Coonts, Stephen - Jake Grafton 7 - Cuba

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by Cuba (lit)


  obsolete artifacts of a bygone age.

  It was equally ridiculous to expect someone

  to remove this missile from the silo and install

  a new, modern one. Cuba was poor, even poorer

  than Russia had been when he was growing up.

  Cuba could not afford modern missiles and the new,

  postcommunist Russia certainly could not afford

  to give them away.

  Not even to aim at Atlanta.

  Those were the targeting coordinates.

  He wasn't supposed to know the target, of course,

  but that rule was another example of military

  stupidity. He took care of the missile,

  maintained it, tested it, and if necessary would someday fire

  it at the enemy. Yet the powers that be didn't want

  him to know where the missile was aimed.

  So when he was working on the guidance module he had

  checked the coordinates that were programmed in,

  STEPHEN COONTS

  compared them to a map in the village school.

  Atlanta!

  The gyros in the guidance module were 1950's

  technology, and Soviet to boot, with the usual

  large, forgiving military tolerances. No one ever

  claimed the guidance system in a Scud I was a

  precision instrument, but it was adequate. The

  guidance system would get the missile into the proper

  neighborhood, more or less, then the warhead

  would do the rest.

  The old warhead had an explosive force equal

  to one hundred thousand tons" equivalent of

  TNT. It wouldn't flatten all of

  AtlantaAtlanta was a mighty big place and

  getting biggerbut it would make a hell of a dent in

  Georgia. Somewhere in Georgia. With luck, the

  chances were pretty good that the missile would hit

  Georgia.

  The new warhead... well, he knew nothing about it.

  It was a completely different design than the old

  one, although it weighed exactly the same and also

  seemed to be rigged for an airburst, but of course

  there was no way for him to determine the altitude.

  Not that it mattered. The missile had never been

  fired and probably never would be. Its

  capabilities were mere speculation.

  The old man took a last look at the interior

  of the control module, replaced the inspection plate

  and inserted the screws, then carefully tightened each

  one. Then he inspected the cables that led to the

  missile and their connectors. From the platform he could

  also see the hydraulic pistons and arms that would

  lift the cap on the silo, if and when. No leaks

  today.

  Carefully, holding on with both hands, he climbed

  down the ladder to the floor of the silo, which was just a

  grate over a large hole, the fire tube,

  designed so the fiery rocket exhaust would not cook

  the missile before it rose from the silo.

  The rats may have got into the silo when he had the

  cap open, he thought. Yes, that was probably it.

  They got in-

  side, found nothing to eat, began chewing on wire

  insulation to stay alive.

  But the rats were dead.

  His woman was dead, and he soon would be.

  The missile...

  He patted the side of the missile, then began

  climbing the stairs to the control room to do his

  electrical checks.

  Nobody gave a damn about the missile, except

  him and maybe the major. The major didn't really

  care all that muchthe missile was just a job for him.

  The missile had been the old man's life. He

  had traded life in Russia as a slave in the

  Strategic Rocket Forces for a life in

  paradise as a slave to a missile that would never be

  fired.

  He thought about Russia as he climbed the

  stairs.

  You make your choices going through life,

  he told himself,

  or the state makes the choices for you. Or God

  does. Whichever, a man must accept life as it

  conies.

  He sat down at the console in the control room,

  ran his fingers over the buttons and switches.

  At least he had never had to fire the missile.

  After all these years taking care of it, that would be

  somewhat like committing suicide.

  Could he do it? Could he fire the missile if

  ordered to do so?

  When he first came to Cuba he had thought deeply

  about that question. Of course he had taken an oath

  to obey disand all that, but he never knew if he really

  could.

  Still didn't.

  And was going to die not knowing.

  The old man laughed aloud. He liked the sound so

  much he laughed again, louder.

  After all, the joke was really on the communists, who

  sent him here. Amazingly, after all the pain and

  suffering they caused tens of millions of people all

  over the planet, they had given him a good

  life.

  He laughed again because the joke was a good one.

  Guantanamo Bay, on the southeast coast of the

  island of Cuba, is the prettiest spot on the

  planet, thought Rear Admiral Jake

  Grafton, USN.

  He was leaning on the railing on top of the carrier

  United States's

  superstructure, her island, a place the sailors

  called Steel Beach. Here off-duty crew

  members gathered to soak up some rays and do a few

  calisthenics. Jake Grafton was not normally a

  sun worshiper; at sea he rarely visited

  Steel Beach, preferring to arrange his day so that he

  could spend at least a half hour running on the

  flight deck. Today he was dressed in gym shorts,

  T-shirt, and tennis shoes, but he had yet

  to make it to the flight deck.

