October's Ghost

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  And with that there was nothing that could be done.

  The starboard gear assembly was on the downside of the rotation, meaning the propeller shaft was spinning over its top to starboard. As the gear slice came free, its teeth still enmeshed with those on the shaft, it was pulled under the shaft. But there was not enough room for the foot-diameter slab of metal to make it. With only a four inch clearance between the shaft and the polymer-coated deck, the gear was pulled into the inadequate space like a wedge, the power of thirty thousand horses ensuring an uneven match between force and matter. The sound of the event, louder than the fractured nut ricocheting through the engine room, was transmitted throughout the sub, causing brains to register the fact that something was very wrong. Before any heads could turn, though, another, more horrifying sound radiated from the back of the boat.

  The propeller shaft, continuing to turn, had nowhere else to go but upward as the gear was driven between it and the deck. A four-inch clearance expanded instantly to more than twelve as the ten-ton shaft broke free of the bearing rings that held it in place. Its forwardmost end, where the gear assemblies were attached, sprang up like the vaulted end of a fulcrum, lifting the eight-ton electric drive motor upward with it. At the top of the motor were stabilizer bars, looking much like extended shock absorbers, that helped dampen any motion of the machinery and held the unit in place. These bars had three inches of play, which was not enough to absorb the extra eight inches the unit was being forced to move. Their top ends transferred the force of the event, now exceeding a million-and-a-quarter foot-pounds of energy, to the number-eight structural ring, to which they were connected. Seventy-eight of these rings, over which an inch-and-a-half-thick skin of HY-80 steel was welded, formed the structure of the pressure hull. The number-eight ring, like all the others, was designed to withstand tremendous pressures squeezing it from all sides, but not a point impact of the magnitude being delivered. It was as if a mighty scissor jack had thrust upward against the ring. The result was a complete failure of the structural member, which cracked outward, separating the steel skin as it pressed toward the sea. The directional force continued for a millisecond more, expanding the rupture in the pressure hull, tearing the inner and outer skin of the Pennsylvania for a hundred feet along the starboard side of its topdeck as if a can opener had sliced through it.

  No emergency drills could have saved the sub or its crew. The seawater, under tremendous pressure at six hundred feet, sprayed through the ruptured hull, flooding all compartments from the missile room aft. The huge electric drive motor, lifted more than a foot off its base, came back down with a violence the deck and supports had never been intended to sustain. They failed completely, sending the unit crashing through to the bulkhead supports below. In the process the propeller shaft, free of any moorings, smashed around the engine room, impacting the steam turbine a few feet to port, knocking it off its supports and separating the steam pipes from their welded flanges that mated them to the reactor room. High pressure steam at 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit shot into the flooding compartment. Those who had survived the initial venting of the hull were burned to death without as much as a spark of flame.

  One compartment forward, in the reactor room, automatic controls registered the event and began to SCRAM—or rapidly shut down—the nuclear pile, but radiation was not what was to doom the Pennsylvania. The emptied steam pipes that fed the turbines one compartment back quickly overheated. Though they did not enter the reactor vessel, they passed side by side through the heat exchanger with the pipes that transferred the high-temperature coolant from the reactor. When the empty turbine pipes were doused with the ice-cold seawater flooding the reactor room, a vast quantity of steam was instantly generated, more than the confined space could handle. What engineers called an explosive overpressure event occurred. This ripped through the aft part of the sub, buckling the hull more than it already was and punching bulkheads fore and aft. The resultant overpressure blew watertight doors all the way forward through the control room just as the captain ordered the emergency buoy released.

  The command was never carried out. A tremendous pop shook everyone in the forward section of the sub, then a strange white wall of fluid poured through the doors facing aft and slammed into every living thing. Men were thrown forward as the water raced toward the nose of the sub.

  The entire process, from catastrophic failure to destruction, had taken under ten seconds. The Pennsylvania continued on course another two hundred yards before the weight of the water filling her hull overcame her momentum and stopped the big sub. As most of her weight was closer to the stern, she slid backward and down at an angle that grew ever steeper. She impacted the sea floor at a depth of 15,030 feet, her stern pointed almost straight down. Traveling at forty knots, the mass of the Pennsylvania drove the crumpled hull into the soft ocean bottom and collapsed the sub, bow upon stem, like an accordion.

  With that, the USS Pennsylvania had disappeared into the watery depths of the Atlantic for the last time, and the United States of America, which had counted itself lucky for more than three decades, had lost its first fleet ballistic-missile submarine in an accident at sea.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LIBERTAD

  There were ten of them, all dressed in the dirty blue coveralls that they wore each and every day in the execution of their duties at the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force Base near Santa Clara in the central part of the island nation. On evenings such as this they would routinely spend the six hours of their first duty shift cleaning and preparing the base’s twelve operative MiG-23 fighters for use the following morning. The likelihood that any would be taken skyward was rare these days, so the limits of their efforts were largely directed at keeping the aircraft clean and rust free. A pretty picture they would make, but the squadron—which had boasted sixteen functioning MiGs just a month previously—was supposed to be more than a showpiece in its intended role, something these ground crewman were, in a grand switch of motives, going to prevent from ever coming to fruition.

