by Cuba (lit)
screwdriver. He only had one, and if
he dropped it, it would go down the grate.
He heard muffled noises from above, but he couldn't
tell what they were. It didn't really matter,
he decided. Getting this warhead out of this missile
was priority one.
Carefully, working by feel, he removed the screws
from the access panel one by one. When he had the last
one out, he pried at the panel. It came off
easily enough and he laid it on the catwalk near his
feet.
So far so good. He carefully stowed the screwdriver
in his tool bag and wiped the sweat from his face and
hands.
Okay.
Toad reached up to find the latch that the ancient
Russian engineer on television had said should be
here. God knows where the CIA found that guy!
Yep. He found the latch.
He rotated it. Now the latch on the left. He
was having his troubles getting that latch to turn when the
lights came on in the silo.
From instant darkness to glaring light from twenty or more
bulbs.
Toad Tarkington pulled his arm from the missile,
clapped his hands over his eyes and squinted,
waiting for his eyes to adjust.
He could hear a hum. Must be a fan or blower
moving air.
No. The hum was in the missile, just a foot or
two from his head.
Something winding up. The pitch was rising rapidly.
A gyro?
What was going on?
Toad started down the ladder, moving as fast as he
could go, intending to go to the control room to see what in
hell was happening.
He heard a grinding noise, loud, low-pitched, and
looked up. The cap on the silo was opening.
Holy...
He still had his tools. If he could get that access
panel off and cut the guidance wires, the wires
to control the warhead...
Toad Tarkington scrambled back up the ladder,
The little six-by-six access hole gaped at him.
He ran his arm in, trying to reach the other latches
that would allow the large panel to come off.
He got one open. The gyro had ceased
to accelerateit was running steadily now, a
high-pitched steady whine.
Holy shit!
He was out of time: the fire from the missile's engines
would fry him to a cinder.
He heard the igniters firing, popping like jet
engine igniters.
The rocket motors lit with a mighty whoosh.
Toad grabbed for the access hole with both hands,
held on desperately as the missile began
to rise on a column of fire.
The noise was beyond deafeningit was the loudest thing
Toad Tarkington had ever heard, a soul-numbing
roar that made his flesh quiver and vibrated his
teeth.
Rising ... the missile was rising, dragging him off
the catwalk.
He clung to the access hole with all his strength,
The missile came out of the silo, past the floor
of the barn, accelerating, going up, up, up....
The tip of the missile burst through the rotten,
shattered roof and threw wood in every direction.
As it did Toad curled his feet up against the
fuselage of the missile, released his hold on the
access hole, and kicked off.
He flew through the darkness, bounced on the collapsing
roof, felt the blast of furnace heat as the
rocket motors singed him, then he was
falling, falling....
* * *
Stiff Hardwick couldn't believe his eyes. He
had his F-14 Tomcat down at 4,000 feet,
fifteen miles from silo one, and was impatiently
waiting for Boots to sort out the villain from the other
airborne targets in the area when he saw the
ballistic missile rising into the night sky on a
cone of whitehot fire.
"Jesus Christff"...he swore over the radio, "the
bastards have launched one."
"Lock it up, Bootsea"...Stiff screamed, still on
the radio, although he thought he was on the intercom.
"Lock it up and we'll shoot an AMRAAM."...The
acronym stood for advanced medium-range
air-to-air missile.
Boots was trying. The problem was that the ballistic
missile was essentially stationary hi relation to the
earth. It was accelerating upward, of course, but its
velocity over the ground was close to zero just now. The
designers of the F-14 weapons system did not
envision that the crew would want to shoot missiles at
stationary targets, so Boots was having his troubles.
Frustrated, he snarled at Stiff, "Go to heat,
goddamnit. Shoot a "winder at that
exhaust."
"A 'winder ain't gonna dent that fucking
thingea"...Stiff replied, his logic impeccable. He was
on the ICS now. "We'll come up under it and shoot
as it accelerates upward."
"Okay! Okay!"
And that is what he did. As the missile
accelerated upward, Stiff Hardwick kept his
nose down, punched the burners full on and
accelerated in toward the launch site, then pulled
up to put the climbing, accelerating ballistic
missile in front of him.
Now Boots got a radar lock.
The symbology on the HUD was alive, showing the
target, the boresight angle, the drift
angle....
Stiff Hardwick lifted his thumb to fire the first
AMRAAM. As he did an infrared missile from
Carlos Cor-
CUBA
.
rado's MiGo-29 went up his right tailpipe and
blew a stabilator off the F-14.
