Coonts, Stephen - Jake Grafton 7 - Cuba

by Cuba (lit)

  farms, two men leaped from each plane. Forty

  seconds later two more went as they crossed over the

  second possible lab site. Then the Hercs made

  a gentle, lazy 270-degree turn to get lined

  up for the run-in to the missile silos.

  Jose Marti Airport and the surface-to-air

  missile sites that surrounded it were only thirty

  miles west. Not a peep from them. If the

  Tomahawks missed any of the mobile radars, the

  operators had not yet screwed up the courage

  to turn them on, for which the Hercules crews were

  thankful. The Prowler crews, however, with HARM

  missiles ready on the rails, were feeling a bit

  disappointed. After all the sweating, there should be more

  action.

  Aboard USS

  United States,

  the datalink from the E-3 Sentry AW ACS

  over Key West revealed the aerial fire drill

  going on over Havana as commercial flights tried

  to find their way into Jose Marti Airport without the

  aid of air traffic controllers with radar.

  Some of the flights announced they were diverting, and

  headed for the United States or Jamaica or the

  Cayman Islands. The others queued up and landed

  VFRIEND as Jake Grafton watched the computer

  displays with his fingers crossed. While he didn't

  want to be responsible for the crash of a civilian

  airliner, he couldn't

  delay this operation until there was a temporary lull

  in civilian air activity.

  As the first Here approached silo one, two men

  leaped from the open rear door. Seconds later,

  two more leaped from the second transport.

  The jumpers fell away from the airplanes like

  stones.

  Over silo two, marines leaped in pairs from each

  of the Hercs, and so on, until the transports had

  overflown and dropped recon teams at all six

  silo sites. Then they turned northward, toward the

  sea.

  The Prowlers followed faithfully.

  At that moment a SAM control radar near silo

  two came on the air, probing for a target.

  The Prowlers with the Hercs picked up the signal, of

  course, and two of them dropped their wings to turn

  back toward the threat.

  Forty miles south of silo two, Schuyler

  Coleridge also picked up the SAM radar, an

  old Soviet Fansong. As he slaved the HARM

  to the signal, his pilot, Marcus Gillispie,

  turned the plane ten degrees to ppint at the

  offending radar. Although the new missiles could be

  fired at very large angles, a quick turn by the

  launching aircraft shortened the missile's flight

  time by a few seconds.

  "Fireea"...Coleridge ordered, and Gillispie

  punched off the HARM, which shot forward off the rail in

  a blaze of fire.

  Coleridge keyed the radio. "Fox Threeea"...he

  said, letting everyone on the freq know that a beam

  rider was in the air.

  The HARM zeroed in on the side lobes of the

  radiating Fansong, whose operator was trying to lock

  up a Here for an SA-2 launch. The operator

  never realized the beam rider was in the air.

  The missile actually flew into the back of the

  antenna dish at almost Mach 3 and went several

  feet through it before the warhead exploded.

  The warhead contained thousands of 3/16th-inch

  tungsten-alloy cubes, which were three times denser

  than steel. The warhead blasted these cubes

  in all directions,

  obliterating the radar antenna and wave guides,

  shredding the trailer on which the antenna was mounted, and

  knocking out the equipment in the trailer. The flying

  cubes also killed the radar operator and severely

  wounded the three other occupants of the trailer.

  Another HARM launched by one of the FirstA-18

  Hornets on the Prowler's wing arrived six

  seconds later and impacted a tree just a few

  feet from the smoking, gutted trailer. Although the

  target radar had been off the air for six

  seconds, the missile's strap-down.ineitial

  allowed it to fly to the place where the computer memory

  believed the radar to be. The shrapnel from the warhead

  severed the tree and sprayed the shell of the trailer

  yet again, killing one of the already-wounded men.

  Major Carlos Corrado was sleeping off a

  hangover when the roar of a Tomahawk going over

  woke him. His eyes came open. He heard the

  staccato popping of bomblets from the Tomahawk, but

  had no idea what caused the sound. He thought the

  Tomahawk was a low-flying airplane.

  Groggy, aching, sick to his stomach, he was hugging

  a commode when another Tomahawk went over. In

  ten seconds the sound of the bomblets

  detonating on the planes parked on the flight line

  reached him though his alcoholic haze. Then one of the

  planes exploded with a rolling crash that shook the

  barracks.

  Corrado staggered outside and looked toward the

  flight line, where at least three planes were burning

  brightly.

  "Holy Mother!"

  Suddenly sober, Corrado went back inside and

  hastily donned his flight suit and boots.

  He was jogging toward the flight line when another

  Tomahawk went over scattering bomblets. The

  missile flew on, out of sight.

  As Corrado rounded the corner and the flight line

  came into view, the first cruise missile that had

  scattered bomb-

  lets dove into one of the hangars. There wasn't much

  of an explosion, but in seconds a hot fire was

  burning in the wooden structure.

