Jake had had a long talk with the EA-6B electronic warfare crews and the four F/A-18 Hornets that would be over the Ospreys carrying HARMs. HARM stood for high-speed antiradiation missile. Enemy radars were the targets of HARMs, which rode the beams right into the dishes. HARMs even had memories, so if an enemy operator turned off his radar after a HARM was launched, the missile would still fly to the memorized location.
“If the Cubans turn on the SAM radars, open fire,” Jake told his guardian angels. “Don’t wait until their missiles are in the air.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jake had heard nothing from Washington waffling on the assertion that the Colón was in international waters, so as far as he was concerned, that fact was a given. The Cubans had no right to fire on ships or planes in international waters. If they did, Jake Grafton would shoot back. Of course, if the Cubans shot first, they would probably kill a planeload or two of Americans, Jake Grafton included. The crews of the EA-6B Prowlers and Hornets were well aware of that reality.
As he sat in the Osprey Jake Grafton wondered if the enlisted marines in the other two planes understood the risks involved in this mission. He suspected they didn’t know, and in truth probably didn’t want to. Their job was to obey their officers; if the officers led them into action, fretting about the odds wasn’t going to do any good at all.
That thought led straight to another: Did he understand the risks?
“You okay, Admiral?”
That was Toad.
Jake Grafton nodded, smiled. A friend like Tarkington was a rare thing indeed. He hadn’t asked Toad if he wanted to risk his life on this mission; the commander would have been insulted if he had.
The warm noisy darkness inside the plane seemed comforting, somehow, as if the plane were a loud, safe womb. After takeoff Jake sat for five minutes with his eyes closed, savoring the flying sensations, recharging his batteries. Then he made his way toward the cockpit and squatted behind the pilots, both of whom were wearing night-vision goggles. From this vantage point Jake could see the computer displays on the instrument panel. The flight engineer handed him a helmet, already plugged in, so that he could talk to the pilots and listen to the radio.
He heard the Prowler and Hornets checking in, the F-14s, the S-3 tankers.
He heard Rita call twenty miles to go to the mission coordinator in the E-2 Hawkeye. She had the Osprey flying at a thousand feet above the water, inbound at 250 knots.
“Visibility is five or six miles,” she told Jake over the intercom. “Some rain showers around. Wind out of the west northwest.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll do it like we planned,” she continued, making sure Jake, the copilot, and her crew chief all understood what was to happen. “I’ll hover into the wind, then back down toward the ship, put the ramp over the fantail.”
“Ten miles,” the copilot sang out.
Jake took off the aircraft helmet and donned a marine tactical helmet, which contained a small radio that broadcast on one of four tactical frequencies. Repeaters in the Ospreys picked up the low-powered helmet transmissions and rebroadcast them so that everyone on the tactical net could hear, including the mission coordinator in the E-2, the people aboard the carrier, and the pilots of the airborne planes.
Jake pulled on a set of night-vision goggles and looked forward, through the Osprey windscreen. The night was gone, banished. He could see the stranded freighter, still several miles away, see the surf breaking on the rocks, the containers stacked on deck, the empty sea in all directions. He looked toward the nearest land, an island just over three miles away; he could just make out the line of breaking surf.
The Osprey was slowing: Rita rotated the engine nacelles toward the vertical position as she transitioned from wing-borne cruising flight to pure helicopter operation. Computers monitored her control inputs and gradually increased the effectiveness of the rotor swashplates as flaperons, elevators and rudders lost their effectiveness due to the decreasing airspeed. The transition from wing-borne to rotor-borne flight was smooth, seamless, a technological miracle, and Jake Grafton appreciated it as such.
Jake Grafton kept his eyes on the ship. No people in sight. The bow of the ship was on the rocks. The ship had a small forecastle superstructure, with the main superstructure and bridge on the stern of the ship. The ship’s cargo was in holds amidships, with extra containers stacked between the bridge and forecastle. The ship had two large cranes, one forward, one aft. She had a single stack, and probably—given her size—only one screw.