Jake Grafton heard all of it. "A missile
is in the air! Just came out of silo
oneff"...was the shout over the radio.
He picked up the red telephone, the direct
satellite connection with the White House.
"Mr. President, I don't know what happened,
but apparently the Cubans have launched one."
The president must have heard the shouts over the net the
same as Jake did. His question was, "What is the
target?"
Jake had the targets memorized. "It came out of
silo one, sir. The target is Atlanta."
"Thank you, Admiralea"...the president said
mechanically, and hung up.
When Toad Tarkington came to, the night was
quiet. He was lying on cool earth, the sky above
was dark... and there was a marine standing over him with his
mouth moving.
He was deaf. He had lost his hearing.
Toad sat up, fell over, forced himself into a
sitting po caret sition again. He ached all over,
every muscle and tendon screamed in protest. But he
was alive.
He got to his feet, swaying. The marine helped
steady him. .
The barn was right there beside him.
He pulled his pistol, staggered for the
entrance.
The interior was a shambles, the stench nearly unbearable
from bodies fried and seared by the exhaust of the
missile.
Toad p
ulled boards out of the way to get to the open
door that led down to the control room.
The lights were still on. Using a palm on one wall
to steady himself, he descended the stair.
The old man was still sitting at the console, still wearing
the tie around his wrists.
He looked at Toad dispassionately.
"You bastardea"...Toad said. He said the words but he
could barely hear them. "You foul, evil old man."
A young marine who had followed Toad down the
stairs grabbed the white-haired old man, shoved
him toward the stairs. "Get going, you old fart!
Upstairs,-upstairs."
Tarkington sagged to his knees on the floor, then
stretched out. He was so tired....
Boots VonRauenzahn pulled the ejection
handle, and both he and Stiff Hardwick were launched
from Showtime One Oh Nine a fraction of a second
apart.
Stiff got his wits about him as he hung in his
parachute harness in the night sky. He could
see the ballistic missile accelerating into the
skyit was now a bright spot of light amid the starsand
he could see the burning wreckage of his Tomcat as
it fluttered toward the ground.
He couldn't see the MiGo-29 that had shot him
down. He could hear him though, a rumble that muffled the
fading roar of the ballistic missile heading for
space.
What he didn't know was that Carlps Corrado had
decided that his fuel state didn't allow him to jab
the Americans anymore this night. He was on his
way back to Cienfuegos. With his radar off.
The SPY-IB radar aboard
Hue City
acquired the rising ballistic missile as it rose
over the rim of the earth and transmitted the information
by datalink to
Guilford Courthouse,
which picked up the missile on its own radar
seconds later.
Hue City's
tactical action officer (Tao) in the Combat
Control Center reached out and pushed the squawk-box
button for the bridge, notifying her captain.
"Sir, we have a possible ATBM threat,
bearing one hundred seventy-five degrees
true."...An ATBM was ah antitactical
ballistic missile threat.
The information from the SPY-IB radar was fed into the
Aegis weapons system, which used the radar to control
SM-2 missiles. The TAO waited for the
computer to present the specifics of the target's
trajectory.
Her orders were to shoot down any missiles
launched from Cuba over the Florida Straits.
To do that, she would use the latest version of the SM-2
missile, of which her ship carried eight.
Guilford Courthouse
also carried eight of these weapons, which had an
extraordinary envelope. They could fly as far as
300 nautical mites and as high as
400,000 feet, about 66 nautical miles.
The ballistic missile that was flying now was still
climbing and accelerating. The trick was to shoot it
over the Florida Straits before it got out of the
SM-2 envelope.
The captain was on the squawk box. "You may
fire anytimeea"...the old man said.
The TAO was Lieutenant (junior grade)
Melinda Robinson. Her mother had wanted
her to be a dancer and her father wanted her to take up
law, his profession, but she chose the navy, confounding
them both.
Just now she concentrated on the computer presentations
on the large, 42-inch by 42-inch console in front
of her. . 'Two missilesea"...Robinson ordered.
She was tempted to fire four, but the Cubans might
launch more ballistic missiles, so she couldn't
afford to run out of ammo.
"Fire oneea"...she said.
The SM-2 Tactical Aegis LEAP
(lightweight exoatmospheric projectile)
missile roared from the vertical launcher in front
of the ship's bridge in a blaze of fire.
Two seconds later a second missile roared
after the first.
Guilford Courthouse
also fired two missiles.
The solid fuel third-stage boosters of the
SM-2 missiles lifted them through the bulk of the
atmosphere, and finally separated at an altitude
of 187,000 feet. The second stages ignited
now, lifting the interceptor missiles higher and
higher.
