Cuba (62 page)

Americans.

The guards led them to Hector, who was in a cell in

a corridor off the main cellblock. “They have no

key to the cellea”…Carmellini told Jake.

“Use C-4. Blow itea”…the admiral said.

Hector reached through the bars and got his hands on

Ocho. They hugged while Jake Grafton held

the flashlight and Tommy Carmellini set the

explosive.

“Have you seen Santana”…”…Carmellini asked

Hector.

“Yes. He was here.”

“Where is he now?”

“He heard you coming and ran.”

When the plastic explosive blew the lock apart

on Hector’s cell, Ocho jerked the door open

and hugged him fiercely. “I apologize,

Hectorea”…he said. “Please forgive me.”

Jake Grafton dragged them apart. “There is no

timeea”…he shouted, and pushed them toward the corridor.

The sounds of the mob tearing at the steel bars

barred the way into the cell block could be heard above

the shouts of the men in the cells.

Toad led his party the other way. Another door,

precious seconds wasted while the officers fumbled

for a key, then they were through and going up a stairway.

More stairs, then along a long, dark corridor

lit only by flashlights.

As they rounded a turn someone ahead fired a shot

at them. The bullet spanged off a wall, and

miraculously failed to connect with human flesh:

Suddenly sure, Tommy Carmellini told

Jake, “It’s Santana. You go on. I’ll

get the bastard.”

“We don’t have time for personal

vendettasea”…Jake Grafton snapped.

“I’m a civilian, Grafton. I can take

care of myself. Go on!”

Jake led his party onward.

When they came out onto the roof the Osprey’s

position lights and flashing anticollision light

revealed a crowd of at least three hundred people.

They completely surrounded the Osprey and helo and the

marines with rifles who held them off. The pilots

must have shut down the engines due to the large number of

people nearby. Lieutenant Colonel

Eckhardt walked back and forth behind the marines, an

im-

posing martial figure if ever there was one.

Fortunately no one in the crowd seemed to be armed.

Jake and Toad forced their way through the crowd.

It was Ocho who stepped in front of the crowd and

began to speak. “This is my brother Hector, the

next president of Cuba.”

The crowd cheered lustily.

“I am El Ocho. I wish to know if you love

Cuba?”

“Si!”

they roared.

“Do you believe in Cuba?”"…”…SiThat

“Will you fight for Cuba?”

“Si!”

“Will you follow me and put Hector Sedano in the

presidential palace?”

“Si! Si! Si!”

The crowd breathed the word over and over and swarmed around

Ocho.

“Comeea”…sd Jake Grafton, and pulled Hector

toward the Osprey.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

As Jake Grafton and the others climbed

the stairs toward the roof of La Cabana

Prison, Tommy Carmellini doused his

flashlight and held it in his left hand. He stood

in the darkness waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim

light.

He had a pistol that the marines aboard ship had

given him, a 9-mm, that felt cold and comforting in

his grip. He closed his eyes, listened to the cheers

and shouts from the roof, waited until he heard the

chopper and Osprey get airborne.

Finally the corridors of the old fortress grew

quiet.

Santana was in here someplace.

Jake Grafton had his thing and he was hard at it.

William Henry Chance had his thing, trying to control

biological and chemical weapons in Third World

countries, and he had died doing it. Tommy

Carmellini’s thing was cracking safes. Sure, he

was doing it for the CIA now instead of stealing diamonds

from rich matrons, but somehow that wasn’t enough. There

comes a time in a man’s life when he begins to tally

up 4he score. When Carmellini realized

Grafton wasn’t going to take the time to step on the

cockroach Santana, he knew he had to.

He stepped forward now, walking the way

Hector had indicated that Santana had gone.

Taking his time in the near-total darknessthere was just enough

light to see the outline of the corridorwalking,

listening, walking, listening again, Tommy Carmellini

moved to the end of the corridor and stopped.

He could hear metal on metal, as if someone was

trying

to open a lock. The sound came’from the corridor

on the right.

Tommy Carmellini bent as low as he could get,

eased his head around the corner.

Yes, the sound was clearer now.

Ever so slowly he edged around the corner, crossed the

corridor to the other side, began moving forward into the

blackness, toward the sound.

The noise stopped.

Carmellini froze. Closed his eyes to concentrate

on the sound.

The pistol was heavy in his hand.

The sound began again.

Forward, ever so stealthily, moving like a glacier, just

flowing slowly, silently, effortlessly….

The man was just ahead. Working on a lock.

Probably on one of those steel gates.

Again the sound stopped.

Carmellini froze, not trusting himself to breathe.

The other man was here, he could feel him. But where?

Time seemed to stop. Tommy Carmellini held his

breath, stood crouched but frozen, knowing that the

slightest sound would give away his position.

Santana was …

Suddenly Carmellini knew. He was right…

There! He pointed the pistol and pulled the trigger.

The muzzle flash strobed the darkness, and revealed

Santana swinging the butt of his rifle, swinging it

at Carmellini’s head.

He tried to duck but the rifle struck his shoulder and

sent him sprawling. He held on to the pistol,

triggered two more shots, which came like giant

thunderclaps, deafening him with their roar.

The flashlight was gone, lost when he fell. His

left shoulder was on fire where the rifle butt

struck him, his arm numb. He could hear Santana

running, shuffling along, the sound fading.

He felt for the flashlight with his right hand, couldn’t

find it, paused and listened and searched some more. There!

He picked it up without releasing the pistol. Now

he put the pistol between his legs, tried to work the

flashlight with his right hand. It was broken. He set

it on the floor out of the way.

He listened, heard the faintest of sounds, then

nothing.

