by Ted Bell
“Where were these taken?” Hawke asked, flipping through the pictures.
“Predator spy photos, taken yesterday. About an hour after you identified the purchaser as Telaraña, we got a Predator in the air out of Gitmo. Look. There’s the southeast coast of Cuba. That’s the town of Manzanillo. On Guacanayabo Bay. There’s Telaraña, that small island off the coast, do you see it?”
“Yes,” Hawke said, rising and taking the pictures to the window where the light was stronger. “A lot of construction. Looks like barracks, warehouses. And, here, mobile scud launchers.”
“Yes. We think they’re recently purchased massive numbers of Russian scuds. There’s also a large white structure at the mouth of the river, do you see that?”
“Yes, it looks huge. What is it?”
“Navy at the Pentagon says it’s some kind of amphitheater. I think it’s a submarine pen disguised to look like a public building. Certainly wide enough for the beam of a Boomerang. We really don’t know, Alex,” the secretary said.
“The plot, as they say, sickens. The new Cuba—a dog or a rat in every pot and a half-billion-dollar invisible nuclear submarine in every garage.”
“Alex?” Something in her tone had changed.
“Yes?” He looked into her incredibly beautiful brown eyes for an extra second and then turned back to the window.
“Look at me.”
“Bad idea.”
“Turn around and look at me.”
“Terrible idea, Conch.”
As a charter member of the bad idea club, he knew one when he saw one coming. And his intense desire to unbutton that tight pink sweater was definitely not a good idea. He didn’t need this now. Especially now, in fact. He was in love. And the woman he loved was lying in the hospital. Christ.
“I can’t do it, Conch. I won’t do it,” he said. He heard a rustle of papers and folders being gathered up behind him. When he turned around, she was headed for the door.
“Conch?”
She paused and turned to look at him. The expression on her face was all business.
“The president has asked me to form an emergency task force to deal with this,” she said. “I’ve asked the two men you met in my office to head it up. He sent me here to ask you to be part of the team.”
“Consuelo, you know I’m always at your disposal. But if you look carefully at my résumé, you’ll see the telltale notation, ‘Doesn’t work well with others.’ ”
“I expected that. But this is obviously a matter of enormous consequence to the president. We simply cannot have this goddamn thing floating around out there, a couple of miles off Miami Beach. He is deeply appreciative of your stunning success in the Caribbean. Hell, we all are.”
“He was kind enough to call.”
“You found out who bought it. Now all we’ve got to do is find and neutralize the sonofabitch. I promised him I’d secure your help. See it through to the end.”
“Really? That’s a fairly staggering thing for you to do, Conch.”
“Isn’t it? I take so much for granted. I just never learn.”
“Conch, listen. I was a sorry little shit, dreadful. Forgive me one day?”
“Yeah, well, I hated the way we ended. You caught me looking, I’ll give you that much. No warning signs. Nothing. It really hurt, okay? I felt like you never even gave me a chance. Gave us a chance.”
“Yes. Well, if you really think about it, we never—”
“Please shut up, Hawke. You’re really crappy at this kind of stuff.”
Alex had no reply for that.
“What’s your schedule look like?” she asked, all business once more.
“I’m headed right back down to the Exumas. Vicky’s had a mild concussion and could use a couple of weeks away from her office anyway. I’m taking her to the islands for two weeks aboard Blackhawke.”
“Lucky girl.”
“I’m flying down this afternoon. When I get there, I’m your man. Whatever I can do. Just don’t drag me into another one of those bloody task force meetings.”
“Remember what you did at the last one?”
“No. I try to forget these things.”
“Halfway through, you stood up and announced that, while you were enjoying the meeting immensely, you had to leave because you had a leg of lamb in the oven.”
“Ah, yes. Mustn’t overcook lamb. Quite a good one, wasn’t it?”
“Okay, my man.” The secretary of state grabbed her coat from the back of a chair and headed for the door without looking back.
“ ’Bye, Conch.”
“Scoot over and borrow a cup of sugar anytime,” she said, pulling the door closed behind her.
31
Manso and his two brothers, Carlos and Juanito, stood together at the very end of a long jetty. Waves were breaking over the rocks, soaking the three men to the skin. There was no moon and no stars, only the raging sea. It was a miserable Cuban night. It was a magnificent Cuban night.
Manso, shivering in the cold rain, was aglow inside. He’d done it. They had all done it. The country would soon learn that a new Cuba was about to be born. Right now, looking at their exuberant smiles, he felt like this small band of brothers were the three happiest men in all of Cuba.
They stood on the concrete jetty, just at the base of a newly installed red channel marker. Every three seconds it flashed, splashing the three men with brilliant red light. A green marker flashed at the end of the other jetty, a halo of light some two hundred yards across the mouth of the river in the darkness.
It was almost midnight and raining hard, but they didn’t care. In the long, tortuous history of their country, this was a moment of historic importance. The de Herreras brothers were euphoric as they peered through the slashing rain, out across the black water.
“Anything?” Manso asked.
“I thought I saw something,” Carlos said, “but I think it’s only salt water in my eyes.” He took a swig from a silver flask and stuck the container back inside his jacket.
“You’re going to see something, mi hermano,” Juanito said, laughing and clapping him on the back. “You are definitely going to see a great big something!” All three men had night-vision binoculars hanging from their necks.
Nothing.
“The television was a disaster,” Manso said, after a few more moments of scanning the black horizon with his binoculars. “He was a wild man, even with the sedatives. I had the announcer say that he was rescheduled for tomorrow. I don’t think he’s going to cooperate.”
