Cold Warrior td-91

by Warren Murphy

  Cold Warrior

  ( The Destroyer - 91 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  When impoverished Cuba is attacked, Castro is sure that the U.S. is behind the assault, and he sends a MiG fighter jet to destroy a nuclear power plant in Florida, prompting Remo and Chiun to spring to action.

  Destroyer 91: Cold Warrior

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Prologue

  When his mind awoke, his eyes beheld only darkness. But his mind was awake. His brain, long the realm of inchoate nightmares from which there had been no awakening, no refuge, and no surcease, processed conscious thoughts.

  When he tried to open his eyes, they refused him. He could feel his lids strain and tug, attempting to separate.

  He made a frightened noise deep in his throat, and tasted something plastic along one edge of his thick, dry tongue. His throat felt raw.

  Then he sensed presences. Something popped out of his right ear and he heard sounds again. Beeping. A steady hum. An oscilloscope. To his mind leaped the image of an oscilloscope.

  "Steady, sir," a youngish voice said.

  He grunted inarticulately.

  Something came out of his left ear, and the sounds were all around him. There were two of them. They were hovering on either side of the bed on which he lay.

  At least, he hoped it was a bed. He could not tell. It felt more like a plush-lined coffin.

  Fingers took his chin and separated his jaw. The hinge muscles shot fire into his logy brain and he cried out in agony. But the thing that had obstructed his mouth, the plastic-tasting thing, was no longer there.

  "Don't try to speak yet, sir. We're still in the middle of bringing you back."

  His mind shot into first gear. Back!

  He forced his mouth to make sounds. They sounded horrible, corpsey.

  "How . . . long?" he croaked.

  "Please, sir. Not yet. Let us finish the procedure."

  "Grrrr . . ."

  They began unwinding the bandages that sheathed his eyes.

  The darkness shaded to gray, then lightened to a pinkish haze in which faint greenish sparks hung, dancing-his optic nerves reacting to the first stimuli in . . . dammit, how long had it been?

  "Hmmm," an older voice was saying. "Eyelids are encrusted. Seem welded together."

  "I don't see anything in the manual about a procedure covering this," the youngish voice muttered.

  "May be a natural phenomenon. We'll leave them. Let the retina get used to stimulation again."

  He swallowed. The effort was like ingesting a rough-textured concrete golf ball.

  "How . . . long . . . damn . . . it!"

  "The briefing officer is on his way, sir. We're physicians."

  "Status?"

  "Well, your new heart is functioning normally. The animation unit did a good job. Twenty-six beats a minute, like a Swiss clock."

  "It was a heart attack, then?"

  "You don't remember?"

  "No."

  "We've had to perform certain other . . . procedures. There was some tissue damage, with resulting loss of function."

  "I feel nothing."

  "Technically the nerves are still frozen. Feeling will come back. There may be some discomfort."

  He said nothing to that.

  Then a door clicked open, and he sensed the attending physicians had turned.

  "Oh, there you are. He's conscious and responding to our voices, Captain."

  "As you were." The new voice was more mature, a strong voice. One he felt he could trust. Not like those wet-behind-the-ears, over-solicitous doctors. Who the hell had hired them, anyway?

  "Director, I am Captain Maus."

  "Maus. What kind of a name is that?"

  "German, sir."

  "Go ahead. Report. How long was I . . . inanimate?"

  "Let's start with the good news, sir. We currently have thriving bases in California, Florida, Japan, and France. Except for some cultural problems with the French base, expansion is continuing apace."

  He absorbed that with a tight smile. The empire flourished! The captain went on.

  "In the last few years the Berlin Wall has fallen, the two Germanies have reunited, the Soviet Union has broken up into a chaotic collection of autonomous states with the economic prospects of a landlocked Fiji Islands, and Eastern Europe is free."

  He groaned. "That long?"

  "It has been a while, Director."

  He frowned. "Revenue?"

  "Down in the last several quarters. The global economy has been rocky. But we're solidly in the black. There has been no downsizing-"

  "Down . . . ?"

