Cuba
Page 23
“Yes, sir. At our request, the Bahamans have formally requested that a United States ship board and search the North Korean freighter, which has violated their territorial waters. The nearest U.S. ship will be there in three hours.”
“And if the North Koreans raise the anchor and sail away?”
“We’ll stop the ship anyway, remove any United States government property that we find.”
“Another international incident!” the president grumped. “The North Koreans will shout bloody murder, then the Cubans will join the chorus.”
The national security adviser jumped right in. “Sir, the Cubans can’t prove we had CBW warheads in Gitmo.”
“Can’t prove? If Fidel Castro doesn’t have a stolen artillery shell on his desk right now I’ll kiss your ass at high noon on the Capitol steps while CNN—”
“Sir, we think—”
“Let me finish! Don’t interrupt! I’m the guy the congressmen are going to fry when they hear about this fiasco. Let me finish.”
Silence.
The president swallowed once, adjusted his tie. “And now,” he said, trying to keep the acid out of his voice, “we learn the Cubans have a biological weapons lab in a building in the heart of Havana, at the university there. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What I would like to know is this: Have the Cubans got any way of using biological weapons on the United States right now? Today? Have they got a delivery system?”
“Sir, we don’t know.”
“Well, by God, in my nonmilitary opinion we ought to find out just as fast as we can. Does anybody in this room agree with that proposition?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Another thing I want to know: Somebody explain again how the goddamned Chemical Weapons Treaty will make countries like Cuba decide not to build biological and chemical weapons.”
The silence that followed that question was broken by the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Tater Totten:
“The Chemical Weapons Convention. Agreement won’t dissuade anyone who wants these weapons from building them. All it will do is force us to rid ourselves of the weapons that deter others from using these things. Chemical and biological weapons are only employed when a user believes his enemy cannot or will not retaliate in kind. Your staff knew that and wanted the treaty anyway so that you could brag about it on the stump and win votes from soccer moms who don’t know shit from peanut butter.”
The president eyed General Totten sourly, then surveyed the rest of them. “At least somebody around here has the guts to tell it like it is,” he muttered.
The chairman continued: “Doing the right thing isn’t the same as getting the right result. We could use more of the latter and less of the former, if you ask me.”
“Don’t push it, General,” the president snarled.
The gray-haired general motored on as if the president hadn’t said a word. “To get back to your question, of course the Cubans have a delivery system, or several. Biological weapons are the easiest of all weapons to employ. The delivery system could be as simple as planes rigged to spray microorganisms into the atmosphere: after all, Cuba is just ninety miles south of Key West; jets could be over Florida in minutes. Or a few teams of Cuban saboteurs could induce the toxins into the water supply systems of major cities—tens of millions of people could be infected before anyone figured out there was even a problem.”
Here was the classic dilemma: The U.S. was prepared to fight a nuclear war to the finish and lick anyone on the planet in a conventional war. Hundreds of billions of dollars had been spent on networks and communications, on precision weapons and missile systems, on an army, navy and air force that were the best equipped, trained, and led armed forces on earth. So if there were an armed conflict, no sane enemy would confront the United States on a conventional or nuclear battlefield: guerrilla warfare and terror weapons were the alternatives.
“What the Cubans probably don’t have,” General Totten continued, “is the engineering and industrial capacity to turn tankfuls of toxins into true weapons, weapons that are safe to handle, can be stored indefinitely, and aimed precisely. That’s why they want to get their hands on that shipload of biological warheads.”
“So how do we prevent the use of CBW weapons?” the president asked.
“You have to deter the bad guys,” Tater Totten explained. “You have to be willing to do it to them worse than they can do it to you. And they have to know that you will.”
“You’re saying that if the Cubans murder ten million Americans, we have to kill every human in Cuba?”
“That’s right. Mutually assured destruction.”
“M-A-D.”
“Insane. But there is no other way. If these people think you lack the resolve to retaliate in kind, you just lost the war.”
“If anyone kills Americans we will retaliate,” the president said. “That’s been U.S. policy since George Washington took the oath of office.”
The general concentrated on straightening a paper clip, then bending it into a new shape.
Finally, when the president had had his say, when the national security adviser had summed up the situation, the chairman spoke again: “The agent in Havana who found the lab had a request. It was in the last paragraph of his message this morning. Mr. Adviser, do you wish to discuss it?”
The adviser obviously didn’t wish to discuss it; he could have raised the point at any time during the meeting and hadn’t. A flash of irritation crossed his face, then he said, “I’ve gone over that request with the staff, and with State, ah, and both staff and State feel it is completely out of bounds.”
“What request?” the president asked curtly.
“Sir, staff and State feel the request is absolutely out of the question; I struck it from the agenda.”
“What request?” the president repeated with some heat.
“The agent wants Operation Flashlight to happen at one-thirty A.M. tomorrow,” Tater Totten said.
“And that is?” the president said, frowning.
“He wants the power grid in central Havana knocked out.”
“Oh. Now I remember. You want to blow some high-voltage towers.”
