Coonts, Stephen - Jake Grafton 7 - Cuba

by Cuba (lit)

  way he could; Vargas seemed to have the same talent,

  so perhaps he had a chance.

  The two military men shook Vargas's hand.

  "Tell us,

  Senor Presidente,

  what the Americans will do."

  "I have thrown the ballistic missiles in their

  faceea"...Vargas said. "I expect the Americans

  to go to the United Nations Security Council and

  ask for sanctions, perhaps a world trade embargo

  sanctioned by the UN. Now that the missiles have been

  discussed in public, the American government cannot

  ignore them, even if they want to."

  "Do you anticipate an attack?"

  "I do not, but we must take precautions. The

  missiles sit hi hardened silos impervious

  to air attack, or nearly so. It is possible that

  the Americans might attempt commando raids. I

  suggest you move troops to the sites, have them dig in

  around the silos."

  "And if the Americans attack and we cannot

  repulse them?"

  "This dog will bite. Fire the missiles."

  Alba grinned. His hatred of the Yanquis was common

  knowledge. "If the Americans do attack, when would you

  expect it?"

  "They will try diplomacy first. Only if

  that fails will they try military action."

  "Still, I would like to move the troops immediately."

  "By all meansea"...sd Alejo Vargas. "We will have

  television cameras film your men digging in to defend

  Cuba."

  "And the missiles? Are you going to film them?"

  "Of course. Cuba is a sovereign nation. The

  world has changed since the 1962 missile

  crisis. We have an absolute right to defend

  ourselves, and if necessary we shall. Any noise the

  Americans make will rally the Cuban people to us."

  Even as Vargas talked to his military men, the

  president of the United States's advisers were

  arguing for diplomatic initiatives before military

  options were weighed. "We must go to the United Nations

  first," the secretary of state stated forcefully.

  "What if the UN turns us down"..."...the president

  asked in reply.

  "We need political coverea"...the secretary shot

  back. "A significant percentage of

  Americans think Castro was a hero, a champion

  of the downtrodden, and we unfairly bullied him. The

  fact that he was an absolute dictator with zero

  regard for human rights means very little to the political

  left. Then there is the Casualty

  problemthe-American people won't tolerate seeing their

  soldiers killed while fighting for oil or

  corporate profits in foreign wars."

  "What bullshitff"...snapped Tater Totten.

  "I'm really sick of listening to Vietnam draft

  evaders tell us that Americans don't have the guts

  to fight for civilization."

  "I am

  not

  a draft evaderea"...shouted the secretary of state,

  her face red, her cheeks quivering. "I demand an

  immediate apology!"

  "Shut up, both of youea"...the president growled.

  "I apologizeea"...Tater Totten muttered, almost

  as if he meant it.

  The president had done some hard thinking since

  Tater Totten demanded that the presence of the Cuban

  missiles be addressed before any other matter with

  Cuba was put on the table. Six missiles with

  biological warheads aimed at the southeastern

  United StatesCuban missiles today were every bit

  as serious as when John F. Kennedy had to deal with

  them, he decided. If the administration asked for the

  blessing of the UN Security Council and didn't

  get it, he would be worse off than if he

  ordered military action immediately.

  The lab and processing facility worried him too.

  If Cuba could manufacture polio virus and

  put it in an aerosol so-

  lution, any plane that could fly across the Straits of

  Florida could attack the United States.

  By the time Alejo Vargas's broadcast was

  translated and replayed for the National Security

  Council, the president strongly believed that the

  American people would react angrily to the presence of

  missiles in Cuba. The outrage of the congressmen

  and senators who heard the speech convinced him.

  He called on Tater Totten again. "I'm

  getting the cold sweats just thinking about this crap.

  Tell me what we are going to do to make sure the

  Cubans don't shoot those missiles."

  "Sir, the best insurance is to go after the missiles,

  the lab, and the processing facility as soon as

  humanly possible, before the Cubans get troops

  in there to defend them."

  "When is humanly possible?"

  "Tomorrow night would be the earliest possible date. Every

  day we wait allows us to assemble more forces.

  Conversely, every day we wait the risk increases:

  Tomorrow Vargas can move more troops to guard

  those silos; he could get wind of what's coming and

  threaten to release polio virus by airplane,

  by missile, or have somebody with an aerosol bomb

  in a suitcase turn it loose God-knows where."

  "So why not go tomorrow night?"

  "We must put enough people and firepower in there to get the

  job done. It's a nice calculation."

  "Do you want me to make that decision?"

  "I recommend that you leave the decision to the

  military professional who is there, Rear

  Admiral Grafton. He's spent thirty years

  in uniform training for this moment, for this decision."

  The president grunted.