  Gra bar ton was a trim, fit fifty-three

  years old, a trifle over six feet tall, with

  short hair turning gray, gray eyes, and a nose

  slightly too large for his face. On one temple

  was a scar, an old, faded white slash where a

  bullet had gouged him years ago.

  People who knew him regarded him as the

  epitome of a competent naval officer. Grafton

  always put his brain in gear before he opened his mouth,

  never lost his cool, and he never lost sight of the

  goals he wanted to accomplish. In short, he was

  one fine naval officer and his superiors knew it,

  which was why he was in charge of this carrier group lying in

  Guantanamo Bay.

  The carrier and her escorts had been running

  exercises in the Caribbean for the last week. Today the

  carrier was anchored in the mouth of the bay, with two of

  her larger consorts anchored nearby. To seaward

  three- destroyers

  steamed back and forth, their radars probing the skies.

  A set of top-secret orders had brought the

  carrier group here.

  Jake Grafton thought about those orders as he

  studied the two cargo ships lying against the pier through a

  set of navy binoculars. The ships were small,

  less than eight thousand tons each; larger ships

  drew too much water to get against the pier in this
>
  harbor. They were

  Nuestra Sefiora de Colon

  and

  Astarte.

  The order bringing those ships here had not come from

  some windowless Pentagon cubbyhole; it was no memo

  drafted by an anonymous civil servant or

  faceless staff weenie. Oh, no. The order that had

  brought those ships to this pier on the southern coast of

  Cuba had come from the White House, the top of the

  food chain.

  Jake Grafton looked past the cargo ships at

  the warehouses and barracks and administration buildings

  baking in the warm Cuban sun.

  A paradise, that was the word that described Cuba.

  A paradise inhabited by communists. And

  Guantanamo Bay was a lonely little American

  outpost adhering to the underside of this communist island, the

  asshole of Cuba some called it.

  Rear Admiral Grafton could see the cranes

  moving, the white containers being swung down to the pier

  from

  Astarte,

  which had arrived several hours ago. Forklifts took

  the steel boxes to a hurricane-proof warehouse,

  where no doubt the harbormaster was stacking them three

  or four deep in neat, tidy military rows.

  The containers were packages designed to hold

  chemical and biological weapons, artillery

  shells and bombs. A trained crew was here

  to load the weapons stored inside the

  hurricane-proof warehouse into the containers, which would

  then be loaded aboard the ship at the pier and

  transported to the United States, where the warheads

  would be destroyed.

  Loading the weapons into the containers and getting the

  containers stowed aboard the second ship was going

  to take at least a week, probably longer. The

  first ship,

  Nuestra Sefiora de Colon,

  Our Lady of Col less-than 5n, had been a

  week loading, and would be ready to sail this evening.

  Jake Grafton's job was to provide military

  cover for the loading operation with this carrier battle

  group.

  His orders raised more questions than they answered. The

  weapons had been stored in that warehouse for years why

  remove them now? Why did the removal operation

  require military cover? What was the threat?

  Admiral Grafton put down his binoculars and

  did fifty push-ups on the steel deck while he

  thought about chemical and biological weapons.

  Cheaper and even more lethal than atomic weapons,

  they were the weapons of choice for Third World nations

  seeking to acquire a credible military

  presence. Chemical weapons were easier to control

  than biological weapons, yet more expensive

  to deliver. Hands down, the cheapest and deadliest

  weapon known to man was the biological one.

  Almost any nation, indeed, almost anyone with a credit

  card and two thousand square feet of laboratory

  space, could construct a biological weapon hi a

  matter of weeks from inexpensive, off-the-shelf

  technology. Years ago Saddam Hussein got

  into the biological warfare business with anthrax

  cultures purchased from an American mail-order

  supply house and delivered via overnight mail.

  Ten grams of anthrax properly dispersed can kill

  as many people as a ton of the nerve gas Sarin. What was

  that estimate Jake saw recently"...one hundred

  kilograms of anthrax delivered by an efficient

  aerosol generator on a large urban target would

  kill from two to six times as many people as a

  one-megaton nuclear device.

  Of course, Jake Grafton reflected,

  anthrax was merely one of over one hundred and

  sixty known biological warfare agents. There were

  others far deadlier but equally cheap to manufacture

  and disperse. Still, obtaining a culture was merely a

  first step; the journey from culture dishes

  to

  a reliable weapon that could be safely stored and

  accurately employedanything other than a spray

  tankwas long, expensive, and fraught with engineering

  challenges.

