Cuba (57 page)

roar that made his flesh quiver and vibrated his

teeth.

Rising … the missile was rising, dragging him off

the catwalk.

He clung to the access hole with all his strength,

The missile came out of the silo, past the floor

of the barn, accelerating, going up, up, up….

The tip of the missile burst through the rotten,

shattered roof and threw wood in every direction.

As it did Toad curled his feet up against the

fuselage of the missile, released his hold on the

access hole, and kicked off.

He flew through the darkness, bounced on the collapsing

roof, felt the blast of furnace heat as the

rocket motors singed him, then he was

falling, falling….

* * *

Stiff Hardwick couldn’t believe his eyes. He

had his F-14 Tomcat down at 4,000 feet,

fifteen miles from silo one, and was impatiently

waiting for Boots to sort out the villain from the other

airborne targets in the area when he saw the

ballistic missile rising into the night sky on a

cone of whitehot fire.

“Jesus Christff”…he swore over the radio, “the

bastards have launched one.”

“Lock it up, Bootsea”…Stiff screamed, still on

the radio, although he thought he was on the intercom.

“Lock it up and we’ll shoot an AMRAAM.”…The

acronym stood for advanced medium-range

air-to-air missile.

Boots was trying. The problem was that the ballistic

missile was essentially stationary hi relation to the

earth. It was accelerating upward, of course, but its

velocity over the ground was close to zero just now. The

designers of the F-14 weapons system did not

envision that the crew would want to shoot missiles at

stationary targets, so Boots was having his troubles.

Frustrated, he snarled at Stiff, “Go to heat,

goddamnit. Shoot a “winder at that

exhaust.”

“A ‘winder ain’t gonna dent that fucking

thingea”…Stiff replied, his logic impeccable. He was

on the ICS now. “We’ll come up under it and shoot

as it accelerates upward.”

“Okay! Okay!”

And that is what he did. As the missile

accelerated upward, Stiff Hardwick kept his

nose down, punched the burners full on and

accelerated in toward the launch site, then pulled

up to put the climbing, accelerating ballistic

missile in front of him.

Now Boots got a radar lock.

The symbology on the HUD was alive, showing the

target, the boresight angle, the drift

angle….

Stiff Hardwick lifted his thumb to fire the first

AMRAAM. As he did an infrared missile from

Carlos Cor-

CUBA

.

rado’s MiGo-29 went up his right tailpipe and

blew a stabilator off the F-14.

Jake Grafton heard all of it. “A missile

is in the air! Just came out of silo

oneff”…was the shout over the radio.

He picked up the red telephone, the direct

satellite connection with the White House.

“Mr. President, I don’t know what happened,

but apparently the Cubans have launched one.”

The president must have heard the shouts over the net the

same as Jake did. His question was, “What is the

target?”

Jake had the targets memorized. “It came out of

silo one, sir. The target is Atlanta.”

“Thank you, Admiralea”…the president said

mechanically, and hung up.

When Toad Tarkington came to, the night was

quiet. He was lying on cool earth, the sky above

was dark… and there was a marine standing over him with his

mouth moving.

He was deaf. He had lost his hearing.

Toad sat up, fell over, forced himself into a

sitting po caret sition again. He ached all over,

every muscle and tendon screamed in protest. But he

was alive.

He got to his feet, swaying. The marine helped

steady him. .

The barn was right there beside him.

He pulled his pistol, staggered for the

entrance.

The interior was a shambles, the stench nearly unbearable

from bodies fried and seared by the exhaust of the

missile.

Toad pulled boards out of the way to get to the open

door that led down to the control room.

The lights were still on. Using a palm on one wall

to steady himself, he descended the stair.

The old man was still sitting at the console, still wearing

the tie around his wrists.

He looked at Toad dispassionately.

“You bastardea”…Toad said. He said the words but he

could barely hear them. “You foul, evil old man.”

A young marine who had followed Toad down the

stairs grabbed the white-haired old man, shoved

him toward the stairs. “Get going, you old fart!

Upstairs,-upstairs.”

Tarkington sagged to his knees on the floor, then

stretched out. He was so tired….

Boots VonRauenzahn pulled the ejection

handle, and both he and Stiff Hardwick were launched

from Showtime One Oh Nine a fraction of a second

apart.

Stiff got his wits about him as he hung in his

parachute harness in the night sky. He could

see the ballistic missile accelerating into the

skyit was now a bright spot of light amid the starsand

he could see the burning wreckage of his Tomcat as

it fluttered toward the ground.

He couldn’t see the MiGo-29 that had shot him

down. He could hear him though, a rumble that muffled the

fading roar of the ballistic missile heading for

space.

What he didn’t know was that Carlps Corrado had

decided that his fuel state didn’t allow him to jab

the Americans anymore this night. He was on his

way back to Cienfuegos. With his radar off.

The SPY-IB radar aboard

Hue City

acquired the rising ballistic missile as it rose

over the rim of the earth and transmitted the information

by datalink to

Guilford Courthouse,

which picked up the missile on its own radar

seconds later.

Hue City’s

tactical action officer (Tao) in the Combat

Control Center reached out and pushed the squawk-box

button for the bridge, notifying her captain.

“Sir, we have a possible ATBM threat,

bearing one hundred seventy-five degrees

true.”…An ATBM was ah antitactical

ballistic missile threat.

The information from the SPY-IB radar was fed into the

Aegis weapons system, which used the radar to control

SM-2 missiles. The TAO waited for the

computer to present the specifics of the target’s

trajectory.

Her orders were to shoot down any missiles

launched from Cuba over the Florida Straits.