  The Chairman continued, "By tonight we will have two

  Aegis cruisers in the Florida Straits between

  Cuba and Florida. Jake Grafton ordered

  them there on his own initiative. He's a good man.

  The cruisers have the capability of shooting down

  ballistic missiles coming out of Cuba."

  "Do the Cubans know that?"

  "Someone in Cuba mightthe information is in the public

  domainbut I doubt that Alejo Vargas knows much

  about U.s. naval capability."

  "You hope he doesn't, because if he does, they

  might launch before the cruisers get in

  range."

  Tater Totten nodded affirmatively.

  "This Grafton, I've heard that he goes off

  half-cocked, doesn't obey orders, isn't a

  team player."

  "I don't know who said that, but Jake 'Grafton

  is the best we have. War is his profession. Alejo

  Vargas is an amateur playing at warthere is a

  vast difference."

  "Grafton has enemies,"

  "Who doesn't?"

  "What if the Cubans launch their missiles and the

  cruisers miss?"

  "Then the shit will really be in the fan, Mr.

  President. Americans will die, a lot of them.

  You'll have to decide. how much of Cuba ybu want

  to wipe off the face of the earth."

  "We're going to hold a news conference to reply

  to Vargas this afternoon."

  "I wouldn't mention biological weapons, if I

  were youea"...Tater Totten advised. "Le
t your

  audience assume the Cuban missiles still have

  nuclear warheads. Germs scare people more than bombs,

  perhaps because they are invisible. And we've lived with the

  bomb for fifty years."

  The president pursed his lips thoughtfully.

  Autrey James, Petty Officer Third

  Class, USN, always watched the ocean from his station

  in the door of the helicopter. It was a point of

  pride with him. He once spotted two fishermen

  whose boat had sunk off Long Island and was given a

  medal and had his name and photograph in the

  newspapers, but the part of that adventure that he

  remembered best was his grandmother's reaction when she

  read of his exploits. "You

  save

  people, Autrey, what a marvel-

  ous professionff"...Grandmom's comment somehow said it all

  for Autrey James; whenever his helo was

  airborne, he watched the ocean. Maybe someday

  he would save another life.

  So that was the reason Autrey James spotted the

  tiny object on the surface of the immense ocean and

  called it out to the pilots on the ICS.

  "Yo, Mr. P., looks like a man in the water

  at ten o'clock, two milesea"...Autrey James said.

  "Are you kidding me, James? You got eyes that

  good?"

  "Looks like a man to me, sir, but I could be

  wrong."

  "Well, we'll motor over that way just to find out

  if you are."

  The helicopter was an SH-60But Seahawk from

  USS

  Hue City,

  one of the two Aegis-class cruisers that Jake

  Grafton had sent charging northwest. The cruisers

  were doing just that right now, running abreast of each other a

  mile apart, making 32 knots, twenty-five

  miles east of the helicopter's position.

  Hue City's

  commanding officer had launched his helo so the crew could

  get some flight time and he could find out what was over

  the horizon, beyond the range of his surface-search

  radar.

  "Dog my dingies, James, danged if that ain't

  a survivor. Is he alive, do you think?"

  "His head's still up, sir. Give me a hover and

  I'll put the basket in the water."

  The basket was just that, a basket on the end of a winch

  cable. All the survivor had to do was crawl in,

  then James could winch the basket up to the chopper and

  help the survivor out.

  Unfortunately, with the basket in the water just in

  front of him, the survivor made no

  attempt to get in.

  "He ain't gettin" in, Mr. P.ea"...Autrey

  James told the pilot. He was leaning out the door

  of the helicopter so that he could see the survivor and the

  basket.

  "I don't think so. Looks like his head is out of the

  water. Dead men don't float like that."

  "You wanna jump in and help?"

  "On my wayea"...sd Autrey James. The pilot

  lowered the chopper to just a few feet above the water and

  James jumped into the sea.

  One look at the survivor's face told him the

  man was near death, too weak to help himself. With some

  pushing and pulling, James got the survivor into the

  basket. The other enlisted man in the chopper winched

  him up, then dropped the basket for James.

  When James had his helmet on again, he informed the

  pilot, "We'd better head back quick, Mr.

  P. This guy is in real bad shape. His eyes

  don't focus."

  "Try to give him some water."

  "I'll try, but we need to get him to a doc."

  Autrey James leaned over the survivor, who was

  deathly cold, and shouted to make himself heard above the

  loud background noise, "Hey, man,

  you're one lucky dude. You're gonna be okay.

  Just hang on for a few more minutes."

  "Blanketsea"...James said to the other crewman.

  Both of them wrapped the survivor in wool

  blankets.