  Jake Grafton had had a few classified

  briefings about CBW-WHICH stood for chemical and

  biological warfare but he knew little more than diswas

  available in the public press. These weren't the

  kinds of secrets that rank-and-file naval

  officers had a need to know. Since the Kennedy

  administration insisted on developing other military

  response capabilities besides nuclear warfare,

  the United States had researched, developed, and

  manufactured large stores of nerve gas, mustard

  gas, incapacitants, and defoliants. Research

  on biological agents went forward in tandem at

  Fort Detrick, Maryland, and ultimately led to the

  manufacture of weapons at Pine Bluff

  Arsenal in Arkansas. These highly classified

  programs were undertaken with little debate and almost no

  publicity. Of course the Soviets had their own

  classified programs. Only when accidents

  occurredlike the accidental slaughter of 6,000

  sheep thirty miles from the Dugway

  Proving Ground in Utah during the late

  1960's, or the deaths of sixty-six people at

  Sverdlovsk in 1979 did the public get a

  glimpse into this secret world.

  Nerve gases were loaded into missile and rocket

  warheads, bombs, land mines, and artillery shells.

  Biological agents were loaded into missile

  warheads, cluster bombs, and spray tanks and

  dispensers mounted on aircraft.

  Historically nations used chemical or

  biological weapons against an enemy only when the

  enemy lacked the means to retaliate in kind. The

  threat of massive American retaliation had

  deterred Saddam Hussein from the use of chemical

  and biological weapons in the 1991 Gulf War,

  yet these days deterrence was politically incorrect.

  In 1993 the United States signed the

  Chemical Weapons Convention, thereby agreeing

  to remove chemical and biological weapons from its

  stockpiles.

  The U.s. military had been in no hurry

  to comply with the treaty, of course, because without the threat of

  retalia-

  STEPHEN COONTS

  tion there was no way to prevent these weapons

  being used against American troops and civilians.

  The waiting was over, apparently. The politicians

  in Washington were getting their way: the United

  States would not retaliate against an enemy with

  chemical or biological weapons even if

  similar weapons were used to slaughter Americans.

  When Jake Grafton finished his push-ups and

  stood, the staff operations officer, Commander Toad

  Tarkington, was there with a towel. Toad was slightly

  above medium height, deeply tanned, and had a

  mouthful of perfect white teeth that were visible when he

  smiled or laughed, which he often did. The admiral

  wiped his face on the towel, then picked up the

  binoculars and once again focused them on the cargo<
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  ships.

  "Glad the decision to destroy those things wasn't one

  I had to makeea"...Toad Tarkington said.

  "There are a lot of things in this world that I'm glad

  I'm not responsible forea"...Jake replied.

  "Why now, Admiral? And why does the ordnance

  crowd need a battle group to guard them?"

  "What I'd like to knowea"...Jake Grafton mused,

  "is why those damned things were stored here in the first

  place. If we knew that, then maybe we would know

  why the brass sent us here to stand guard."

  "Think Castro has chemical or biological

  weapons, sir?"

  "I suspect he does, or someone with a lot of

  stars once thought he might. If so, our weapons were

  probably put here to discourage friend Castro from

  waving his about. But what is the threat to removing them?"

  "Got to be terrorists, sirea"...Toad said.

  "Castro would be delighted to see them go. An

  attack from the Cuban Army is the last thing on

  earth I would expect. But terrorists maybe they

  plan to do a raid into here, steal some of the darn things."

  "Maybeea"...Jake said, sighing.

  "I guess I don't understand why we are taking them

  home for destructionea"...Toad added. "The

  administration got

  the political credit for signing the Chemical

  Weapons Treaty. If we keep our weapons,

  we can still credibly threaten massive retaliation if

  someone threatens us."

  "Pretty hard to agree to destroy the things, not do

  it, and then fulminate against other countries who

  don't destroy theirs."

  "Hypocrisy never slowed down a

  politicianea"...Toad said sourly. "I guess I

  just never liked the idea of getting naked when

  everyone else at the party is fully dressed."

  "Who in Washington would ever authorize the use of

  CBW weapons"..."...Jake muttered. "Can you see a

  buttoneddown, blow-dried, politically correct

  American politician ever signing such an

  order?"

  Both men stood with their elbows on the railing looking

  at the cargo ships. After a bit the admiral

  passed Toad the binoculars.

  "Wonder if the National Security Agency is

  keeping this area under surveillance with

  satellites"..."...Toad mused.

  "No one in Washington is going to tell

  us,"

  the admiral said matter-of-factly. He pointed

  to one of the two Aegis cruisers anchored nearby.

  "Leave that cruiser anchored here for the next few

  days. She can cover the base perimeter with her guns

  if push comes to shove. Have the cruiser keep her

 

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