Jake could see that the containers on the deck were jumbled about, several obviously open and empty. Others, a whole bunch, seemed to be missing.
Now Rita swung into the wind, away from the Colón.
The ramp at the back of the aircraft was open, with Toad and the crew chief waiting there. Jake Grafton walked aft to join them.
The crew chief gave Rita directions on the ICS, back fifty feet, down ten, as she watched her progress on a small television screen that had been rigged in the cockpit for this mission.
Lower, closer to the ship … and the ramp touched the deck.
“Go, go, go,” the crew chief shouted.
Jake spoke into his voice-activated boom mike: “Let’s go!”
The fixed deck of the stranded freighter felt strange after a half hour in the moving Osprey. The wash from the mighty, 38-foot rotors was a mini-hurricane here on the fantail, a mixture of charged air and sea spray, dirt, and trash from the deck and containers.
Jake and Toad crouched on the deck as the Osprey moved away. The ramp had been against the deck for no more than fifteen seconds.
Jake spoke into his lip mike, made sure the mission coordinator could hear him. Gripping an M-16 in the ready position, Toad led them forward along the main deck. Jake Grafton carried a video camera, which was running, and two 35-mm cameras. The video and one of the still cameras were loaded with infrared film, the other 35-mm contained regular film and was equipped with a flash attachment.
First stop was the main deck, where he inspected the containers there. Many had doors hanging open, some still had the doors closed, but all the containers were empty. Although he wasn’t sure how many containers were supposed to be there, the area around the main hatches was remarkably clear. The hatches themselves were not properly installed. One hatch was ajar.
No people about. None. The ship seemed totally deserted and firmly aground. Jake could feel no motion.
He used a flashlight to look into the hold. This section of the hold didn’t seem to be full. Many of the containers were open.
Filming with the video camera, pausing now and then to shoot still photos, the two men searched until they found a ladder that led down into the hold. Toad waited by the hatchway, his M-16 at the ready.
Jake went down the ladder into the dark bay.
He had his night-vision goggles off now; in total darkness they were useless. He snapped on the flashlight, looked around, fingered the pistol in the holster on his hip.
This hold was half-empty, with the packing material that had been wrapped around the warheads strewn everywhere. The place was knee-deep in trash. The containers that were there were obviously empty.
Jake didn’t stay but a minute or so, then he climbed back up the ladder.
“Let’s check the bridge,” he said to Toad over the tactical radio.
They went aft along the main deck and climbed an outside ladder to the bridge, which stretched from one side of the ship to the other.
“They’ve cleaned her out,” Toad remarked over the tac net. “Yeah,” Jake replied, and kept climbing.
On the bridge Jake again removed the night-vision goggles and used a flashlight. He wanted to see whatever was there in natural light.
What he found were bloodstains. A lot of blood had been spilled here on the bridge; pools of congealed, sticky black blood lay on the deck. People had walked in it, tracking the stuff all over.
“Not everyone was on the payroll,�
� Jake muttered, and quickly completed his search. He aimed the video camera at the stains, then snapped a couple photos with the regular camera using the flash.
Toad used a flashlight to search for the log book and ship’s documents. “The safe is open and empty,” he told Jake Grafton. He came over to watch the admiral work the cameras.
“Where in hell are the warheads?” Toad asked aloud.
“The Americans are aboard the Colón, Colonel.”
The man shook Santana awake. He held a candle, which flickered in the tropical breeze coming through the screen.
Santana sat up and tossed the sheet aside. He consulted his watch.
He got out of bed, walked out onto the porch of the small house and searched the night sea with binoculars. Nothing.
He lowered the binoculars, stood listening.
Yes, he could hear engine sounds, very faint … jet engines, the whopping of rotors … .
“How long have they been aboard?”
“I don’t know, sir. With this wind it is hard to hear helicopter noises. When I heard the voices on the radio, I came to wake you.”
