October's Ghost

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  But it was times like these that gave value to all the exhaustive efforts, particularly when a President was able to be witness to something historic that he might not have started but that he had offered assistance to. There were actually two such things happening; that which his NSA had taken from concept to reality, and that which the same man had no idea of. It was time to change that

  “Bud, I’m afraid we’ve left you out of something.”

  Left me out... Bud saw there was some regret in the President’s eyes, but more satisfaction. Merriweather had only the latter expressed on his face. Greg Drummond was without either, just a flatness to his expression. “What is that, sir?”

  “Operation SNAPSHOT,” the DCI answered for his boss. “The liberation of Cuba.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know this may be a little hard to fathom, but hear Anthony out, Bud. This was too good to pass up.” The President leaned to one arm of the chair, a single finger coming to his chin as he turned his attention to the DCI.

  Too good? Something in Bud clicked at that characterization. A quick look at the wooden DDI confirmed his intuitive addition of “to be true” to the phrase.

  “Some months back we received word from one of the Cuban-American exile groups that they had been contacted by a representative of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.” Merriweather stopped momentarily, as if there was nothing more to explain. “They wished our assistance in removing President Castro from power.”

  “What members?”

  “The leader of the rebellion is Colonel Hector Ojeda,” Merriweather answered. “Do you know who he is?”

  Bud nodded. Ojeda was probably the most highly decorated and best-trained officer the Cubans had. A veteran of Angola, the not-so-secret secret detachment sent to Afghanistan, and every special training program their former “brother Soviets” had to offer. He was the cream of a very sparse crop.

  “And to him you can add thirty-two thousand. Sufficient, wouldn’t you say?” the DCI inquired unnecessarily.

  “More than, actually.” Bud looked back to the President. “Sir, why was this kept from me?”

  “It is a CIA operation,” the DCI answered out of turn.

  Bud acknowledged the DCI with the briefest glance. It wasn’t from him that the NSA wanted an answer. “Sir?”

  “Bud, like Anthony said, this began as an Agency operation. The two ranking members of the Joint Select Committee have given the Congress’s stamp to it. My belief was that you had a full plate working with the Russians, and this really does not fall under your area of National Security.” The President saw his adviser’s jaw drop at that. “This is low risk, Bud.”

  “Sir, a war raging ninety miles from us is precisely what I see as in my domain. That is a national-security issue, with all due respect,” Bud said firmly. He had never backed down when he believed himself to be right in any disagreement with the Man. He owed the nation’s leader no less.

  “Your point is noted,” the President responded with no malice. He had expected his NSA to react just this way, which had partly influenced his decision to keep him from the initial stages. “It was my call, Bud.”

  “Understood.” Bud’s eyes swept over the DCI. A slight expression—never a smile—edged up from the wrinkled folds at his mouth’s corner. And your prompting. “But ‘low risk’ is not always as low as we’d like to believe.”

  “Our exposure here is one man. Anthony, if you would...”

  “Of course, Mr. President.” Merriweather faced the man he’d seen as his nemesis in the West Wing since day one, guessing correctly that James DiContino now was party to that analysis as well. “What the rebellious faction wanted from us was intelligence. The location and movement of loyalist forces once the fighting began, and similar reports. That was all they asked for, but with that they would be at a distinct advantage. To accomplish that, we attached a field officer to the rebel command staff some months ago. His job was first to validate the viability of the proposal—it would do us little good if this was all a crazy show to be put on by some disgruntled officers. His job now is to receive the reports from here—all the information is to be gathered by satellite reconnaissance, of course—and give them to the rebel command staff.”

  “And what prompted Ojeda to do this?”

  “The economy, the miserable living standards, among other things. But the execution of General Eduardo Echeverria Ontiveros appears to be the real spade that lit this fire.” The DCI could see recognition on the NSA’s face. “Castro was none too happy with his support of that Russian after the hijacking, you remember.”

  How could he ever forget? His baptism by fire. And the forced demise of the general, one of the more pragmatic and capable commanding officers the Cubans had, was easily reason enough to foment a revolt. Good soldiers were loyal to good, competent leaders, and equally disdainful of deskbound commanders who passed judgment upon them and their actions. Ontiveros might not have been a friend in the eyes of Cuba’s neighbor to the north, but he certainly was to the men who had served under him.

  “And what do we get from this? I mean other than a new leadership in Cuba...if the coup succeeds.”

  “It will succeed,” Merriweather said with an arrogant confidence, as though a suggestion that any other outcome was possible was somehow blasphemous. “And we were able to choose the new leadership.”

  “Choose?” Visions of Panama after Noriega flashed in the NSA’s mind. “How so?”

  “Bud, it’s not like that,” the President interjected. “It’s not some insertion of a puppet regime. The rebels agreed to accept civilian leadership drawn from the exile community here.”

  “And how were they selected?” Bud asked.

  “It was logical to choose members of the group contacted by the Cubans to serve in an interim government,” the DCI explained. “I brokered the arrangements personally with Jim Coventry.”

  He’s “Jim” and I’m still “James.” I see... “You told the secretary of state, but not me?” Bud sat back and blew out an exasperated breath. “Who else is in the loop?”