To do that, she would use the latest version of the SM-2

missile, of which her ship carried eight.

Guilford Courthouse

also carried eight of these weapons, which had an

extraordinary envelope. They could fly as far as

300 nautical mites and as high as

400,000 feet, about 66 nautical miles.

The ballistic missile that was flying now was still

climbing and accelerating. The trick was to shoot it

over the Florida Straits before it got out of the

SM-2 envelope.

The captain was on the squawk box. “You may

fire anytimeea”…the old man said.

The TAO was Lieutenant (junior grade)

Melinda Robinson. Her mother had wanted

her to be a dancer and her father wanted her to take up

law, his profession, but she chose the navy, confounding

them both.

Just now she concentrated on the computer presentations

on the large, 42-inch by 42-inch console in front

of her. . ‘Two missilesea”…Robinson ordered.

She was tempted to fire four, but the Cubans might

launch more ballistic missiles, so she couldn’t

afford to run out of ammo.

“Fire oneea”…she said.

The SM-2 Tactical Aegis LEAP

(lightweight exoatmospheric projectile)

missile roared from the vertical launcher in front

of the ship’s bridge in a blaze of fire.

Two seconds later a second missile roared

after the first.

Guilford Courthouse

also fired two missiles.

The solid fuel third-stage boosters of the

SM-2 missiles lifted them through the bulk of the

atmosphere, and finally separated at an altitude

of 187,000 feet. The second stages ignited

now, lifting the interceptor missiles higher and

higher.

At 300,000 feet the second stage

of the missile pitched

over and ejected the nose cone of the missile,

exposing the infrared sensor of the kinetic-energy

kill vehicle. The motor continued to burn for

another sixteen seconds, carrying the kill

vehicle higher and still faster. At 370,000 feet

the kill vehicle was aligned by its GPS’-AIDED

inertial unit and was ejected from the missile.

Tracking the target now at 375,000 feet of

altitude, the kill vehicle homed in on the

ballistic missile’s final stage at 6,000

miles per hour.

And hit it.

The second missile missed by a hundred feet,

the third struck a piece of the target missile,

and the fourth missed by seven feet.

“Admiral Grafton,

Hue City

reports the ballistic missile was destroyed over

the Straits.”

Jake picked up the telephone to the White House

and waited for someone to. answer.

“Hue City,

an Aegis cruiser, reports the Cuban

missile was destroyed over the Straits.”

The president didn’t say anything, but Jake could

feel his relief. When he did speak, he sounded

tired. “How many warheads are still in those

missiles?”

“Only one left, sir. Number four. There are

no Cubans there but the marines are having trouble

getting the warhead out of the missile.”

“Are you destroying the missiles when they are

sanitized?”

“Yes, sir. A magnesium flare ignited near

the nose cone. The heat melts it, then finally

ignites the solid fuel and causes an explosion

in the silo.”

“You destroyed the warhead manufacturing

facility?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All that’s left is the lab at the university?”

“That’s correct.”

“I want it destroyed, Admiral.”

‘There will be casualties, sir, American and

Cuban. That

thing is smack in the middle of downtown

Havana.”…”…I understand that. Destroy it.”"…We’ll

do it tomorrow nightea”…Jake Grafton said.

Toad Tarkington found Rita putting a

bandage on her copilot, Crash Wade, who had

smashed his face into the instrument panel when their

Osprey crashed. Half the marines aboard had

been injured, but by some miracle only two were

killed. The Osprey was a total loss.

Toad put his hands on Rita’s shoulders. She

turned and he saw a large goose-egg bump on

her forehead, one already turning purple. One of her

eyes was also black and slightly swollen.

He knelt beside her. “How’s your head?”

“I’m okay. Didn’t even knock me out.”

“And Crash?”

“The wound that’s bleeding is pulpyI think his skull

is smashed. He doesn’t seem to recognize me

or anybody.”

When she had Wade’s wounds bandaged, she and Toad

walked over to a tree and sat down. “Somebody said

a MiGo shot us down, Toad. Cannon holes

all over the right engine nacelle. I couldn’t save

it.”

She was so tired. When he leaned back against the

tree she put her head down in his lap.

By dawn Jake Grafton had five biological

warheads locked up aboard

United States;

five intermediate-range ballistic missiles

had been melted and burned in their silos; and every

uniformed American and flyable military aircraft

was out of Cuba. It had been a tight squeeze.

Over half the SuperCobra helicopters lacked

the fuel to return across the Florida Straits

to Key West, nor was there room for them on the

decks of U. S. ships off the Cuban coast.

More fuel in flexible bladders was flown in from

Kearsarge.

The choppers were refueled, then launched for Key

West. Four of the SuperCobras had been shot

down, and one had suffered so much battle damage it

was unsafe to fly and had to be destroyed.

Prowlers and Hornets armed with HARM missiles

continued to patrol over central Cuba all night,

ready to attack any radar that came on the air.

Above them F-14’s cruised back and forth, ready

to engage any bogey brave enough to-take to the sky.

Several Cuban Army units probed gently at

the marines guarding the silo sites while they

prepared to withdraw, but a few bursts of machine-gun

fire and mortar shells from the marines were enough

to discourage further attention. The marines eventually

disengaged and pulled out unmolested.

When he landed his MiGo-29 at Cienfuegos,

Major Carlos Corrado found that he couldn’t

get fuel. Two cruise missiles had

destroyed the fuel trucks and electrical pumping

unit; all fueling would have to be done by hand, a slow,

labor-intensive process. Disgusted, Corrado

walked to the

nearest bar in town, where he was a regular, and