“Bux,” Sean said softly, then reached up and keyed his mic. “Bux!”
There was no response.
“Maj,” Antonelli said, pointing up and to the east.
Sean forced himself to look away from the inferno. “My God.”
“Where did that come from?” Goldfarb practically demanded.
Sean watched helplessly as the Pave Hawk, a ribbon of smoke marking its path, sped away, a second helicopter right behind, its turret-mounted Gatling gun spitting fire and lead.
“Maj, what do we do?”
There was nothing they could do about the Pave Hawk, or for anyone on board. Including Anderson. Cho would have to run for cover, which meant that what remained of Graber’s team was on its own. “We do what we came here to do. Until we know otherwise, we have to assume the warhead is in there somewhere.”
“In that?” Goldfarb said skeptically.
“Until we know otherwise,” Sean repeated with authority.
“But what about...”
Quimpo’s words were cut off by Sean. “Listen! We have a mission to complete! You think I don’t feel like shit right now? Well, I do, but I lived through this before, and we sure as hell ain’t gonna run away like we did then!” The nightmare of Desert One seemed all too real at the moment. The fire. The drone of aircraft. The feeling of failure. There Delta had hightailed it out of harm’s way before it could do its job. Men had died there. Sean looked to the fire, knowing that very good men, very good friends, had fallen here also. But there was no ducking this one. For the moment, at least, they were on their own, and there was still a job to do. “Two and three. Mikey, you guys work around to the east side, by those far buildings. Stay clear of the fire. We don’t know if there’s anything left in there that could blow.” Like a nuke? he wondered. “We’ll take this side. Stay in contact until our reinforcements get here.”
A series of small explosions echoed from the distance. Sean hoped it wasn’t the rebels getting bogged down in a fight. He desperately wanted some more firepower on the ground right now.
BOOM
.
The distant explosions became a singular one very close as a rocket-propelled grenade fell short after being fired from the corridors between the reactor buildings three hundred yards to the northwest.
“Damn!” Antonelli cursed. “I’m hit!”
Sean and Lewis dropped low and sprayed multiple bursts in the direction of fire. The shots were met immediately by a volley of full automatic fire from the reactor buildings.
“Inside. Hurry.” Sean tapped two more bursts off, but the effective range of the suppressed MP5s was severely limited. They were close-in weapons, not battle rifles. He would have traded a year’s pay for a few M-16s right then.
Quimpo and Goldfarb dragged the big lieutenant back into the bunker. Quimpo went to cover the south door, while Goldfarb, the team’s medic, went to work on his comrade’s nasty leg wound. Sean and Lewis backed in and took cover as round after round peppered the beautifully thick concrete walls.
“At least the Chinese can build decent prefab,” Lewis joked.
“It won’t mean shit once they get around us,” Sean pointed out. They needed help fast. He switched his radio from the local channel, which allowed the Delta troops to talk freely without distracting communications from the net, to tactical. This linked him with the only assistance he could count on for the moment. “Raptor, this is ground. We need some help here.”
“Okay, ground, whaddya got?” Cadler’s welcome voice inquired.
“Unknown strength to the northwest of our pos in the bunker. Autos and RPGs. We have multiple casualties. Can you assist?”
There was no hesitation in the reply. “A-ffirmative, ground.”
* * *
“Launch! Launch!” The NORAD threat officer said loudly. Thousands of heat-sensitive receptors on a DSP satellite, looking down upon the Western Hemisphere from twenty-two thousand miles over Gibraltar, had registered a surge of energy from a single point, and the signal-processing computer had judged the event significant enough to warrant a FLASH warning to NORAD.
General Walker hurried down from the command center’s upper deck. “Where?”
“Central Cuba, thermal-launch signature.” The officer processed the information further, the expression on his face signaling that something was not right. “Very concentrated. Similar to a silo hot launch, but then it spread way out. Going from a thermal of three-thousand-point-eight on a narrow aspect to one thousand even on a wide one.
Walker’s heart was beating faster, enough so that he thought he could hear more than feel it. “Better location.”
A few seconds passed. “Cienfuegos, west of the city.”