  Corrado's personal fighter was parked between the

  burning hangar and another, which would probably be

  struck within seconds. The maintenance men had been

  working on the plane today, which was why it was not on its

  usual parking place at the head of the

  flight line.

  Running men helped Corrado push the plane

  away from the burning hangar, the wall of which was

  perilously close to collapse.

  "There is no fuel in the planeea"...someone shouted.

  "Get a truckea"...Corrado roared in reply.

  "And ammunition for the guns."

  The words were no more out of his mouth when the second

  missile crashed into the untouched hangar.

  Corrado seethed as linemen fueled his plane and

  serviced the guns. He was still on the phone in the

  dispersal shack talking to someone at the base armory

  when the truck carrying missiles braked to a

  squealing halt near the fighter, a silver

  MiGo-29 Fulcrum. Now he called the

  sector GCI site. The telephone rang and

  rang, but no one answered.

  Corrado stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth and

  stomped out to the plane. "Careful there, fools. Do

  it right. Do not embarrass me."

  He was watching the last of the 30-mm cannon

  shells going into the feed trays when one of the Havana

  colonels showed up.

  "You aren't going up in this thing, are you,
Corrado?"

  "We are servicing it as a joke, dear

  Colonel. Every Saturday night when the

  Americans attack we put the cannon shells

  in, then take them out on Sunday morning."

  "Don't trifle with me, Major. I won't stand

  for it."

  "You pompous limp-dick! Go find a whore and

  let the real men fight."

  "Do not insult me, you sot. You stink of rum and

  vomit! Show some respect!"

  "Why should I? Your putrid face insults you every

  day."

  The colonel was so angry he spluttered. "I

  absolutely forbid you to fly this airplane without

  written orders from Havana."

  "Court-martial me tomorrow."

  "The Americans will destroy this airplane if you

  take it off the ground. To fly it is sabotage, a

  crime against the state. If you attempt to fly it,

  I will shoot you."...The colonel pulled out his pistol

  and showed Corrado the business end.

  Corrado ignored the gun. "You are a

  traitorea"...he roared, "who wants the Americans

  to win. Defeatist! Coward!"

  "I will shoot anyone who helps you defect in this

  airplaneea"...the colonel screamed. He

  pointed the pistol at the troops closing the servicing

  doors on the MiGo-29.

  "Counterrevolutionaries! Saboteurs!"

  Corrado used his fist on the colonel. The

  second punch, in the ear, did the trick. The man

  went to his knees, then onto his face. He

  didn't get up. One of the linemen picked up the

  pistol while the major massaged his knuckles.

  His hand hurt like hell but didn't seem to be

  broken.

  In truth Corrado wasn't much of a man. He

  abandoned a wife and child years ago and hadn't heard

  from them sincedidn't want to hear from them, because they would

  probably want money. What money he got his

  hands on he drank up; he even sold military

  equipment on the black market to pay for alcohol.

  His ability to fly a fighter plane was his sole

  skill, his only worthwhile accomplishment in

  thirty-six years of life. Now, unexpectedly,

  miraculously, he had a chance to use that skill

  to defend something larger than himself, to make his miserable

  life mean something and no strutting Havana rooster

  was going to cheat him out of it.

  Carlos Corrado gestured at the men. "Get the

  missiles loaded, you lazy bastardsea"...he

  shouted. "There's a war on."

  Richard Merriweather rode his parachute into a

  cornfield. At least, he thought it was cornlong,

  stiff stalks, head-

  high. He checked himself over; he was sore, but

  nothing broken. He stood and wrestled the chute

  toward him, then began scooping out a hole to bury

  it. He was finishing the job when he heard someone coming

  toward him.

  "Sergeant?"

  "Yo. You okay?"

  "Yeahea"...sd Kirb Handy.

  "Set up the GPS. Figure out where we are."

  With the parachute disposed of, Merriweather put on his

  night-vision goggles and took a careful look

  around. He was well out in the center of this field,

  near as he could tell.

  Merriweather sat down hi the dirt beside Handy, who

  was also wearing night-vision goggles. Handy punched

  buttons on the GPS.

  "This thing says we are a mile and a half

  southwest."

  "I'll buy that."

  "Missed the landing zone by a half mile."

  "Not bad at all."...Merriweather unslung his

  weapon and checked it over. Then he got to his

  feet.

  "The other two guys should be aroundea"...Handy muttered.

  .

  "They'd better be. We don't have much time."

  After a careful check of the GPS unit, the two men

  started walking northeast toward missile silo

  number six. They had gone only about a hundred

  meters when they came to the bank of a stream, a

  fairly wide stream.

  "What the hell is this"..."...Merriweather demanded; and

  got out his map. He and Handy huddled disbbh a tree

  studying the thing.

