Eyeball to Eyeball (Final Failure)

by Douglas Niles

  “Ah, perhaps they are afraid of our SAMs.”

  “Indeed, Comrade Chairman, it would seem so. Even the U2s cannot outfly our rockets. Comrade Castro has sent his own fighter aircraft up to make sure the Americans know they are being watched. Of course, he has older MiGs, though his pilots are well trained. Our own modern fighters, the MiG-21s, will be flown by Russian pilots. They are getting established on Cuban bases right now.”

  Khrushchev felt a little thrill again—the thrill of victory, of a gamble that paid off. Of course, the game wasn’t over yet, but the dice were falling his way. Even before he had made the decision, last May, to send the nuclear rockets to Cuba, he had agreed to fortify the Caribbean nation’s antiaircraft defenses with many batteries of the famed SA-2 missile, the same weapon that had brought down Francis Gary Powers’ spy plane over the rodina, the motherland, three years earlier.

  Malinovsky knew, all the members of the Presidium knew, that every piece of Operation Anadyr was Nikita Khrushchev’s brainchild. And it was a brilliant, audacious plan indeed. It rankled them all to know that the Americans possessed almost complete mastery of the nuclear arms race. The United States had hundreds of medium- and intermediate-range missiles based in England, Italy, and Turkey, as well as an army of intercontinental ballistic missiles based in silos and on launchers throughout the plains of the United States. They had a fleet of long-range bombers capable of carrying thermonuclear bombs, and at least some of those bombers, with full weapon loads, remained in the air at all times.

  The Soviets, in turn, had only a few dozen rockets that could fly around to the other side of the world to strike at American targets, and they were weapons of questionable reliability. Most of the ICBMs had to be stored outside on exposed launch platforms. They needed to be fueled directly before launching, a time-consuming process—and the corrosive nature of the liquid fuel meant that the rockets could remain fueled only a few days before suffering damage.

  Most of the more effective Soviet strategic missiles were medium or intermediate range. From the rodina, they were able to threaten Western Europe, Japan, and Taiwan, but incapable of reaching the USA. And unlike the USA, the Soviet Union lacked client states in all corners of the world. While the Americans had allies almost completely surrounding the USSR, until 1960 Russia had not had a single reliable partner anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

  The Cuban Revolution, and Fidel Castro, had created the opportunity for Operation Anadyr, which would change all that strategic imbalance in one swift coup. It was the Soviet Chairman who had seen that opportunity, and seized it. In less than two months—right around November 1—Khrushchev would be able to announce to the world that the United States was now exposed to the full might of Soviet weaponry. Cuba would be safe, and the Americans would know the fear that their own nuclear might had imposed upon the rest of the world.

  “Come, Rodion Yakovlivich—share a toast with me!” The Chairman felt ebullient enough to address his defense minister by his Russian familiar, tingling with that thrill of victory. He poured two tumblers of fine vodka, and he and his marshal shared a toast.

  A few minutes later, Nikita Khrushchev was back at the party. He found Stella Widener, who looked very happy to see him. He smiled at her, opened his arms in a gesture of welcome and friendship.

  “Miss Widener,” he declared, beaming, tickled by the hopeful expression on her face. In his expansive mood, he decided to bring her suspense to an end.

  “I have decided to let you make your film. You may bring your crews to the Kremlin tomorrow afternoon. I shall arrange for a security escort to meet you at the gate.”

  17 September 1962

  0230 hours (Monday very early morning)

  Battery 2, 539th Missile Regiment

  San Marco del Fuego, Cuba

  The dozens of vehicles in the Soviet convoy growled down the slope of the forested ridge, following the steep, rutted track into the valley. A column of motorcycles led the way, followed by a pair of armored cars, and then a file of massive, rumbling trucks hauling long trailers. The vehicles ran with dimmed headlights, moving very slowly on the narrow, only partially paved road.

  Riding in the passenger seat of the second armored car, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Tukov leaned partially out of the open window, only to have the dense, humid air add another layer of sweat to his already sodden forehead and scalp. He heard the staccato crackle of the motorcycles at the head of the column, and as that sound fell back to a chorus of idles he knew they were looking at another delay.

  Even before the armored car came to a stop, he’d opened the door, and as the air brakes hissed one last time, he dropped out of the cab and stalked up the shoulder of the narrow road, removing his brimmed military cap to wipe his head with a sticky handkerchief. A breeze teased him with a tiny waft before the atmosphere settled back to its normal, steamy stillness.

  “What is it this time?” he demanded of the little knot of men gathered around their motorcycles. Some of these men were Cuban scouts assigned to lead the 79th regiment to San Cristobal, where Tukov’s missiles would be installed. One of these men was speaking, in halting Russian, to a Red Army captain.

  “The curve here, Comrade Colonel,” reported the captain, who was in command of the motorcycle platoon. He gestured with a gloved hand, and Tulov had to wonder: How could the man be wearing gloves in this heat?

