Cuba (53 page)

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

traitorea”…he roared, “who wants the Americans

to win. Defeatist! Coward!”

“I will shoot anyone who helps you defect in this

airplaneea”…the colonel screamed. He

pointed the pistol at the troops closing the servicing

doors on the MiGo-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 sincedidn’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 bastardsea”…he

shouted. “There’s a war on.”

Richard Merriweather rode his parachute into a

cornfield. At least, he thought it was cornlong,

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?”

“Yeahea”…sd 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 hi 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 aroundea”…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 disbbh a tree

studying the thing.

“Holy shitea”…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”…”…v

“Gotta be over there, near the silo.”

“Let’s get on the phone, give ‘em the bad

news.”"…Oh, manea”…Handy moaned softly. “This

ain’t good.”

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

arid 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 aeacooking 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 ‘emea”…Asel

Tyvek whispered to Janiail Ali, who was lying in

the ditch beside him.

“Sure as hell we can’t stay hereea”…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

apartea”…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 minutesea”…the female voice from

United States

said in his ear. “Twelve minutes.”

“Roger that, Battlestar. Twelve minutes.”

Nojman Tillman and the three men of his recon

team were up TO THEIR knees in cow shit. They waded

through the barn-

yard 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

hereea”…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. Ou.”

“I thought there weren’t any cows at these sitesea”…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.

“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 placeonly 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 troopsno 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 mightea”…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

NCO’S.

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 hi 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 airplanesup there in the

darksamerican 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 MiGo-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 (Mfd’s), 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 Ty vek, NCO in

charge of the marine recon team at silo number