“Damn.” CINCNORAD walked three consoles down to the position he would occupy during the real thing. Whether this was or not, he did not yet know, but he also could not wait to do what needed to be done. He picked up the tan-colored phone that sat away from the other communication devices before him. It was picked up immediately in the NMCC. “This is CINCNORAD. I am reporting a NUCFLASH event, central Cuba. Possible launch. This is not a drill.”
* * *
Yakovlev pulled the phone away from his ear, a puzzled look on his face. “
Voyska PVO
, sir. Urgent”
President Konovalenko saw Bogdanov rise slightly in his chair. “Put it on speaker.”
A raspy click sounded from the white box on his desk. “You fool! You send men here to arrest me, and now the Americans have done it!”
Konovalenko recognized the voice as Shergin’s. “Have done what?”
“Launched a missile at us, you idiot! YOU FOOL!”
Bogdanov’s head sank at the revelation. “You... You...”
“From where?” Konovalenko demanded, keeping his composure. “Exactly.”
“How do you expect an exact report? The Caribbean, idiot. Is that precise enough for you?”
“No. Is it from Cuba?”
“You are blind! There is a submarine out there that has just fired a missile at us! A Trident missile!”
“Could it have come from Cuba?” Konovalenko pressed the question.
“I cannot believe this!” Shergin practically screamed through the phone. “How much proof do you require?”
“More than you are offering.” The president released the line. “Igor Yureivich, suggestions?”
“We get out of here!” Bogdanov answered for the foreign minister. “Before the damned thing kills us all!”
Konovalenko ignored the outburst. “Quickly.”
Yakovlev refused to believe they had been wrong. They had come so far, building a trust with their onetime enemy. That trust had to continue. “Call the Americans immediately.”
* * *
The Communications Vessel
Vertikal
was running a circular course around the growing debris field, her foredeck covered with growing piles of material as her pilot boats continued to bring it aboard. Some of the more interesting items were already in the wardroom.
“Can you read it?” the captain asked. He knew enough conversational English to excel at his job, but the written word had never been his to master. His signals officer was doing those honors.
“A logbook. A captain’s log.” The officer carefully separated the waterlogged papers and laid them on the steel tabletop. He examined the cracked plastic holder that contained them. “A seaman’s folio. I have seen this in Spain before. During our port call last winter. It is normally waterproof and is made of a buoyant material. This is why it floated.”
“But from where?” the captain wondered. “Or what?”
“
Pennsylvania
,” the signals officer said.
“Hardly,” the captain replied, assuming his subordinate had made a joke.
“No, sir. The
USS Pennsylvania
,” he said, pointing to the stencil on the folio’s mangled cover.
Pennsylvania?
The captain snatched the object from his signals officer and examined it himself. It said as he was told, but how could it be? There were no other ships in the area even searching, and surely.... Of course. There was a search under way farther north. Radio intercepts had indicated that. And they would have no way of knowing where to look, if this was true. A
raket
submarine. He looked again at the name.
“Go through these papers immediately. Find out all you can and say nothing to anyone but me. Is that clear?” The captain headed for the door.
“Of course, but where are you going?”
“To the radio,” the captain answered. “This is worthy of an immediate report.” And of a promotion, he thought.
* * *
“No radar track, no exhaust plume.” The threat officer looked up to CINCNORAD and the two Russians standing behind. “Whatever it was, it stayed on the ground.”
Colonel Belyayev leaned close and studied the data carefully. The survival of Motherland’s capital might be at stake. He could trust, as Marshal Kurchatov had shown him, but he must also verify.
“Colonel?”
Belyayev returned to upright. “I see nothing. Residual heat signature.”
CINCNORAD noticed that the exchange was in English. He thought it might have been otherwise at a time like this. The relationship truly was different. Not only between their countries but between the people. It was different, and refreshing. “Marshal?”
Kurchatov nodded. “I am satisfied. Let us contact President Konovalenko.”
* * *
“Toolbox, mark your pos and keep your head down.”
Antonio looked up, seeing nothing but hearing the faint sound of engines as the AC-130U approached.
“Colonel! Stop the advance!”