  In pairs they went to each aircraft, working as normal, cleaning debris from the landing gear and strut assemblies. The officer overseeing their work sat idly a hundred meters away in a straight-backed wooden chair that he leaned against a hangar’s outer wall. His attention was focused on one of the “unauthorized” publications so readily available in Santa Clara, particularly upon a pretty young woman whom the caption said was a frequent visitor to the sands of Playa la Panchita. From the absence of tan lines he was certain it was an accurate statement.

  But while the risqué pictures held his attention, the crews under his watch were able to spend just a short amount of time longer than normal at the front wheelwell of each MiG. In less than four hours their work was done, freeing the crews, half of whom were unofficial “replacements” for those who were not inclined to cooperate in the somewhat historic venture soon to begin, to spend some much needed additional time on the four Hind helicopter gunships based at Santa Clara. There they focused on the tail rotor assemblies, lubricating the exposed fasteners and checking for the required torquing on the bolts. When the desired tightness was achieved, they moved on to the repair shop to clean and secure their tools, most of which were specialized and irreplaceable, as was much of the machinery in the building.

  With a full shift of work behind them, the group, with the approval of their uninterested duty officer, proceeded to their barracks and, as every good soldier in the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces was expected to do, cleaned and prepared their personal weapons for use in any eventuality.

  This final task they completed with particular care and haste, knowing that a certain “eventuality” was soon to occur.

  * * *

  They called him Papa Tony. It was a term representative of respect more than lineage, though the blood that filled Antonio Paredes, Jr.’s veins was of the same land as his hosts. Yet his years were insufficient to allow for parentage of any of the men he was now with. They were all senior office
rs in the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces who had served their country with pride and distinction for decades, from a time before young Antonio had learned to walk. Some may even have taken up arms against his father in the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion. It was possible that one was even responsible for the elder Paredes’s death. But the past was simply history, Antonio believed, and it was time to write a new chapter for the books. Things changed, societies matured, and people who were once cattle in a pen had come to see the benevolent rancher as little more than a guide to the slaughterhouse. Yes, the past was very different from the present, except in one way that few would ever know. A very ironic and appropriate way. For the same reasons as his father, Antonio had returned to the land of his birth, the land his family had fled more than three-and-a-half decades before, to help bring freedom once again to a simple, beautiful people. And, as Antonio felt was a tribute to the father he never knew, he had come at the behest of the same, secretive American employer as his Papa Tony.

  “Papa, do you wish to watch?”

  Paredes turned toward the voice. It was Colonel Hector Ojeda, executive officer of the Second Mechanized Division, a unit located some twelve miles to the east at Falcon. It was a position he would occupy for fifteen more minutes. At that point he would become Colonel Ojeda, rebel officer and leader of the battle for his nation’s freedom.

  Ojeda held a pair of French-made night-vision binoculars out for the CIA officer, who took them and followed his host to the edge of the vegetation on the hill just four miles north of the Santa Clara airfield. They settled in among a sparse grove of palms that opened into a moonlit clearing where the rise sloped downward. There was no fear of detection. The unthinkable would never happen. All threats were outside the borders, across oceans. Akin to the American maxim of personal freedom and safety, the door was unlocked on this warm autumn evening.

  That was the essence of the plan to free Cuba.

  “Ten minutes,” Ojeda reported. He was a tall man, thin from head to toe, which would make him appear weak if not for the eyes. Bulging, brown on white, they were set in a gaunt face that showed a tired determination known only by those who had traveled a long road to an uncertain future. His frame, never beyond wiry in his fifty-nine years, had obviously suffered from the strain of the previous three months. So much planning, so many things to accomplish in the shadows. And at any time his actions could have been discovered, with only one result imaginable. It was that knowledge that had pushed the already driven Ojeda to secure an opportunity for the future with a ruthless abandon that had silenced many of those who would not join in the fight for freedom. The affair had changed him, and he knew it.

  Paredes had been changed, also. In his one month living among those who were about to inexorably alter their future, he had found an attachment to a place he had no memory of. It contradicted what he had been taught during his education in the United States about nature versus nurture. Where environment had shaped his being, it was this place, this land, that had formed it. And though the part he was to play, an officially deniable role as liaison between the rebel military commanders and Langley, was important, if small, he had come to realize that with success there would be a freedom of sorts for him personally, as well as for his hosts. In essence he was a thirty-eight year-old man who had come home.

  “Watch the line of aircraft,” Ojeda directed.

  Antonio braced himself against the coarse surface of a palm and brought the glasses to eye level, using his arms to form a sturdy triangle and steady the view. His left thumb activated the enhancement function of the binoculars, and a soft green luminescence escaped the viewport to paint the upper portion of his face with a glow that matched closely the color of the surrounding flora as seen in daylight.