“Admiral, look at this.” Toad came over to where Jake was standing, showed him the screen of a small battery-operated computer. “I’m picking up radio transmissions, even when we are not using the tactical net. Something on the ship is broadcasting.”
Jake Grafton pulled his mike down to his lips. “Hawkeye, this is Cool Hand. Has anyone been picking up radio transmissions from the target?”
“Cool Hand, Hawkeye. They started about a minute ago, sir, when you went up on the bridge. We have them now.”
“What kind of transmissions?”
“Amazingly, sir, I’m receiving clear channel radio. I’m actually hearing you talk on this other frequency.”
“What the hell? …”
Oh, sweet Jesus!
“This damned ship is wired to blow. The bastards are listening to us right now. We gotta get off!” With that he gave Toad a push toward the door of the bridge. Toad ran. Jake Grafton was right behind him.
Colonel Santana couldn’t see anything through the binoculars, but he heard those American voices coming through the radio speaker. The microphones were on the bridge.
“Any time, Tomas,” he said.
Tomas keyed the radio transmit button three times. A flower of red and yellow fire blossomed in the darkness.
Santana aimed the binoculars and focused them as the last of the explosions faded. He could see the flicker of flames as they spread aboard Nuestra Señora de Colón. These Americans! So predictable! Santana chuckled as he watched.
“Into the ocean,” Jake shouted.
Toad vaulted over the rail into the blackness. As he fell he wondered if there were rocks or salt water below.
Toad Tarkington and Jake Grafton were in midair when the bridge exploded behind them. Jake felt the thermal pulse and the first concussion.
Then the dark, cool water closed over his head and he went completely under.
As he began to rise toward the surface, he felt more explosions from inside the ship. The concussions reached him through the water like spent punches from a prizefighter.
When he got his head above water, flames illuminated the night.
Above the noise of the explosions and flames, he could hear Tarkington cursing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After Rita pulled them out of the ocean and flew them back to the carrier, Toad Tarkington and Jake Grafton were checked in sick bay, then they showered and tried to snatch a few hours’ sleep.
Toad gave up on sleep—too much adrenaline. He lay in his bunk thinking about leaping over the bridge rail without knowing whether rocks or water lay beneath, and he shivered. The shock of the impact with the water had been almost a deliverance.
He turned on the light and looked at the photos of Rita and Tyler he had taped to the bulkhead. Really stupid, Toad-man, really stupid. Grafton must have checked the location of the rocks, knew where he could jump and where he couldn’t, and you never once thought to look.
He got up, dressed, and headed for the computers, where he typed out a classified E-mail for the people at the National Security Agency. After breakfast he was ready to brief Jake Grafton and Gil Pascal.
“Before she was stranded, Nuestra Señora de Colón went into this little Cuban port at the west end of Bahia de Nipe. She was there for six hours, then she steamed out and went on the rocks where we found her. If you look at this satellite photo you can see a boat nearby, probably taking the crew off after she piled up. The folks at NSA in Fort Meade say they can see ropes from the ship to this boat that the crewmen could slide down.”
Toad Tarkington stood back so Jake Grafton and Gil Pascal could study the satellite photos that he had pinned to a bulletin board in the mission planning spaces.
“Where are the weapons now?” Gil Pascal asked.
“In this fish warehouse.” Toad pointed at the photo with the tip of a pencil. “Right here.”
“It’s an easy SEAL target,” the Chief of Staff commented.
“Too easy,” Jake Grafton said, then regretted it.
“When did the freighter reach this port?”
“Noon, three days ago.”
“And they spent the afternoon offloading it?”
“Yes. It went onto the rocks that night.”
“Too easy.” Now he was sure.
“What do you mean?”
“These people aren’t stupid. They know about satellite reconnaissance; they knew we would see them offloading the ship in this port; they wanted us to see that. The question is, Why did they go to all the trouble of putting on a show for us? What are they hiding?”