Ojeda snapped his head toward the American. “What are you talking about, Papa? We are almost to the objective. These loyalists are paper-thin in numbers.”
Antonio knew he had little time to explain. “Maybe so, but farther on the American unit is pinned down, and someone is going to be laying some heavy fire on the area in less than a minute.”
Ojeda followed Antonio’s gaze upward. He heard the sound also. “Back! Fall back!” He reached for a termite grenade from an aide and pulled the pin. “Where?”
“Here. We’ll be safe on this side, then.”
Ojeda tossed the incendiary device around the building’s corner and trotted back the way they had come. A pronounced
pop
came a few seconds later.
* * *
“Gunners, we have a friendly marker west northwest. One click from the target. Check fire west of marker.”
The gunners aboard the AC130U noted the fire-control officer’s directions and prepared to make some noise. The forward weapons station consisted of a single 25mm Gatling gun, located just aft of the cockpit. Closer to the rear, just forward of the aircraft’s loading ramp, were a 40mm cannon and a 105mm howitzer. All the weapons fired to port, requiring the pilot to put the aircraft into a controlled orbit around the target.
“Ten seconds,” fire control announced.
Cadler keyed his mic. “Ground, take cover.”
All three stations would be used in this attack. The gunners already had the target located on their low-light targeting systems. With five seconds to go, the pilot gave the AC130U an additional five-degree bank, allowing the weapons to have free play on the target during the tight orbit.
“Commence firing.”
* * *
Fifty of the loyalist forces had just begun dashing across the open area toward the bunker when the ground around them turned to dust and sparks. It was the last thing any of them saw. Thousands of 25mm rounds showered the vicinity of the target with a show of dancing colors as the lead and steel shells impacted the concrete.
The stream of fire, accompanied by the terrible sound of a buzz saw, followed a gentle curve to the reactor buildings. As the rounds stitched across the buildings’ roofs, the 40mm cannon opened up, concentrating on the mini-canyons between the structures. The 105mm howitzer boomed next, firing straight into the mass of troops scurrying away from the devastation. The 25mm gun also shifted to them a few seconds later. After one half-orbit there was no movement visible, and no fire coming from the reactor buildings.
* * *
Ojeda ordered his men to advance as soon as the airborne battery had checked fire. The loyalists that had impeded their advance just minutes before were now fleeing north through the dozens of buildings. Calling for his radioman, he instructed half of the northern group to move south and contain the retreating loyalists, lest they escape. No one, he swore, would get away.
“Helicopters!” the rebel gunner yelled, his body turning as he tracked both aircraft with the SA-14 Gremlin SAM resting on his shoulder.
“No!” Ojeda shouted, running to the soldier and yanking the weapon away. He put it on his own shoulder and tracked the targets with the optical sight, waiting for the high-pitched screech that would signal that the infrared seeker in the missile’s nose had acquired a target. Muzzle flashes from the second helicopter dazzled his vision, then series of sparks fell from the lead craft. What is this? he asked himself as the craft both banked right, one following the other.
Following...or hunting?
The lock-on tone screeched from the small annunciator on the Gremlin’s firing unit. Ojeda listened, following the path of the helicopters as they turned sharply east. He had a lock, but he could not fire.
“Colonel?” the gunner said as Ojeda lowered the weapon and switched off the firing unit.
“One of those has to be the Americans,” the colonel explained. “The other...”
“But you could have fired.”
Ojeda handed the weapon back. “If there is one thing I have taught you, it is that you do not fire blindly just for the sake of doing something.” It was a lesson in war, and one in life. He reached to the ground and picked up his Kalashnikov. “Papa Tony.”
Antonio had watched the entire episode, and it had allayed any fears he might have had about his suggestion to Langley. Ojeda was a warrior, for certain, but he was a thinking warrior. He was also a giant of a man. “Yes.”
“Let us go meet your friends.”
* * *
The Pave Hawk took its fourth hit in the starboard outrigger tank, which broke free of its wing mount and burst into flames as it fell away.
“Hey!” Joe screamed for what seemed like the thousandth time as his body was thrown left, then right, as the pilot maneuvered violently to evade whatever was trying to kill them.