  "A new business term. It means, um, to lay off staff and cut back expenditures and expansion."

  "Why not just say that?"

  "Businessmen don't talk that way anymore."

  "Humph. With Communism dead, I don't see why they'd hide their light under a bush."

  "Actually, Communism isn't exactly dead," said Captain Maus. "The Reds still control China, North Korea-although there is some wild talk of unification there-and other pockets here and there."

  "Bring me a map."

  "Sir?"

  "I want to see this new world."

  A doctor's voice: "He's not ready for this yet. The optic nerve has been in utter darkness for . . ."

  The doctor's voice trailed off.

  "Bring me a map," he repeated harshly.

  A map was brought.

  "Here it is, sir."

  "Someone see to my eyes."

  Again the young doctor protested. "I can't allow this. There is no telling what kind of trauma this could cause . . . ."

  "Either open my eyes for me, or someone fire that idiot!"

  "Yes, sir."

  The young doctor's stunned voice protested in bewilderment.

  "But, sir, you can't mean . . . I mean, I've been an admirer of yours since I was a boy. You can't mean what you say."

  "You're on my payroll. Do your damn job."

  The doctors set to work, saying, "We'll try it one eye at a time."

  "Just as long you do it."

  As they were pouring warm saline solution into his left eye in an attempt to loosen the encrustation there, a question popped into his mind.

  "What about Cuba?"

  "Sir?"

  "Cuba. Is it free?"

  "Regrettably, no."

  "Who's in charge down there? Anyone I know?" The last was a faint hope, but he wanted something to hold on to. Something familiar.

  "Castro, sir."

  "Still?"

  "He'd old and gray, and they're down to short rations and bicycles, but he's still clinging to power."

  "Incredible!"

  The other doctor said then, "We think the eye is ready now. We would suggest you take it very slowly."

  "Shut up!" he snapped.

  And, taking a deep breath, he willed his left eyelid to open a crack.

  A white-hot needle of light seared his optic nerve and sent his brain crashing through thunderstorms of pain and shock, and somewhere in the distance he heard their frantic shouts and above them the meek, too-young doctor crying, "I told you so! I told you so! But none of you would listen!"

  His last thought before he blacked out again was that he'd have that doctor fired. He had been right in the first place, and therefore should have stood his ground. There would be no place for such weaklings in the new order.

  Chapter 1

  In the waning weeks of the Thirty-third Year of the Revolution, Xavier Custodio went down to the beach to defend the Revolution for the last time.

  In the privacy of his wood and royal palm bohio, he went through his morning routine,
not knowing it was to be for the last time. First he dressed in his ragged fatigues, taking them off the clothesline where they had been hung, dripping, the night before. He squirmed into the harness that held the wooden cross snugly on his back. Then he picked up his Sovietmade Kalashnikov rifle-it had begun to rust in the tropical moisture-and a single clip of ammunition.

  His machete, which he took from beside the door, was not rusted. It would never rust. Unlike the castoff AK-47, the machete was Cuban. Pre-revolutionary Cuban. It would last Xavier his entire lifetime.

  With the machete swinging loose in his hand, he walked into the mangrove thicket and began to hack off a sapling. With absentminded skill, he wormed the thin bole into the back brace, so that the branches formed a canopy over his head. His machete made short work of assorted royal palm fronds and other branches.

  These he slipped into rips and rents in his raggedy uniform. Once these things had been held in place by string and elastics-Russian string and elastics. There had been none since the fall of the hated capitialationist, Gorbachev.

  When he was so festooned with greenery as to resemble an ambulatory bush, Xavier strode off toward the beach, his branches and fronds bouncing happily.

  The Caribbean sun was coming up, promising a glorious day. Xavier enjoyed the warm, sultry rays as they seeped through his itchy camouflage. It was a walk he had been taking since the earliest days of the Revolution, when he had been a young man.

  Now he was old and bent, and his beard had turned to snow. And while his camouflage bounced, his proud heart did not.