  “How long now?” Paredes inquired as he slowly swept the twin rows of Soviet-built fighters.

  “Just a few minutes.”

  All was still on the tarmac. Nearly an hour past midnight nothing else would be expected. But shortly a display of ingenuity, determination, and deadly ability would be offered, not only for the eyes of Papa Tony, but for the eyes of his masters, for whom a final act of convincing was necessary before committing support to the rebellion.

  Antonio both heard and felt the breath of Ojeda on his neck. It surprised him some that the colonel chose not to watch the scene more closely, but then the man had lived it for so long. In each safe house—a generous term in a country where the accommodations depicted on Gilligan’s Island were ostentatious by comparison—he had been moved to, twelve in all, Ojeda had kept him intimately informed of the preparations and the participants who were signed onto the plan. So strange it was, Paredes had come to realize, that a man whom Ojeda and his comrades had respected for decades could destroy that trust and loyalty with such a minor act. They would have killed for Fidel Castro, but now they would kill to unseat him from power, from his throne of arrogance. The bullet that had killed General Eduardo Echevarria Ontiveros, hero of the Revolution and true leader of men, might just as well have been fired by volley at the presidente himself.

  But acts seen as insignificant by the mighty often propelled lesser men to counter the injustice they perceived with a fury never imagined. And fury was the proper word, for it was something Antonio knew was key to Ojeda’s being, and it was something to be revealed momentarily before his very eyes.

  The flashes were rapid in succession, like a string of noiseless firecrackers exploding to one’s front. The brightness flared the night-vision glasses and were compensated for automatically, the optics fully recovering by the time the sharp cracks reached Paredes and Ojeda four miles distant. A joyous yell erupted from beyond the grove of palms as the sound passed over the rebel command staff.

  Like a coach looking for evidence of mistakes or missteps on the part of his team, Paredes watched for several minutes as mayhem erupted on the base below. Pilots, alerted by the blasts and the subsequent alarm, ran from their quarters to the flight line where they stood, bewildered, as they stared at their suddenly grounded aircraft. To the west of the planes a flash erupted from the base’s maintenance hangar, followed quickly by a bright orange fireball that did not subside. Fingers of orange licked out of the half-open door and the shattered windows as equipment vital to the operation of the aircraft was consumed by the inferno. A few minutes later, as the Hind pilots and crew scrambled to their ships and took to the sky, the final blow of the opening was struck.

  Antonio lowered the glasses as obvious muzzle flashes erupted around and in the control tower. He turned to Colonel Ojeda, who stood in the same position as before, his eyes cast not upon the successful operation unfolding, but toward the sky almost straight up. “Sufficient for your government, Papa Tony?”

  Paredes smiled, wishing in vain that the cameras a hundred miles up could see the look in the colonel’s eyes, for no further confirmation of the viability of this rebellion would be necessary. “Ample, Colonel. It is a fair fight now.”

  Ojeda’s gaze came down upon the American’s satisfied face. At several other airfields across the country similar actions would be happening, effectively taking the Revolutionary Air Forces out of the fray. The skies would belong to no one. Still, it was a fact only of tactical convenience to the colonel. “Papa, I would fight this war with a stick, a stone, and the hate in my heart.” The expression on his face changed slightly, to something that seemed to perplex and slightly frighten the American. “It was fair when they had an air force. Now the battle is mine.”

  Grandiose, some would label the claim, but they were not standing in the shadow of the man who, as lit from above by the bright, full moon, resembled the earthly embodiment of the grim reaper. Antonio Paredes was, and he pitied the enemy, for any foe of this man was at a disadvantage simply by nature of his allegiance.

  Ojeda reached out and touched the American on the shoulder, leaving his hand there for a moment, conveying the gratitude that words would fumble over. Then he turned and went to his men, leaving P
aredes to stand among the palms that towered like sheltering sentinels over him. Activity on the base was picking up, with more flashes, more sounds, and the beautiful scenes of confusion as soldiers loyal to the government struggled to comprehend what had happened and where the enemy had come from. Ten men, Antonio thought. And Ojeda has thirty thousand. He could only smile at the thought of what was still to come.

  The liberation of Cuba had begun.

  * * *

  Deputy Director, Intelligence, Greg Drummond hated the hour. The sun was barely up when his CIA driver arrived at his suburban Virginia home, the crisp beauty of an autumn morning not yet fully realized. And it wouldn’t be for the man who headed the Agency’s Intelligence directorate. He had missed a slew of sunrises and sunsets in his eighteen years at Langley, half of those in the past six months, and he had begun to wonder if life was anything more than work marked at both ends by meals from the Agency’s mess.

  The drive in took thirty minutes, a little more than usual because some knucklehead had tried a right-side pass on a big rig and ended up transforming his forty-thousand-dollar Beamer into a thirty-thousand-dollar Beamer with a ten-grand repair bill attached. Drummond was deposited in the VIP area of the CIA’s underground parking garage and took the VIP elevator directly to the seventh floor, the home of the VIPs. Being a VIP had its pluses.