Arsenal c-10

by Keith Douglass

  Turned up a few dirt clods, perhaps missing a few agricultural workers, but that is it. And furthermore, you have this excellent videotape of American Special Forces intruding on your soil. That is bound to weaken support for America within the Caribbean basin. This opens new opportunities for you and for us.”

  “But the missiles,” Santana began.

  Mendiria cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Are on their way, even as we speak. Do you think we would leave them here for the American attack to destroy? Are you so confident of your ability to hide them that you would risk all in this matter?” The Libyan shook his head disapprovingly.

  “No, we will keep you from such mistakes. As soon as matters are settled in my country, we will off-load the missiles to you. They are even now a bare three hundred miles away from here, nestled in the hold of a merchant ship.”

  “What exactly is happening in your country that requires the Americans to be otherwise occupied?” Santana asked bluntly. It was the question that had lingered unasked in every discussion he’d had with the Libyan, and one that the Libyan had never volunteered the answer to. Now, sensing the Libyan’s willingness to reassure him, Santana asked for the first time.

  Mendiria shook his head. “You have no need to know, but I will tell you this much: There are certain border disputes that are even now being resolved in a manner favorable to us. Certain … political considerations … that are being realigned to be more in keeping with a modern, powerful Libya.”

  “A coup?” Santana asked.

  “A realignment,” Mendiria corrected. He smiled, teeth flashing in the dim light. “There are many of us who believe that Libya should take a more active role in world affairs.

  With our natural resources, our strategic coastline well, there are many opportunities for a nation such as Libya, especially under an enlightened leadership. If the United States is preoccupied with her backyard, it gives us a free hand in ours, the Mediterranean.”

  “The missiles,” Santana insisted.

  “In two days,” Mendiria said finally, grudgingly giving up the delicate cat-and-mouse game. “We will unload them in two days. And then, you may make whatever use you wish of them.”

  0300 Local (+5 GMT)

  USS Arsenal

  The ship steamed back and forth in her firing basket like a caged tiger. Six knots on gentle seas induced a slow, hypnotic roll. The few sailors still in their racks were lulled into even deeper sleep, while three decks below complex fire control circuitry compensated for the motion in the targeting data it fed to the launchers.

  Within the bowels of the ship, technicians eased themselves into the narrow interspaces between weapons, carefully making last-minute checks and adjustments to the warheads. A few of the tubes still showed smoke smudges from the earlier fire, but the delicate wiring and structural supports were undamaged.

  An undercurrent of tension and excitement throbbed throughout the ship, a reflection of the eagerness of the new and untried crew to finally, after what seemed like decades of testing, make the boat demonstrate the capabilities of their platform. No ship in history, save perhaps the old-style battleships, had ever possessed such a massive load of firepower and deadly weaponry. And this was the crew that would make it work.

  In Combat, the tactical action officer paced back and forth in front of his console, chained like a dog to it by the cord running from his headset to the internal communications system. He listened to the myriad reports rapping crisply out over the circuit, glanced around to make sure every station was manned, then turned to his captain. “All stations report ready. Captain.” He hunched his shoulders a bit, distracted by a bead of sweat trickling down his back.

  “Very well. Commence firing weapons package number eight-two-nine, at will.” Captain Heather made it sound like a routine order, his voice calm and deadly professional, but the pain was clawing away at the edges of his self-control.

  Still, it evidently worked. His words had a steadying effect on the young TAO, who nodded.

  “Firing weapons package number eight-two-nine, aye, Captain.” The TAO turned back to his console, slipped into the chair, and turned his key in the lock. The SPY-1 computer took over from there.

  For the next ninety seconds, being inside Arsenal was like rolling down a hill in a steel garbage can. The hull rang and shivered with multiple explosions as Tomahawk cruise missiles were ejected from their vertical launch tubes. Each missile came out impossibly slowly, seemed to hover over the deck for a few minutes, scorching the nonskid and gray paint with hellfire from its propulsion section, then picked up speed and darted out toward the horizon. Within moments of leaving the ship, the missiles were traveling too fast and far for the naked eye to follow.