  Even in the humid darkness, Tukov saw the problem immediately. The convoy—including the trucks hauling their long, tubular trailers—needed to make a hard left turn here. The advance crews had already come through and taken out a few telephone poles and, to judge from the gaping foundation and the cracked beer sign lying in the mud, a cantina that had once stood on the acute point of the intersection. There was almost enough room for the trucks to make the turn, but not quite: a ramshackle barn still stood in the way.

  “Bring up the bulldozer, and don’t waste any time!” Tukov barked. The barn would have to go before the trailers could continue on.

  “No! No!” An elderly farmer emerged from a nearby house. He began to shout in rapid Spanish to one of the Cuban scouts, demanding to know why his barn was about to be bulldozed.

  “For the good of the revolution,” replied the Cuban militia captain calmly. “And so these Russian jackasses don’t shoot you and me both, and bury us under the ruins of your barn.”

  “At least let me get my pigs out of there!”

  “You have five minutes,” the captain replied, which was about how long it would take the bulldozer to come up.

  The distraught farmer hurried to the barn. Tukov looked at the Cuban captain. “You should know that even a Russian jackass might comprende español,” he said to the man in his own language.

  “Dios mio!” the man declared, his face growing pale. “I did not mean to disrespect the great Soviet Union!”

  Tukov shrugged. “If some foreigner was going to knock my barn down, I’d think he was a jackass too.”

  He sighed and trudged back to his car. Here they were in Cuba, to share in the glories of the next step of the global revolution. He was tired of this journey, tired of the stifling climate. He and his men, good comrades and well-trained soldiers all of them, had come to this new, foreign hemisphere, traveling farther from the rodina, than any other Soviet combat formations in that nation’s brief, glorious history.

  It might have been a voyage to hell, as far as Tukov and the other men aboard Odessa had been concerned. They’d departed from the Black Sea port of Sevastapol in late August, and for two interminable weeks had been tossed and turned by the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and then the Atlantic Ocean. The officers, at least, slept in cabins—as a lieutenant colonel, Tukov had even had one to himself!—but the men had been crammed into open compartments below decks. Temperatures had soared to well over one hundred degrees, and the hatches had remained sealed during all daylight hours to screen the secret transport from the NATO patrol aircraft that managed to find them even in the middle of the
great ocean. Seasickness had been rampant, and toilet facilities were hopelessly inadequate, so the conditions in the troop compartment had been almost intolerable.

  Closer to Cuba, Odessa had been buzzed by US Navy attack planes based at Guantanamo. When it finally arrived at the busy port of Mariel, some 60 kilometers west of Havana, the Russians still had to wait until full darkness to debark. Here Tukov and his men had come upon the surreal sight of a previously debarked detachment in the process of building huge bonfires of the wooden skis and ski poles that had been sent along with several battalions. Tukov knew this deployment was called Operation Anadyr, after a Siberian region, as part of the maskirovka—the plan to deceive—the Americans, but he didn’t know the guise had been extended to such ridiculous details.

  Other details rankled as well. His men, well-trained and proud soldiers of the Strategic Rocket Forces, had been stripped of their uniforms and forced to wear gaudy sport shirts and casual slacks in an obviously vain attempt to disguise them as tourists.

  For another week, the men of the regiment had waited, hiding in a stifling warehouse that had been designated as a “barracks” until the freighter Poltava arrived with the SS4 missiles, launchers, and concrete launching pads for Tukov’s unit. They had everything they needed to become operational except the nuclear warheads themselves, which were to arrive in a few weeks on another ship.

  But the regiment wouldn’t wait for that. Instead, they’d loaded the missiles and launchers in trucks and trailers, and moved out of Mariel for their eventual base, near San Cristobal. The first night, the convoy had bypassed the town of Trinidad on a new road that had been bulldozed expressly for the purpose—the huge trucks couldn’t fit through the narrow streets of the ancient colonial town. They’d hidden out in the forest during the day, and continued on tonight, rumbling over gravel and concrete bridges that had been erected over numerous streams.

  Now, another delay. Tukov watched impatiently, smoking one cigarette after another, until the bulldozer had done its splintering, destructive work, cracking the weakened walls and flattening the pile of rubble so that the trailers, with their high ground clearance, would be able to maneuver past. Finally, the obstacle was removed, and the farmer and his pigs had disappeared. Tukov crushed out his last cigarette, climbed back into the armored car, and felt the lurch as the convoy started moving again into the hot, humid night.

  27 September 1962

  0730 hours (Thursday morning)

  Tactical Air Command Headquarters

  Langley AFB, Virginia

  The burly chief of staff of the United States Air Force was not a young man, but he sprang down the three steps from his transport jet to the tarmac with surprising agility. Brusquely returning the salutes of the three officers who stood stiffly at attention before him, he pulled a fresh cigar from his tunic and started toward the command center with barely a pause.

  General Walter Sweeney, head of the Air Force’s Tactical Air Command, striding beside his boss, pulled out a lighter and touched the flame to LeMay’s stogie. The two generals strode toward the unadorned brick building with the other officers—a pair of TAC colonels and Lemay’s aide, who hastened off the plane after the Chief of Staff, almost trotting to keep up.