  As he trudged down to the beach, Xavier Custodio wondered where the years had gone. And thinking of the passage of time made him wonder where the Revolution had gone.

  No, he thought morosely. Where the Revolution had gone wrong.

  Oh, it had been so exciting when he was a young Fidelista! He could remember the day Batista had fled in the middle of the night-after a New Year's Day celebration. Xavier had been in Habana when Fidel had marched in with his guerrilleros.

  The santeria priests lined the road to offer the protection of their gods to the bearded man wearing the jaunty beret, who was hailed as a redeemer and the new Pizarro. Rebels shot up the parking meters. There would be no taxes levied on the people in the new Cuba, they proclaimed. Millions came out to greet their new leader, and when he appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace, to give his first historic speech to the masses, doves actually roosted in the stonework above him. One right on his shoulder.

  A glorious day. It had been the dawn of a new Cuba. A Cuba for Cubans-not Americanos or Mafiosos, but the Cuban people.

  So long ago . . .

  In those days it had been an honor to rise with the sun and go down to the beach, even with the putrid crab-stink.

  As he thought this, a scarlet land crab scuttled out of the brush on nervous, spidery legs. It lifted its sun burned pincers angrily, as if challenging Xavier's right to walk on his own island.

  Without giving it a thought, Xavier stepped on the crab. It made a sound like a Dixie cup popping, and Xavier walked on.

  Behind him another land crab scuttled out, clamped pincers onto the mortal remains of its brother, and dragged it greedily from sight. Crunching cannibal sounds came from a mangrove thicket.

  Near a stand of sugarcane, Xavier stopped for breakfast, too. He selected a moderate shoot of cane, and cutting it so close to the ground that the shoot would not stop growing, deftly spun it in his hand as he hacked off the bitter tip, letting it drop to decompose and fertilize the still living parent stalk.

  As he walked, Xavier sucked in the sweet brown sucrose juice without enjoyment.

  There was a time when breakfast had been more nourishing, he thought sadly. And somehow sweeter.

  There had been a time when Xavier had driven down to the beach in his 1953 DeSoto. Until the irreplaceable parts had begun to decay. A motor scooter had replaced that. Until gasoline had become scarce and a Chinese bicycle had replaced that-until its tires had been confiscated to make tires for the military trucks that had drunk the entire gas ration of the island.

  Where did the Revolution go wrong? Xavier asked himself.

  Was it when the leadership organized the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in every neighborhood? Before the Revolution, to be a chivato had been a shameful thing. Now every Cuban was an informer. Every Cuban carried a secret shame.

  Was it when the Russians had insisted upon converting the Cuban economy to sugarcane harvesting-even though El Lider Maximo had earlier abandoned sugarcane as an industry for peons and imperialista lackeys?

  Was it when the flower of Cuban youth had been sent to Africa to fight in liberation wars that had resulted only in returning coffins?

  No, Xavier thought. Things had truly begun to go awry after the Bay of Pigs.

  He had been on the beach then, digging ditches. Then, as now, he had been a militiaman. Then, as now, loyal to Fidel.

  The B-26s came flying Cuban Revolutionary colors. They buzzed in low, and Xavier laid down his spade to wave at them with both arms. But then he noticed something the American CIA had overlooked in their preparations: They had solid metal noses. The B-26s of the Cuban Air Force-all three of them-had Plexiglas noses.

  The false Cuban warplanes opened fire. Xavier rolled into his half-dug trench just ahead of the blunt teeth of death, and lived.

  The Bay was soon alive with invading forces. Xavier had helped sound the alarm. As a guide for Batallion 111, he helped capture nearly two hundred mercenaries. They thought they had captured Americans. They had taken only Cubans. Exiles.

  For his bravery that day, the Maximum Leader himself had decorated Xavier and assigned him the honor of guarding Playa Giron, the beach at the mouth of the Bahia de Cochinos. It was not only an honor but a gift.