  But the SPY-1 system held radar contact on each one, sorting out the tiny pulses of returned radar energy, comparing them with the launch vector and destination of every missile, and assigning a serial number to each green lozenge blip on the screen. The launching went quickly, and completely without incident. When it was finally over, the TAO turned back to the captain. “Weapons package complete, Captain. All stations report no damage.”

  Captain Heather tried to grin. “Feels better when you get to do it yourself, doesn’t it? Now let’s just hope those men make it into shore.”

  “Men?” The TAO looked puzzled. For just a moment, he thought the captain might have finally lost his mind. But no, glancing at the self-satisfied visage, he knew better. TAO or not, there were still things the captain knew that he didn’t.

  0305 Local (+5 GMT)

  Ten Miles West of Cuba

  “Jesus! Will you look at that?” Sikes pointed toward the horizon. “Looks like they started their Fourth of July celebration a little early.” He smiled, a cold, twisted line to his lips. The amusement never reached his eyes.

  Behind him in the RHIB, three other SEALs shifted slightly to keep their balance as they also turned to watch.

  “Makes for a nice diversion, doesn’t it?” one of them said to no one in particular. “Beats a helicopter gunship, anyway.”

  “Yeah, like you’d know anything about them,” Huerta said mildly. “Boy, I was taking helicopter gunships into areas that didn’t have any names while you were still sucking on your mama’s tit. You use ‘em right, there’s nothing that beats it.” He turned back to the horizon as three new far-off explosions echoed in the air. A trace of respect crossed his face. “Have to admit, though, this is nice.”

  “Let’s see if it works first.” Sikes’s voice was still grim.

  “How will we know if it works?” Garcia asked, more out of curiosity than any real need to know.

  Huerta and Sikes exchanged an amused look. Huerta turned back to the younger sailor. “If there are people standing on the beach waitin’ to offer us a friendly greeting when we show up, it didn’t work.”

  Huerta smiled. “And it won’t be the first time nor the last that that’s happened to a SEAL.”

  0310 Local (+5 GMT)

  USS Arsenal

  “Lost contact over land,” the TAO reported. He slipped one of the earphones off so that he could listen to the chatter inside the compartment. The sailors were starting to talk now, breaking into professional discussions of how the launch had been executed as well as exchanging congratulations.

  “Good work.” The captain’s voice was warm. “Nice to have the first operational test out of the way, isn’t it?”

  The TAO nodded. “Sir, you mentioned some men. ” he ventured.

  The captain smiled, real relief crossing his face. “Let’s just say that we’re doing our part for a SAR mission and leave it at that.”

  0320 Local (+5 GMT)

  One Mile off the Western Coast of Cuba

  “Okay, gents, just like last time. You know the drill.” Sikes touched his gear, verifying the tightness of the connections, then took a hard look at Garcia. Behind him, Huerta and Carter were performing similar services for each other.

  Finally, satisfied that al
l their gear was operational, they slipped into the warm water and headed for shore.

  Twenty miles to the southeast, the other team was repeating the same maneuver. The diversion to the north, in the form of Arsenal’s cruise missiles bombarding isolated military targets, drew Cuban forces away from both landing zones, at least to the extent of available reserves.

  But, as Sikes had noted, there was always somebody who didn’t get the word.

  0411 Local (+5 GMT)

  Western Coast of Cuba

  “Helluva good swim.” Sikes forced the words out, trying to disguise his urgent desire to suck in deep, gasping breaths.

  To his right, Huerta smiled slightly, recognizing the deception.

  “You might start finding time from now on to break away from that paperwork for more IT,” Huerta mused. He took the entrenching tool out of his backpack, unfolded it, and began digging a shallow hole near the base of one tree. He’d already taken his cammies out of the waterproof pack, carefully reversing the vent that allowed him to pump air out of the plastic container. He stood, stripped off his wet suit, and folded it carefully before putting it in the hole. He then slipped into his cammies.