“That’s correct, sir. This operation was discussed and approved three weeks ago.”
“Oh, no. Three weeks ago I gave a tentative approval, tentative only. Sabotage of a power network of a foreign nation is a damn serious matter. Back when I was in school we called that an act of war.”
“It still is,” the national security adviser said. He was something of a suck-up, General Totten thought.
“I think this matter deserves more discussion,” the president said.
“Yes, sir.”
“What happens if the people setting these charges are arrested?”
The director of the CIA reluctantly stepped in. “Sir, that is one of the inherent risks of clandestine operations. The men who set the charges know the risks. We know the risks. The fact is that the possible gains here make the risks worth running. That’s the same cost-benefit analysis we make before we authorize any clandestine operation.”
“What if one of these people is arrested? Can the Cubans prove they work for the CIA?”
“No, sir. They will appear to be Cuban exiles, in Cuba creating mischief on their own hook.”
“This operation gives me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach,” the president said. “There are too many things going wrong all at once.”
General Totten could hold his tongue no longer. “There is no time to be lost,” he said. “Four vials of microorganisms taken from a biological warfare laboratory located just ninety miles south of Key West in the capital of a communist country hostile to the United States are this very minute being examined in laboratories in the Washington area. Cuba could become another Iraq, armed to the teeth with chemical and biological weapons. This nation cannot afford to let that happen. Cuba is only ninety miles away. The risk is simply too great.”
“Mr. President, Flashlight will take hours to pull off,” the CIA director said. “I’ve already given the order for it to proceed.”
“You’ve already given the order?” The president repeated the words incredulously.
“There was no time to be lost,” the director shot back. “These things take hours to set in motion. The execution time is one-thirty A.M., less than six hours away.”
The chairman of the joint chiefs leaned forward in his chair, rested both elbows on the mahogany table. “Mr. President, we have no choice in this matter. None at all. If this administration fails to move aggressively to learn exactly what the Cuban threat is and take steps to meet it, you will almost certainly be impeached and removed from office by Congress for dereliction of duty.”
The president looked as if he were going to explode. This was a side of him the voters never saw. A control freak, like most politicians, he hated just being along for the ride. Watching the president seethe, Tater Totten knew his days on active duty were numbered. The CIA director had better start thinking about retirement, too.
“Who is our agent in Cuba?” the president demanded.
The director looked startled. Names of agents were closely held, never discussed in meetings like this. Yet he couldn’t refuse to answer a direct question from the president of the United States. “Sir, if you need that information, I could write it on a sheet of paper.” The director grabbed a notepad and did so. He tore off the sheet, folded it once, and passed it down the table. The president put the folded paper in front of him but didn’t open it.
“I want to know who authorized this man”—the president tapped on the folded paper with a finger—“to go to Cuba to see what cesspools he could uncover.”
“Sir, this mission was authorized by this council two months ago.”
“Then why in hell didn’t someone mention it when we were discussing getting our warheads home from Guantánamo Bay? Why wasn’t that cargo ship escorted from pier to pier? Why in hell didn’t we get those warheads out of there two months ago, two years ago? Why in hell can’t you people get a goddamn grip?”
Silence followed that outburst. It was broken when the chairman said, “Instead of fretting over the timing, let’s pat ourselves on the back for being smart enough to have an agent in Havana. It’s the Cubans’ weapons lab, not ours.”
When Tater Totten walked out of the room, he still had his letter of resignation from the joint chiefs in his pocket. He had prepared it when the national security adviser struck Operation Lightbulb from the agenda. Maybe he should have laid the letter on the president and retired to the golf course before these fools drove this truck off the cliff. He had no doubt the mess in Cuba was about to blow up in their faces, and soon.
The American warship nearest the unnamed cay where the North Korean freighter was anchored was a destroyer out of Charleston, South Carolina, manned by naval reservists on their annual two-week tour of active duty. The destroyer had been on its way to Nassau for a weekend port call when the flash message rolled off the printer.
The destroyer’s flank speed was 34 knots, and she was making every knot of it now as she thundered down the Exuma Channel with a bone in her teeth.
From five thousand feet Jake Grafton could see the destroyer plainly even though it was twenty miles away. And he could see the wake lengthening behind the North Korean freighter, Wonsan.
“Damn scow is getting under way,” Rita said disgustedly. She was flying the V-22. “It’ll be in international waters long before the destroyer gets there.”
“Wonder how many warheads they pulled out of the water?”
“We’re going to find out pretty soon,” Jake muttered. “If this guy stops and lets us board him, he won’t have a warhead aboard. If he refuses to heave to, he’s got a bunch.”
“What are you going to do, Admiral, if he refuses to stop?”
Jake Grafton didn’t have an answer to that contingency, nor did he want to make the decision. If that eventuality came to pass he would ask for guidance from Washington, pass the buck along to people who would probably refer it to the politicians.
“The Wonsan is turning northeast,” Rita observed. “She’ll probably go between Cat Island and San Salvador.”
