapons, yet more expensive

to deliver. Hands down, the cheapest and deadliest

weapon known to man was the biological one.

Almost any nation, indeed, almost anyone with a credit

card and two thousand square feet of laboratory

space, could construct a biological weapon hi a

matter of weeks from inexpensive, off-the-shelf

technology. Years ago Saddam Hussein got

into the biological warfare business with anthrax

cultures purchased from an American mail-order

supply house and delivered via overnight mail.

Ten grams of anthrax properly dispersed can kill

as many people as a ton of the nerve gas Sarin. What was

that estimate Jake saw recently”…one hundred

kilograms of anthrax delivered by an efficient

aerosol generator on a large urban target would

kill from two to six times as many people as a