  "Holy shitea"...Handy said. "We're in the wrong

  place. We're at least four miles from the damned

  silo. Look here."...He pointed to the stream. "That

  has gotta be this thing in front of us."

  "So where's the other half of our team"..."...v

  "Gotta be over there, near the silo."

  "Let's get on the phone, give 'em the bad

  news.""...Oh, manea"...Handy moaned softly. "This

  ain't good."

  The four-man recon team for silo number two

  approached the barn via a large seasonal

  drainage ditch that ran more or less in the right

  direction. Fortunately the sides were relatively

  dry, though the ditch contained a few inches of water

  arid the bottom felt soft.

  They stopped moving when they were about fifty meters from

  the barn where they believed the silo to be. They were

  completely surrounded by Cuban Army troops.

  Two tanks stood outside the barn, trucks were

  parked in a nearby grove of trees, and troops were

  setting up aeacooking tent near the farmhouse's

  well. Other soldiers were down in the woods to the

  left, presumably digging latrines.

  "Must be a couple hundred of 'emea"...Asel

  Tyvek whispered to Janiail Ali, who was lying in

  the ditch beside him.

  "Sure as hell we can't stay hereea"...Ali

  whispered. "It's just a matter of time before somebody

  inspects this damn ditch with a flashlight."

  "The silo must be in that barn. Gotta be. If we

  crawl down this ditch, we should get within thirty

  yards of the thing. When the shit hits the fan, maybe

  we can get in there."

  "Let's spread out, man, fifty yards

  apartea"...Jamail Ali suggested. "If they find one

  of us, the others will have a chance."...Tyvek

  nodded and Ali whispered to the other two men, and

  pointed. They disappeared into the darkness.

  Tyvek keyed the mike on his helmet-mounted

  radio. In seconds he was talking to a controller

  aboard USS

  United States,

  telling her what he saw around the missile silo.

  'Twelve minutesea"...the female voice from

  United States

  said in his ear. "Twelve minutes."

  "Roger that, Battlestar. Twelve minutes."

  Nojman Tillman and the three men of his recon

  team were up TO THEIR knees in cow shit. They waded

  through the barn-

  yard and shoved the mooing dairy cattle out of the way

  so that they could get to the door of the barn, a possible

  biological weapons manufacturing site.

  "I thought there weren't any damn cows around

  hereea"...Tillman's number two muttered

  unpleasantly.

  Tillman took off his night-vision goggles, got

  his flashlight in hand, and took a firm grip on his

  rifle. He nodded at his number two, who

  carefully opened the barn door, which creaked on its

  rusty hinges anyway. Tillman launched


  himself through the. door opening. He slipped on something,

  fell, and slid for several feet on his chest. Much

  to his disgust, he could identify the substance he was

  lying in by its smell.

  Tillman stood, used the flashlight. He was standing

  in a conventional wooden barn that had not been mucked out

  in several weeks. Two cows turned and stared at the

  light. They looked nervous, as if they wanted

  to run, then began bawling. Cursing under his breath,

  Norman Tillman went on through the building,

  checking it out.

  Five minutes later he stepped outside and keyed

  his helmet radio. "Battlestar, this is Team

  One. Negative results. Nothing here but cows."

  "Roger, Team One. Stand by for a pickup."

  "Team One standing by. Ou."

  "I thought there weren't any cows at these sitesea"...one

  of the men said.

  "Yeah, but the cows didn't know they were supposed

  to be on vacation."

  "Maybe we landed at the wrong dairy farm."

  Tillman thought that over. Naw. That would be quite a

  screwup. More likely, the cows were being held in a

  nearby field when the recon photos were taken.

  "Sarge, somebody coming."

  The men dove facedown into the dirt-and-manure mix

  at their feet. The person coming turned out to be a

  farmhand in civilian clothes. The marines made him

  sit with his

  back against the barn wall where they could watch him, but

  they didn't tie his hands.

  At first the man was frightened. He got over it when

  one of the troops offered him a cigarette and lit it

  for him.

  Tillman crawled over a fence out of the muck and

  sat down under a tree to wait for the helicopter.

  One man watched the farmer while the other two posted

  themselves as sentinels.

  "There are several hundred troops and three or

  four tanks around silos one and two, Admiral,

  and at least two tanks and a squad of soldiers

  around three. Four and five appear to be unguarded.

  The recon team checking out silo six seems to have

  been dropped in the wrong placeonly two of the four

  have reported in; they estimate they are three

  miles from the silo. We haven't been able to contact

  the other two men."

  The briefer was an Air Intelligence officer who

  zapped the map with a laser flashlight pointer whenever

  he mentioned a silo.

  Jake Grafton wasn't paying much attention to the

  map, which he had memorized. He glanced at his

  watch, compared it with a clock on the bulkhead.