“Let’s go down,” Jake Grafton said, “hover in front of this guy, see if he’ll stop” He was sitting on the flight engineer’s seat just aft of the pilots.
Five minutes later the Osprey was in helicopter flight with the rotors tilted up, descending gently in front of the Wonsan, which was up to five or six knots now. Jake Grafton could see four people on the bridge, standing close together and gesturing at the Osprey. The copilot was watching the clearance, telling Rita how much maneuvering room she had.
“Closer,” Jake said.
Rita Moravia kept the Osprey moving in. Luckily the wind was from the west, so she could keep the twin-rotor machine on the starboard side of the freighter, yet pointed right at the bridge. This kept the wind on her starboard quarter.
She stopped when the distance between her cockpit and the bridge glass was about fifty yards. The right rotor was still well above the top of the freighter’s crane, which was mounted amidships.
“Closer,” Jake said again, “but watch your clearance.”
The copilot glanced nervously at Jake. “Give me clearance,” Rita snapped at him, which brought him back to the job at hand.
She maneuvered the Osprey until it was completely on the starboard side of the Wonsan, then she dropped it until she could see the length of the bridge.
The captain—he might have been the captain, wearing a dirty, white bridge cap—stepped through the door of the bridge onto the wing and stood looking into the cockpit, fifteen feet away. He had his hands pressed against his ears, trying to deaden the mighty roar of the two big engines. The downwash from the rotors raised a storm of sea spray, which was soaking him, and now it carried away his hat.
“Closer,” Jake said one more time.
“The air is sorta bumpy coming around this superstructure.”
“Yeah,” the admiral said.
Ten feet separated the nose of the V-22 from the rail of the bridge wing. Rita eased the Osprey forward a foot at a time, until the refueling probe and three barrels of the turreted fifty-caliber machine gun that protruded from the nose were no more than eighteen inches from the rail.
“Aim the gun at the captain,” Jake said.
The copilot flipped a switch, then looked at the captain’s head, and the machine gun faithfully tracked, following the aiming commands sent to it from the gunsight mounted on the copilot’s helmet.
The captain’s face was now less than ten feet from Jake Grafton’s. He was balding, a bit overweight, in his late fifties. The rotor wash lashed at him and tore at his sodden clothes, making it difficult for him to keep his footing. Groping for a rail to steady himself against the fierce wind, he looked at the three-barreled machine gun, which tracked him like a living thing, then at Jake Grafton on the seat behind the Osprey pilots.
The captain turned and shouted something over his left shoulder; he held on with both hands as he went through the door onto the enclosed bridge.
“Watch it,” Jake muttered into his lip mike. “This guy may be fool enough to turn into you.”
Rita was the first to realize what was happening. She felt the need to turn left to hold position. “The ship is slowing,” she said. “I think he’s stopped his engines.”
In a few seconds it became obvious that she was correct. Rita backed away until the distance between the cockpit and ship was about fifty feet.
“I think he lost his nerve, Admiral.”
“Look at the stuff on his deck,” the copilot said, pointing. “Looks like he pulled up a bunch of warheads.”
The freighter was drifting when the destroyer arrived a half hour later and coasted to a stop several hundred yards awa
y. In minutes the destroyer had a boat in the water.
When armed Americans were standing on the Wonsan’s deck, Jake tapped Rita on the shoulder.
“Let’s go home.”
“I listened to the tape from Alejo Vargas’s office this afternoon,” Carmellini said to Chance. They were walking the Prado looking for a place to eat dinner. To have a decent selection and palatable food, the restaurant would have to be a hard-currency place. Although the best restaurants were in ramshackle houses in Old Havana, tonight Chance wanted music, laughter, people.
“Someone told Vargas all about the breakin at the university lab, the contamination, the dead lab worker. They spent most of the day running the fans at the lab, trying to lower the count of the stuff in the air before they went in.”
“What did they say about the dead man, why he died?”
“That had them stumped. He was vaccinated. They called in a Professor Svenson.”
“Olaf Svenson?”
“No one used a first name.”
“It must be him. I’ve heard of him. Damned potty old fool. He was at Cal Tech for years. Thought he was at Colorado now. A genius, almost won a Nobel Prize.” He snapped his fingers. “That photo we gave Bouchard—that must have been Svenson.”
“Well, he is their main man down at the lab, to hear the conversation at Vargas’s office.”
“So why did the lab worker die? Wasn’t he vaccinated?”
“The stuff mutated, according to the professor. Mutated again, he said.”
“Well, what the hell is it? Did they say that?”
“Some kind of polio.”
“Polio doesn’t kill that quickly,” Chance objected.
“This kind does. The lab worker wasn’t the first, apparently. The professor wanted to dissect him like the others but Vargas ordered the body burned immediately.”
They paused on a corner, watched the people who filled the sidewalks under the crumbling buildings. Just down the walk to the left a Cuban was trying to sell trinkets to a pair of Germans and having no luck. To the right a tall young white guy, American or Canadian probably, was locked in a passionate embrace with a local girl.