Tommy Carmellini slowly got to his feet and

began moving back the way he had come, after

Santana.

“Showtime One Oh Two, Battlestar Strike.

You are cleared to engage the bogey with a gun.

Weapons free gun only, acknowledge.”

“Weapons free gun only, ayeea”…sung out

Stiff Hardwick, and jammed his throttles forward

to the mechanical stop. The engines wound up quickly;

Stiff eased the throttles to the left, stroked the

afterburners. The big fighter leaped forward and began

closing the five-mile gap between the two planes.

Carlos Corrado glanced over his left shoulder,

for the hundredth time, expecting to see nothing, but this time

he saw the plume of flame that was Hardwick’s

burners.

The Yanqui must be right behind me.

Enough!

He slammed the throttles to the hilt, dropped the

left wing and pulled right up to six Gs. The

MiGo-29 then showed why it was one of the most

maneuverable fighters in the worldit turned on a

dime.

As it did, Carlos Corrado fought the G and

flipped his radar switch to the transmit position.

Leveling up after a 180-degree turn, the radar

scope came alive … and there was the

Americanclose. Too close! Jesus Christ!

Without time to even consider the problem, Carlos

Corrado punched off an Aphid missile, which

roared off the rail in a blaze of fire straight

for the F-14.

Sailor Karnow saw the bogey wind into a left

turn, and called it to Stiff, who instinctively

lowered his right wing to stay in the MiGo’s rear

quadrant.

What Stiff wasn’t prepared for was the

unbelievable quickness with which the MiGo-29 whipped

around and pumped off a missile.

The sight of the fiery exhaust of the Aphid missile

coming at him from eleven o’clock and the wailing of the ECM in

his ears, telling him that he was being painted by a

MiGo-

29 pulse-doppler radar, reached Stiff

Hardwick’s brain at the very same instant. Before

Stiff could react in any way, the missile shot

over his canopy inches above his head. Fortunately

for Stiff and Sailor and their progeny yet

unborn,, the Aphid had not flown far enough to arm, so

the missile passed harmlessly.

“Holy shit!”

Sailor shouted into her oxygen mask.

Stiff Hardwick hadn’t spent the last four years

flying fighters for nothinghis instincts were finely

honed too. As the Aphid went over his head, he

jerked the nose of his fighter toward the closing

MiGo, visible only as a bogey symbol on the

HUD, and pulled the trigger on the stick. The

20-mm M-61 six-barreled cannon in the

nose lit up like a searchlight as a river of fire

streaked into the darkness.

Carlos Corrado saw the finger of God reaching for

him and slammed his stick back, then sideways. The

MiGo’s nose came up steeply and the right wing

dropped in a violent whifferdill that carried it up

and out of the way of the fiery stream of cannon shells.

Completing the roll, Carlos Corrado pushed the

nose of his MiGo downward, toward the city, and let

the plane accelerate without afterburners, the light of

which would beacon to the American. Or Americans,

if there were more than one, which was probable.

Carlos pulled out just above the rooftops and thundered

across the city. He had lost track of the

enemy’s location

because he could not see him visually or with his radar.

He desperately needed his GCI site just now

to call the enemy’s position, but of course the GCI

people had been knocked off the air and were either dead or

drunk.

Still, the contest appealed to his sporting instincts.

He decided to try for one in-parameters missile

shot before he called it a night and went looking for a

bar.

His radar was still on, still looking at nothing.

Without further ado, Carlos pulled the stick back

and let the MiGo’s nose climb. Up past the

vertical, G on hard, the MiGo used its

fabulous turning rate to fly half of a very tight

loop. Upside down with its nose on the

horizon, Carlos slammed the stick sideways and

rolled upright The F-14 was out to his left,

turning toward him. Corrado flipped his switches

to select an infrared missile, turned toward the

American until he got a tone in his headset,

and squeezed it off.

Then he killed his radar and turned hard ninety

degrees right to exit the fight.

“Oh, noea”…Stiff Hardwick swore as

he saw the missile coming at him from ten o’clock.

He lit his afterburners and dropped the right wing

slightly and willed the Tomcat to accelerate,

trying to force the missile into an overshoot, while

he punched off chaff and flares with a button on his

right throttle.

The missile tried to make the turn but couldn’t.

Perhaps the IR seeker in the nose locked onto a

flare. In any event, as it flew past the tail

of the Tomcat its proximity fuse caused the

warhead to detonate, spraying shrapnel into empty

air.

The MiGo-29 was gone. It had disappeared.

“You know, dickwickea”…Sailor Karnow told her

pilot, “I think God is really trying to tell us

something.”

Carlos Corrado knew that he had had more than his

share of luck this night. Although he was flying a

tremendously maneuverable airplane, the

electronic detection and coun-

termeasures systems were generations behind the F-14 that

had followed him around. Why the F-14 had not shot

him down he couldn’t guess, but he was wise enough to know

that luck sorely tried is bound to turn.

He decided to put his MiGo on the ground

while it was still in one piece. Fortunately there-was

an airport nearby, Havana’s Jos6 Marti

International, right over there in the middle of that vast

dark area. Since there was a war on, someone had

turned off the runway lights.

Corrado pulled off the power, let the fighter slow

to gear speed, then snapped the landing gear down.

Flaps out, retrim, and swing out for an approach

to where the runway ought to be. On final he turned

on his-landing light and searched the darkness below.

There! Concrete.

He squeaked the MiGo on and got on the brakes.

He left the landing light on to taxi.

“Showtime One Oh Two, the MiGo is landing at

Jos6 Marti.”…That was the air force controller hi

the Sentry AWACS plane.