  "Gracias,"

  said Ocho Sedano, anil tried to smile. Then

  exhaustion overcame him and he passed out

  The carrier and her battle group got under way at

  dawn.

  Kearsarge

  stayed in Guantanamo Bay and began loading the

  marines that had been guarding warehouse number nine.

  The last of the warheads were going aboard the cargo ship

  this afternoon, then it would sail. When it left,

  Kearsarge

  would also get underway with the marines, all nineteen

  hundred of them.

  The battle group steamed south from Guantanamo

  bay. For about an hour the southern hills of Cuba

  were visible from the decks of the ships, but they soon

  dropped over the horizon and all that could be seen in

  any direction was

  the eternal ocean, always changing, always the same. It

  was then that the carrier launched an E-2

  Hawkeye, which carried its radar up to 20,000

  feet. Everything the Hawkeye's early warning radar

  saw was datalinked to the carrier's computers, where

  specialists kept track of the tactical

  picture.

  Toad Tarkington took Jake aside and showed him

  the latest message from the National Security

  Council. He was directed to destroy the viruses

  in the laboratory in the University of Havana's

  science building, find and destroy the

  warhead-manufacturing facility, and to remove the

  warheads from the six missiles and destroy them in their

  silos.

  As Jake read the message, Toad said, "They

  don't want much, do they?"

  "Where in hell is the warhead-manufacturing

  facility"..."...Jake groused. He went to find

  William Henry Chance to ask him that question. He

  found Chance in the wardroom drinking coffee with

  Tommy Carmellini. They were the only two people there

  at ten in the morning.

  "Do you have any idea where we might find this

  factory for making biological warheads?"

  "Sit down, Admiral. Let me buy you a cup

  of navy coffee."

  Jake sat. Carmellini went for the coffee while

  Jake repeated the question.

  "It has to.be someplace between the science building

  and the missile silosea"...Chance said. "No one in their

  right mind would want to haul that stuff very far. A

  traffic accident of some type ..."

  Jake Grafton's brows knitted. He tapped

  on the table. "If you were going to haul polio

  viruses around, what kind of truck would you use?"

  Chance shrugged. "I don't knowea"...he said.

  "I've been thinking about it for five hours now, and

  I've got an idea. We'll run it though the

  recon computers and see what pops ou"...He got up

  from his chair.

  "Mind sharing your epiphany?"

  "I'd haul the stuff in milk trucks. Clean,

  sterile, and sealed. A dairy should have a sterile

  environment and the equipment to mix the viruses with some

  sort of a base, then load them into warheads."

  Jake turned and marched from the room just as

  Carmellini approached with the extra coffee
cup and

  saucer.

  "He didn't stay long, did he?"

  "Noea"...Chance grunted, and sipped at the coffee

  Carmellini had brought from the urn in the

  corner of the room.

  "Think Grafton's big enough for this

  job"..."...Carmellini asked..

  "Yeah. I think he is."

  Three dairies met Jake's specificationsthey

  were located between Havana and the first of the missile

  silos, which were arranged in a line beginning forty

  miles east of Havana and going east from there. The

  silos were about fifteen miles apart.

  "Cows. See if they have cows around them."

  "When?"

  "The latest satellite photography. Whenever that

  was."

  Two of the dairies no longer had cattle in the

  adjacent fields. The one that did was scratched off

  the list. The other two were examined minutely by the

  carrier's intelligence center experts and the National

  Security Agency photo interpreters in

  Maryland, who conferred back and forth via encrypted

  satellite telephones. The experts decided that

  neither dairy coold be eliminated as a possible

  site for the warhead factory.

  "We'll do 'em bothea"...Jake Grafton said.

  By three that afternoon the staff and air wing planners had

  come up with a draft plan. Actually the

  task, destruction of eight targets, was a

  relatively simple military one. Tomahawk

  missiles could take out

  the

  lab and the dairies without muss or fuss. They could

  probably also destroy the missiles in their

  silos, as the silos were hardened in a simpler age,

  when the threat was unguided air-dropped bombs.

  With their ability to power-dive straight down on a

  hardened target and penetrate ten or twelve feet

  of reinforced concrete, Tomahawks were the weapon of

  choice.

  And they were out of the question. The president absolutely

  refused to take the chance that polio viruses might

  escape from a bombed lab or silo and kill tens

  of thousands of Cubans in their beds. An event like that

  would be political dynamite, with repercussions beyond

  calculation. No, the politicians said,

  American troops were going to have to lay their lives

  on the line to prevent just such an occurrence. And,

  Jake Grafton well knew, some of them would

  die. . He had already put the wheels in motion.

  Preliminary messages had been sent to other

  commands, asking them for the assistance Jake thought he would

  require. A thousand details remained

  to be worked out by the various staffs involved, but the