  “Damn, it’s good to be back on Air Force turf again,” LeMay snapped, following a deep draught of his cigar. “Those tin hats in the Pentagon—not to mention the lily livers north of the river—really start to wear on me!”

  “Welcome to Langley, General,” Sweeney replied. “We might not be Omaha, but I think we can hold the civilians at bay for as long as you want to be here.”

  LeMay, well known as the founding father of the Strategic Air Command—based in the geographic heart of the nation in Nebraska—uttered a short bark of laughter. “Thanks, Walt. But we’ve got some business to take care of, and then I’ll need to be back in D.C. by tonight.”

  General Sweeney cast a glance—a look that might have contained an element of relief—over his shoulder at his two colonels. “Everything ready for the conference?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  Indeed, less than five minutes later, the four officers were seated a large table in a wood-paneled, windowless room, secure on the second floor of the TAC headquarters. One long wall of the room was dominated by the map of an elongated island, a land mass that bore more than a passing resemblance to a crocodile, with a wedge-shaped head to the east and a winding, serpentine tail trailing out to the west. Just jutting into view at the top of the image, near the west end, was the very southern tip of Florida and the dotted line of the Florida Keys. A major from Air Force Intelligence stood next to the map, pointer in hand.

  “Let’s get started,” LeMay said, with a flourish of his smoldering cigar.

  “Yes Sir, General,” the major replied curtly, raising the pointer.

  “This map highlights our most up-to-date intelligence on the air defences of Cuba. Unfortunately, the data dates back more than a month, since the U2 flights were suspended on the order of the President—”

  “Goddamn it!” snarled the Chief of Staff. “I’ve tried to get that notion through his pretty head—we need current pictures! Castro could have built a dozen installations in the time that we’ve been blinded!”

  Recognizing the rhetorical nature of the objection, the major merely nodded. All of the men chafed at the restriction on aerial overflights, which JFK had ordered after a Nationalist Chinese U2 had been shot down over mainland China by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile—a SAM-2, like the one that had downed the CIA’s Francis Gary Powers over Russia, in the last year of Eisenhower’s presidency. Kennedy had been unwilling to risk another international incident, especially in the light of reports from sources on the ground that SAMs had been delivered to Cuba and could well be operational by now.

  “Well, go on,” LeMay said.

  “Very good, Sir. As you know, OPLAN 314 and OPLAN 316 are already in place—representing quick reaction plans for attacks on Cuba with lead times of only four, or two, days, respectively. We have good reason to suspect that the Army and Navy would not be able to attain mission capability within that time frame, but based on the orders from yourself and General Sweeney, we are confident that the Air Force would be able to engage within as little as twenty-four hours of notification, for OPLAN 316. Given the wider range of targets and the greater number of assets required, OPLAN 314 would necessitate a lead time of thirty-six to forty hours, but could certainly commence in less than the forty-eight hours required by the plan.”

  “Are we going to be ready to install the plans on time?” the Chief of Staff demanded.

  “Yes, sir. The target date—for hypothetical purposes—is 20 October of this year, and most of our deployments are already under way, or will commence in the next week or so. We’ll use our bases in Florida for the strike aircraft, and bases throughout the southeastern U.S. for our medium-range bombers.”

  “I hope to hell we can get clearance for more photo recon by then!” the general declared, returning to worry that bone again. “The problem is, the CIA wants to keep complete control of the U2s. I’ve told Director McCone and the President that we need Air Force pilots in those planes. That way, if there’s an incident, it will be a combat flier in danger, not some goddamn spook.”

  “Right, Sir.” The major tried to keep up with the bullet train of conversation spit forth by his commanding general. “Of course, any intel we can get will enhance our target selection. But for now, we’ve marked out the known airfields and ground-force headquarters. The CIA has helped, breaking down eyewitness reports from the exiles that are still coming into Florida every day.” He indicated a town called San Cristobal, southwest of Havana in the westernmost province of the island country. “We’ve heard about a lot of activity around here, even some reports of Russians. They’re moving some big equipment around, including long trailers.”

  “That’ll be a priority, if—when—we finally get permission to do some more photo recon,” L
eMay declared. “What about ports?”

  “Of course, Castro doesn’t have much of a navy to speak of, but we should be able to take out his gunships in the first wave of attacks,” the briefing officer reported. “Most of his boats are based in the west, at Mariel and Havana, though he has a few in other parts of the country as well.”

  “What’s the status of the MiGs?” LeMay asked.

  “We know that the Cubans have about sixty Soviet-made fighters—a mix of MiG-15s, -17s, and -19s. Castro also has a cadre of fighter pilots trained in Czechoslovakia. The MiGs will obviously be priority targets—”

  “My own fighter pilots have made no secret of it,” General Sweeney interjected. “They hope Fidel dares to send those old jets into the sky. Wherever we find them, you can bet our own fighters will make short work of them.”