Toad flipped through the satellite photos, looking at date-time groups. “Here is the ship coming into the bay, there it is against the pier at Antilla, here it is being offloaded, here is an IR photo of it going out to the rocks after dark, here is an IR shot of the freighter and the boat that probably took the crew off.”
“Radar images?”
Toad had a handful of those too.
“I want to know where this ship was between the time the destroyer left it and the time it showed up in this Cuban port.”
“NSA is still working on that stuff. Perhaps in a few hours, sir,” Toad said.
“Call me.”
“The weapons weren’t on the ship,” the national security adviser told the president in the Oval Office. “The ship was empty when it went on the rocks. Apparently the Cubans booby-trapped it—the thing exploded a few minutes after the admiral went aboard to inspect it.”
“Casualties?”
“None, sir. We were lucky. If the admiral had taken more people with him, I can’t say the results would have been the same.”
“So where are the weapons?”
“NSA thinks they are in a warehouse on the waterfront in the center of the town of Antilla. They are studying the satellite sensor data now.”
“Shit!” said the president.
William Henry Chance and Tommy Carmellini ate dinner in the main restaurant of the largest casino on the Malecon. The fact that 99 percent of the Cubans on the island didn’t eat this well was on Chance’s mind as he watched the waiters come and go amid the tables filled with European diners. Plenty amid poverty, an old Cuban story so common as to be unremarkable.
Carmellini merely played with his food; he was too tense to enjoy eating, had too much on his mind. Chance tried to concentrate on a superb string quartet playing classical music in the corner of the room.
To the best of his knowledge, he and Carmellini had not been followed on their expeditions around the capital, although he knew very well that a really first-class surveillance would be impossible to detect. With enough men, enough radios and automobiles, the subjects could be kept in sight at all times yet no one would be directly behind them, following where they could be seen or noticed. The subjects would seem to be alone, moving of their own will through the urban environment, yet
their isolation would be an illusion.
He knew all that, yet he could detect no tails or signs of people that might be watching, taking an interest in him or Carmellini. Chance was no neophyte—he had a great deal of experience in this line of work, he knew what was possible and he knew what was likely.
He thought about all these things as the flawlessly decked-out Cuban waiter served coffee. The music formed a backdrop to the babble of conversation from his fellow diners, who were gabbing in at least five languages, perhaps six.
Chance sipped the coffee, let his eyes wander the room. No one was paying the slightest attention. Not a single furtive glance, no hastily broken eye contact, no one studiously ignoring him.
Well, if he and Carmellini were going to do it, tonight was the night. The longer they stayed in Havana, the more likely it was that they would attract the interest of the Department of State Security, the secret police. The interest of Santana and Alejo Vargas.
The truth was that Vargas might have burned them, might have devoted the resources necessary to learn everything about them. Vargas or his minions might be waiting tonight in the science hall, waiting to catch them red-handed, to embarrass the United States, perhaps even to execute Chance and Carmellini as spies.
In this line of work the imponderables were always huge, risks impossible to quantify. Still, he and Carmellini were going to have to look inside that building, see what was there.
If there was a biological weapons program in Cuba, it had to be in that building, which housed the largest, best-equipped laboratory known to be on the island. And the most knowledgeable people were nearby, the microbiologists and chemists and skilled lab technicians that would be needed to produce large quantities of microorganisms.
Chance was well aware that the most serious technical problem a researcher faced when constructing a biological weapon was how to keep the microorganisms alive inside a warhead or aerosol bomb for long periods of time. Some biological agents were easier to store than others, which was why they were most often selected for weapons research. For example, the spores of anthrax were very stable, as were the spores of the fungal disease coccidioidomycosis, which incapacitated but rarely killed its victims. Of course, the naturally occurring strains of an infectious disease could have been altered to make the microorganisms more stable, more virulent, or to overcome widespread immunity: years ago researchers produced a highly infective strain of poliomyelitis virus for just these reasons.
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