At 300,000 feet the second stage
of the missile pitched
over and ejected the nose cone of the missile,
exposing the infrared sensor of the kinetic-energy
kill vehicle. The motor continued to burn for
another sixteen seconds, carrying the kill
vehicle higher and still faster. At 370,000 feet
the kill vehicle was aligned by its GPS'-AIDED
inertial unit and was ejected from the missile.
Tracking the target now at 375,000 feet of
altitude, the kill vehicle homed in on the
ballistic missile's final stage at 6,000
miles per hour.
And hit it.
The second missile missed by a hundred feet,
the third struck a piece of the target missile,
and the fourth missed by seven feet.
"Admiral Grafton,
Hue City
reports the ballistic missile was destroyed over
the Straits."
Jake picked up the telephone to the White House
and waited for someone to. answer.
"Hue City,
an Aegis cruiser, reports the Cuban
missile was destroyed over the Straits."
The president didn't say anything, but Jake could
feel his relief. When he did speak, he sounded
tired. "How many warheads are still in those
missiles?"
"Only one left, sir. Number four. There are
no Cubans there but the marines are having trouble
getting the warhead out of the missile."
"Are you destroying the missiles when they are
sanitized?"
"Yes, sir. A magnesium flare ignited near
the nose cone. The heat melts it, then finally
ignites the solid fuel and causes an explosion
in the silo."
"You destroyed the warhead manufacturing
facility?"
"Yes, sir."
"All that's left is the lab at the university?"
"That's correct."
"I want it destroyed, Admiral."
'There will be casualties, sir, American and
Cuban. That
thing is smack in the middle of downtown
Havana."..."...I understand that. Destroy it.""...We'll
do it tomorrow nightea"...Jake Grafton said.
Toad Tarkington found Rita putting a
bandage on her copilot, Crash Wade, who had
smashed his face into the instrument panel when their
Osprey crashed. Half the marines aboard had
been injured, but by some miracle only two were
killed. The Osprey was a total loss.
Toad put his hands on Rita's shoulders. She
turned and he saw a large goose-egg bump on
her forehead, one already turning purple. One of her
eyes was also black and slightly swollen.
He knelt beside her. "How's your head?"
"I'm okay. Didn't even knock me out."
"And Crash?"
"The wound that's bleeding is pulpyI think his skull
is smashed. He doesn't seem to recognize me
or anybody."
When she had Wade's wounds bandaged, she and Toad
walked over to a tree and sat down. "Somebody said
a MiGo shot us down, Toad. Cannon holes
all over the right engine nacelle. I couldn't save
it."
She was so tired. When he leaned back against the
tree she put her head down in his lap.
By dawn Jake Grafton had five biological
warheads locked up aboard
United States;
five intermediate-range ballistic missiles
had been melted and burned in their silos; and every
uniformed American and flyable military aircraft
was out of Cuba. It had been a tight squeeze.
Over half the SuperCobra helicopters lacked
the fuel to return across the Florida Straits
to Key West, nor was there room for them on the
decks of U. S. ships off the Cuban coast.
More fuel in flexible bladders was flown in from
Kearsarge.
The choppers were refueled, then launched for Key
West. Four of the SuperCobras had been shot
down, and one had suffered so much battle damage it
was unsafe to fly and had to be destroyed.
Prowlers and Hornets armed with HARM missiles
continued to patrol over central Cuba all night,
ready to attack any radar that came on the air.
Above them F-14's cruised back and forth, ready
to engage any bogey brave enough to-take to the sky.
Several Cuban Army units probed gently at
the marines guarding the silo sites while they
prepared to withdraw, but a few bursts of machine-gun
fire and mortar shells from the marines were enough
to discourage further attention. The marines eventually
disengaged and pulled out unmolested.
When he landed his MiGo-29 at Cienfuegos,
Major Carlos Corrado found that he couldn't
get fuel. Two cruise missiles had
destroyed the fuel trucks and electrical pumping
unit; all fueling would have to be done by hand, a slow,
labor-intensive process. Disgusted, Corrado
walked to the
nearest bar in town, where he was a regular, and
proceeded to get drunk, his usual evening routine.
By dawn he was passed out in his bunk in the
barracks, sleeping it off.
In Havana the next morning, Alejo Vargas
summoned the senior officers of the Cuban Army,
Navy, and Air Force to the presidential palace
for a verbal hiding.
"Cowards, fools, traitorsea"...he raged, so