  “That’s it, until you brief Secretary Meyerson,” Merriweather said, passing a task rightly his own to the NSA. “We are going to need certain assistance from the military very shortly.”

  The “low” in low risk was rapidly losing its accuracy in describing what the NSA was being told. “Assistance.”

  Merriweather nodded. “Greg will fill you in after the presentation.”

  Drummond gave a courteous nod when his boss looked his way but said nothing. His place in this had been made perfectly clear without explanation.

  “And the purpose of this presentation?” Bud inquired, motioning to the case before the DCI.

  The President shifted forward in his chair. “Validation. I insisted that we have some proof that the coup could succeed beyond just the planning stages.”

  Someone was thinking half-smart, Bud thought. The Man was no slouch in the brains department. Maybe he’d looked at this all carefully enough to ensure that nothing stupid was being done. Maybe, he thought, looking as the DCI reached into the case. Hopefully.

  “Mr. President, are you ready?” Merriweather saw the chief executive nod, an anticipatory smile on his face, and laid out a series of four twelve-by-twelve-inch photographs.

  Bud leaned forward, as did the President after putting on the reading glasses he had come to hate.

  “Sir, these are images from a KH-12 pass two days ago,” the DCI began. “All four are of the military airfield near Santa Clara in the central part of Cuba. The first two are shots from about forty-nine degrees above the horizon. Distance is one hundred and seventy miles.” Merriweather directed the President’s attention to a line of aircraft obvious in the picture. “These are MiG Twenty-threes, all operational. This angle shows clearly their lineup, all on three good sets of landing gear.”

  Bud studied the images with his head and body cocked to the right. The shots were clear, with only
a hint of clouds that had been digitally removed, he suspected. “These are a combination IR and visible?”

  “Correct,” the DCI answered. He noticed the President shoot a quizzical look his way. “Sir, this is somewhat of a hybrid photograph. The satellite, as it came over the horizon, focused both its visible light sensors, the cameras, and the heat-sensitive receptors, what is called imaging infrared, on the airfield. Pictures, if you will, were taken by both systems in sync, then, once the images were downlinked, NPIC—that’s the National Photographic Interpretation Center—processed them together to enhance the portions of the visible light photos that were degraded by cloud cover and other atmospherics.”

  “I see,” the President said. “Go on.”

  The DCI jumped right back in. “The second pair of images are from a ninety-degree aspect—straight overhead. It’s a wider view of the airfield, so the same aircraft are visible in relation to the other facilities.”

  “What are these and these?” the President asked, pointing with his pen to two groups of what he surmised were aircraft.

  “These objects nearest the maintenance hangar, here, are cannibalized MiGs. They’ve had to strip perfectly good aircraft to keep the others up and flying.”

  “What’s their rate of removal from service been?” Bud asked.

  Merriweather turned to Drummond. “Wasn’t it fifty percent over the previous two years?”

  “That’s right,” the DDI confirmed. “At that rate they’d—”

  “That point is moot,” the DCI interrupted.

  Another look was exchanged between Drummond and Bud, this one not hinting at anything friendly or pleasant.

  “And the others, sir, are something we’ll touch on in a few minutes.” Merriweather motioned to the Oval Office’s television and video player, which he already moved to a position where the group, other than Bud, could watch it unobstructed. The NSA would have to look over his shoulder to see what was going on. “Before that, though, are these.”

  The President noted that the four photos the DCI had just laid before him corresponded in views to the ones just covered up. Bud noticed this, too, and something else. Damn.

  “Sir, these were taken from the same KH-12 just over an hour ago. Look carefully at the front of the aircraft in the low-angle views.”

  What Merriweather wanted the President to see was obvious. All twelve of the MiGs, while appearing intact, were nose-down on the tarmac. Some had odd-looking bulges in the area aft of the cockpit.

  “What was done here?” the President asked. “It looks like the front landing gear is gone, but I don’t see any other damage.” He looked alternately at Bud and the DCI.

  “Bud, you have extensive BDA experience from your Nam days, right?”

  “Right.” The word was spoken flat and quickly. He would have preferred no part in the validation of this, but that wish was now out the window. “Mr. President, what you see before you is artwork.” Bud swallowed imperceptibly.

  “Explain.”

  Both Merriweather’s and Drummond’s eyes were on him, though each subtly expressed very different emotions. The DDI’s showed empathy; the DCI’s, satisfaction.

  “What has happened is the same thing the Viet Cong sappers did when they snuck onto Tahn Son Nhut airbase back in ‘69. The aircraft’s nose wheels have been severed, actually the entire strut. Apparently the rebels were able to get their own people close enough to place a small amount of explosives on the upper portion of each strut. It can be placed up in the wheel well with a simple timer so that no one would notice it unless they took a real close look. That probably gave them time to get away or do other damage.”

  “So what does this mean? Are these planes out of commission?”