  For no one ever expected the U.S. or their tools to attempt another Bay of Pigs. Certainly not at the site of their greatest humiliation. Certainly not in the Bay of Pigs itself.

  Yet as he thought about it, Xavier realized that everything had changed in that first flush of triumph. For it was after the Bay of Pigs that Fidel had declared himself a Marxist-Leninist.

  Xavier could recall his surprise when he'd heard the news. Then, with Latin resolution, he had shrugged his leafy shoulders and muttered, "Well, now we know what we are."

  Before the Bay of Pigs, Xavier had been a defender of the Revolution. After, a defender of Socialism. And now . . .

  Socialism was dead where it was not dying. And it was dying with tortuous slowness on the island of Cuba.

  As he walked down to the beach, the memorials to the fallen of the Revolution began to appear at the side of the dirt road. Weeds had grown up around them. Over thirty years had passed. The young men of Cuba knew not of the Bay of Pigs. It was sad.

  The land crabs began to accumulate in the road. Those that had died the day before-both eaten and not-had been baked orange by the relentless Caribbean sun.

  As he sucked on the too-sweet cane, Xavier casually popped the crabs with his worn shoes. Coolie shoes. Imported from China. Suitable only for the feet of children, not men like Xavier.

  How long, he wondered, before we are reduced to eating the indigestible land crabs?

  How long until the long-promised fruits of the Revolution fall at the feet of the people, in whose name the Revolution was carried out?

  As the warm turquoise water-so clear it was like rippling azure glass-came into view, Xavier popped with each step. The crabs died and the crabs were carried off by the buzzards and the other crabs to be eaten. But the crabs were always just as plentiful the next day.

  Xavier recalled a phrase he had heard: "A revolution always eats its young."

  It was not that way in Cuba. Cuba was different. Its people were different. Its leaders were different.

  Down by the beach, a copy of Granma flapped among the crabs. Since it was his task to keep the beach clean as well as safe, Xavier stooped to retrieve it.
<
br />   Idly he flipped through its pages. There were fifteen pictures of El Lider scattered throughout its eight pages. In each of them Fidel wore his familiar designer fatigues. In each of them his paunch hung over his cinched-tight webbed belt.

  Perhaps it was his downcast mood, perhaps it was because Xavier was approaching his sixtieth birthday, but the sight of the once charismatic leader of the Revolution bursting at the seams, while Xavier actually weighed less now than he did in 1961 when he'd fought at the Bay of Pigs, brought bitter tears to his sun-wrinkled eyes.

  "This Revolution did not eat its young!" he said bitterly. "El Loco Fidel ate the Revolution!"

  He tore the newspaper apart, scattering fragments everywhere. What did it matter if the beach was littered with the detritus of Socialism? It was already littered with the stinking husks of the unkillable crabs. It was a beach men had died for, one whose white sands had drunk their blood-and it had all been for nothing.

  Cuba had gone from being an American colony to a Soviet colony. And once the two superpowers had made their peace, they had turned their backs on the island.

  Thirty years of struggle, and Xavier Custodio patrolled the same stretch of stinking beach, his leathery old man's skin rubbed raw by the branches and fronds, the promise of his youthful ideals squandered.

  He let the last sob break from his sun-dried throat.

  And behind him he heard a sporadic popping.

  Xavier turned to see who was walking along his beach.

  Behind the fronds that shielded his face, his warm brown eyes went wide.

  He was looking at soldiers. They wore olive-drab, just like him. But their uniforms were clean and whole.

  And on their shoulders they wore no patch or insignia. They did not need to. Xavier knew that the shameless Stars and Stripes of the United States army belonged there.

  Xavier dropped to his knees, his old training taking hold. His heart pounded as he watched them. They were disembarking from rubber rafts that even now were being rent by bayonets and sunk with stone weights.

  Xavier hesitated. Should he attack them? Or should he retreat and sound the alarm?

  He looked to his AK-47 and its single clip-and his heart broke. The Revolution had taken his teeth. He could not fight. And his pre-Socialist machete was not equal to the hour.