  The other SEALs followed suit, metamorphosing from waterborne warriors to land commandos. Versatility was one of the most critical qualities of any SEAL team.

  After the preliminaries, they set off east, traveling in a widely spaced, snaking line toward their objective. Huerta took point and vanished into the shadows. Sikes caught an occasional glimpse of him, sometimes just the slightest hint of movement, but never saw the man in profile against the sky, or the slightest glimmer of equipment. It was as though he was a ghost, an unnatural presence stalking the land.

  Sikes tried his best to follow suit, knowing that in the arcane science of this type of warfare, he was hopelessly outclassed.

  Finding the concrete building where their objective was supposedly housed was simple. At that hour of the night, men’s spirits and attention spans are at their lowest. With the sun still hours away, even in the southern tropical climate, sentries around the world found it difficult to concentrate on the graduated shades of black and shadow around them. If anyone were still on watch, not drawn off to the north by the diversion, that is. The SEALs were counting on the Arsenal ship’s evening the odds.

  They clustered together under a small clump of bushes and conferred in soft whispers and hand movements. Their intelligence said that Miss Drake was hardly here against her will, although the Cubans might have been less than cooperative in letting her go. Too, given the prior incursion of the SEALs onto their island, it might be reasonable to expect a heavier guard on her. While they publicly hooted about any threat that a Cuban security force might pose to a team of SEALs, privately each man knew that an armed guard of any kind could pose a problem. That, and your luck going sour on you at the worst possible moment.

  A few minutes of observing the compound did much to allay their fears.

  Although the base blazed with lights, there was evidently only one patrol, and he was a slackard at best, criminally negligent at worst.

  The Cuban patrolled at regular intervals, pacing his way easily around the compound in continuous circles. With a nightscope, Huerta watched him, noting how the man kept his attention centered on the lighted areas, never peering beyond the fence into the dark shadows surrounding the compound.

  The Cuban nodded, satisfied. It was doable.

  With the arrival of the team outside the compound, leadership of the evolution had shifted to SEAL3. Sikes waited until he saw the hand signal, nodded acknowledgment, then darted silently forward. He was wearing the nighttime version of woodland green cammies, a combination of burnt green and dark gray that made him part of the night. He darted twenty feet across open land, then settled down into the grass surrounding the fence. A few quick experiments told him their intelligence was accurate it wasn’t electrified, a relief, even though the SEALs had come prepared to deal with that eventuality if necessary.

  Garcia joined him moments later and pulled an insulated set of wire snips out of his back pocket. Two minutes later, there was a SEAL-sized hole in the wire fence.

  Sikes and Garcia squiggled through it, found cover, and waited for Huerta and Carter to join them. Operating in teams of two, they proceeded leapfrog fashion through the dark and shadows, blending in with the night when they could, taking cover when they couldn’t.

  The security guard was almost painfully easy to avoid.

  The cement building was locked from the outside by a heavy padlock.

  Nothing fancy, nothing complicated, but effective. They made a quick circuit of the building, verifying that there were no windows in it, then turned back to the problem of the lock. A shot from a pistol would have destroyed it, but even their silencers would have been easily detectable in the quiet Cuban night.

  Garcia produced the snips that had dealt with the fence around the compound and fitted them experimentally around the lock’s shaft. He bore down, squeezing the blades together, but made little impression on the metal. Huerta watched patiently for a few moments, then gently shoved him aside.

  He took the handles to the snips in his two massive paws, his hands enveloping them completely. Sikes watched in awe as Huerta bore down, knots of muscles and blood vessels popping out at odd angles all over his hands and arms. The metal blades whined slightly as they bit into the steel, complained, and suddenly met with a sharp click.