  Bud was hoping the DCI would answer the President but the silence dictated that he finish his line of thought. “Down for the count Mr. President. It’s a smart way to disable an aircraft. When the strut blows, the weight of the aircraft comes straight down. The strut then impales the fuselage and does major damage to the airframe and the innards. That’s the bulging you see at the back of the canopy there. The strut is pushing equipment up and to the sides and deforming the fuselage.”

  “But why not blow the planes up completely?” the President wondered. “Wouldn’t you get a bigger bang by tossing a bunch of explosives in the air intake? I admit I saw that in some shoot-‘em-up movie somewhere, but it seems logical. Couldn’t these be repaired?”

  “Not really, sir,” Bud responded. “If you’re trying to just take out a target, you want to use the minimum force necessary. As for repair—not with the reduced capability the Cubans are exhibiting. There’s not much left to cannibalize.” The NSA let it sink in, for himself as well as the President. “And the most intelligent aspect of this is the fact that the aircraft will be able to be repaired in the future, when they might want them. It appears the rebels have thought this out. They’re being very, very smart.”

  The President was obviously pleased, very much so. He allowed a slight smile, then looked to the DCI, whom he had had doubts about before being convinced to nominate him to fill the position. The critics, however, were being proved wrong.

  “You saw this in Vietnam, Bud?” the President inquired.

  The NSA nodded. “A very effective technique.”

  “Proven by the winners, you might say,” Merriweather commented.

  It was an effective jab, notching up Bud’s internal “Nam meter” to a place it hadn’t been in years. Veterans of the Indochina experience had dealt with crap of the sort the DCI had just dished out frequently in the years following the fall of the South, but not so much recently. Bud was fully aware that Merriweather, a fervent Yalie who had ironically held the History chair at Harvard in the late sixties, was no fan of the war. It was becoming more apparent now that, despite any effort to counter it, the DCI was never going to be a fan of Bud’s.

  “Well, not everybody who wins deserves to,” the President observed. “Anthony, what about these other aircraft? They look like helicopters.”

  “Mi-24 Hinds. Russian-built gunships. They’re wonderful against insurgents, like they proved in Afghanistan.”

  Jesus Christ! Bud was having trouble believing his ears. Merriweather was using positive examples of the Viet Cong and the Cold War era Russians to flavor his little performance.

  “They lost in Afghanistan, Anthony.” Bud’s retort was sprinkled with the barest amount of sarcasm.

  “And the mujahedeen were left fighting the crony government in Kabul for how long?” The DCI sniffed a quiet chuckle, with no smile attached to it. “Then again, we pulled out of South Vietnam also. But it didn’t take the North Vietnamese Army that long to take what they wanted after that.”

  He couldn’t stand it anymore. “Anthony,” Bud began, his head shaking slowly from side to side as a smile that could only be one of disgust came to his lips, “some of us were there, you know, unlike—”

  “Hold on. Hold on.” The President leaned farther forward, looking alternately at both of his advisers. Drummond had shifted back to an upright position on the couch. “We are here to discuss Cuba. Not Vietnam. Christ, I was barely out of high school when all that came to an end. But I am here now, and we may be able to do something to put one of those checks back in the ‘democracy’ column. All right?”

  To be castigated by the President was not entirely unheard of, but it had not happened to Bud. Worse yet, he deserved it, and he had allowed Merriweather to advance his apparent agenda that much further by behaving as a reactionary. Bud looked to the DDI but did not engage in any eyeplay to test the situation. There was no need to draw Drummond into this if he was able to maintain a working relationship with his boss. God dammit, Bud. Play smarter.

  “Go on, Anthony.”

  “Yes, sir. If you’ll watch the monitor.” The DCI lifted the remote from the coffee table and clicked on the video player, pausing it as soon as a picture appeared. The scene was in black and white, very high contr
ast, and was filmed from a very high angle. “This is a video record from the KH-12 on a pass over the same airfield as the stills, except this was timed to concur with the beginning of the attack. It was taken using the same type of IR imaging as the stills. Remember, this is in darkness, with low moonlight, so what you will see are the heat signatures of objects.”

  The President nodded while keeping his eyes on the screen.

  “Watch the left top corner of the screen.” The DCI started the video. From where he had indicated, several objects came into view, their forms growing in a white intensity as the camera slowly crossed the area. “Those are the Hinds. They’ve just fired up their engines—that’s the heat you’re seeing there as it bleeds off of the exhaust and radiates from the engine through the body of the helicopter. And there.” Merriweather noted several small white blobs crossing into the frame. “Those are people, probably soldiers, running to where the aircraft were blown.”

  Bud was watching with interest. As a spectator in a game where he should have been on the field, it was all he could do.

  “See how the heat signature is growing in intensity? They’re readying to take off.” Merriweather paused for just a moment, a look of anticipatory satisfaction obvious on his face. “Watch carefully.”

  Two of the Hinds moved slightly, a perceptible jump upward, then each turned to the right and began moving low above the ground. Suddenly, from the tail of each helicopter, within a second of each other, a bright flash and shower of white erupted, and instantly each Hind changed attitude and spun violently to the right. The motion ceased abruptly a few seconds later, an obvious crash.

  “It’s amazing to watch this without sound,” the President commented. “Can you imagine what that sounded like on the ground?”