  Huerta twisted the rest of the lock off the door and tossed it to Garcia. Sikes shook his head, then put his hand on the doorknob.

  It is always difficult to tell how hostages will react, even more so when they are members of the media. There is a well-known phenomenon, the Stockholm Syndrome, in which hostages begin identifying with their captors, to the extent of even resisting rescue. Sikes wondered if such would be the case with Miss Drake.

  He shook his head. No, no way. Their biggest problem would be getting her out without letting her catch it all on film. These reporters just who the hell did they think they were? A spur of anger cut through his concentration, distracting him. She was here by her own actions, but her willful disobedience of her nation’s embargo on Cuba was now endangering his life and that of his men, plus the team on the other side of the island headed for the downed pilot.

  Was it worth it? No, she probably wasn’t but the pilot sure as hell was.

  He shoved the door open quietly and stepped into the room, still a ghost. It was stark, furnished only with a bed and linen. A door off to the right appeared to lead to a bathroom.

  Pamela Drake was asleep. She was lying on her stomach, her head cushioned in one elbow, the pillow partially shielding her eyes. It also covered her ear, making it unlikely that she’d heard them enter the room. He motioned the other men in, out of immediate line of sight, then quietly shut the door so that it would appear normal from the outside. The only problem would be if the sentry came close enough to observe that the lock was now missing from the door. Given his brief observation of the man’s performance, he doubted that was a probability.

  Crossing the room in a few steps, Sikes knelt quietly by the bed. He shook the mattress slightly, trying to rouse her without bringing her to full consciousness. Many times he’d found that actually touching sleeping hostages had startled them so much that they’d screamed, thus bringing unwanted attention to the rescue operation.

  Pamela moaned and rolled over onto her back, and her eyelids fluttered.

  He shook the bed again.

  Her eyelids slammed upward and she rolled to the right, freezing as she saw the man kneeling next to her bed. He felt her eyes travel over his uniform quickly, noting the lack of insignia.

  “SEALs?” she finally whispered.

  He nodded grudging approval of her quiet voice and quick grasp of the situation. Whatever else she was, this woman was no dummy. Time for you to go home, ma’am.”

  Pamela sat up in bed, gathering the sheet around her defensively.
r />   “What makes you think I want to go home?”

  Sikes rocked back on his heels. “The admiral thought” “Tombstone, was it?” Her voice was sharp and slightly louder. “Coming to rescue the fair damsel again, is he? Well, you just head back and tell the admiral that I think I can take care of myself. I got in here on my own, I can get out. Now go away. You’re interrupting my beauty sleep.” She lay down again and turned her back to him, pulling the sheets up around her neck.

  Sikes sighed. This mission was becoming more of a pain in the ass every second. “Ma’am, I don’t think I can let you do that,” he said gently. “There’s some things you need to know.”

  “Are you going to make me leave by force?” she asked, still not turning to face him.

  “There’s a strike inbound on the base. We don’t recommend you stick around for it.”

  “I already survived one.”

  “You won’t survive two.” Sikes made his voice deadly certain. “Not from our weapons they’re as accurate as you report them to be. If they hit what they’re supposed to, this area’s going to be lousy with nuclear debris.”

  “We’re shooting a nuclear weapon?”

  He saw her go stiff under the sheet. “Not us. Conventional munitions only. But what’s stored in those weapons is dirty weapons, ma’am, real dirty. Some nukes, maybe some biological. Certainly some chemical ones. And they’re all capable of reaching the United States. You want to come back when it’s all over, hell, I’ll help you talk them into it.

  But for now, I think you’re going to want to be out of here when it goes down. At least long enough to find out what’s in those boxes.”

  “You saw my report?”

  The question surprised him, but not for long. He forced himself to sound calm. “It was used for an intelligence briefing, ma’am. I figure,” he said, an idea suddenly occurring to him, “that that’s what you intended. That wasn’t a mistake, was it? Getting all that in the background?”