“Who cares?” Carlos asked. “He’s irrelevant. Right now, all the Cuban people know is that he missed a telecast. Unfortunate. But remember that they saw him at the Yacht Club only this morning. The Granma reporter was there, so it will be in the paper. If he ultimately refuses to go before the cameras, so what? You and Fulgencio will announce the change of government and that’s the end of it. Everything else is accomplished.”
“It’s better if Fidel does it, Carlitos,” Juanito insisted. “Easier for all of us. In the long run, the people won’t care. But, for now, I—”
“Listen. I have an idea,” Manso said. “I was talking after supper to the video technician. He tells me we can make him say whatever we want.”
“Of course we can always do that.” Carlos laughed. “Rodrigo and his silver scissors can make anyone say anything.”
“I don’t mean that way, Carlitos,” Manso said, looking at his crazy brother Carlos with eyes like black stones.
“You mean there is another way?” Juanito asked.
“There is a way to digitally alter his speech and lip movements,” Manso said. “As long as it’s kept very short.”
“How short?” Juanito asked. “You mean, like, ‘I quit, here’s the new guy’?” He laughed and took another pull on his flask.
“My God, look at that,” Carlos said. “Look!”
“Turn on the lights!” Manso said. Carlos flipped a switch mounted on the base of the channel marker and mass
ive banks of floodlights above them lit up the storm-torn night.
All three raised their binoculars and aimed them in the direction Carlos had pointed.
“There!” he said. “See it?”
“Where? Oh ... Mother of Christ!”
Out of the sea came the head of the monster, black and knife-edged, its V-shaped snout spewing not fire but boiling white water as it rose ever higher into the rain-whipped skies. It was a dull deadly black, looking like some evil engineer’s nightmare machine. There was in fact no more efficient killing device on earth.
“I told you you were going to see something, my brothers!” Juanito shouted. “Oh, my God, look at this thing! Have you ever seen anything so huge?”
The deadly thing was still rising, a froth of white water pouring off the sleek, sharp-angled sides of its twin swept-back hulls and diving planes. Then that amazing snout came crashing down into the sea and the submarine surged toward the jetties. It was immense.
Water broke over her V-bow. They heard an alarm and saw something rising slowly from the forward-most part of the hull, another sharply angled shape with faint lights glowing from within. Then the structure was looming above the decks, and they understood at once that this was the retractable conning tower. After a moment, they could see the small black silhouettes of men begin to appear at the very top.
A powerful searchlight on the sub’s tower was illuminated and swept back and forth across the river’s entrance.
Manso couldn’t make out any faces, of course, the men were just black figures at this distance, but he knew the identity of one of them. Then he caught a face in his powerful night-vision glasses.
“Commander Nikita Zukov,” Manso said under his breath. “Welcome to Cuba. We’ve been expecting you.”
The three brothers embraced, rain splashing on their faces. It was a moment they seemed to have been imagining forever. But their imaginations had been capable of nothing so grand as the events of the day and this sight and this historic night.
The mammoth black-winged creature from the deep was now entering the mouth of the river. It was the most stunning thing Manso had ever seen. He waved at the men atop the conning tower and they returned his salute.
“Well, my brave brothers, I have a question for you,” he said, gathering them together. “Walk with me.”
Arm in arm, they started walking back along the jetty, toward the sub pen. They wanted to be inside the newly constructed pen with the construction crews and all the on-shore support teams when the sub made its dramatic appearance.
“Just one little question,” Manso said, looking back at the sub sliding majestically toward them.
“Sí, Manso?” they replied in unison.
“I want to know, my brothers, exactly how does it feel to be a super-power?”
Laughing, the three men raced ahead of the submarine back towards the pen. The huge doors were sliding open, revealing the cavernous interior. Light poured out and so did many of the workers, charged with excitement at the sight of the approaching sub.
It was hard to say who was more excited, the Cubans or the Russians. There were over a hundred Russian electronic engineers, machinists, plumbers, electricians, and various nuclear technicians. They’d been working side by side with the Cubans for months, building the necessary machine and tool shops it would take to support such a sophisticated nuclear submarine.
As the giant sub finally eased into the wide mouth of her slip, there was a deafening roar as the men surged down the floating docks running along each hull, cheering wildly.
Commander Nikita Zukov stood atop the towering sail of his submarine, surveying the sea of activity taking place all around him. He had his hands over his ears to block out the terrible sound. It wasn’t the sound of the arc welders or the steelworkers still putting the finishing touches on the sub pen that bothered him. It was a small orchestra struggling through yet another rehearsal of the Cuban national anthem.
The band was practicing for the dedication ceremony. They stood at the end of a long concrete pier, only twenty feet from where the sub was moored. Commander Zukov thought that if he had to listen to one more stanza, he might well go insane.
“Not bad, not bad,” Admiral Carlos de Herreras said in Spanish. “I think by the time of the May Day ceremony, they’ll be perfect.” Zukov, who spoke fluent Spanish, looked at the man to see if he could possibly be serious. He was.
Zukov’s father had been a Soviet navy “adviser” to Cuba and had married a Cuban woman. So he’d grown up in a house where everyone spoke both Spanish and Russian. Born in Havana thirty-five years ago, he had not been in Cuba in many years. He was ten years old when his father had taken the family back to Moscow. He was accepted at the Naval Academy at eighteen, and became a submarine officer, gaining command of his own boat by age thirty.
Zukov’s Cuban background accounted for the fact that he happened to be standing here instead of any of a dozen former Soviet sub commanders vying for the job. He knew the language and the culture. He knew and loved the people. He had served his country with great distinction. And he’d never forgiven the politburo for their betrayal of his homeland. And his navy.
“The band, they sound pretty good to you, Commander?” the Cuban admiral asked him.
“Symphonic,” Zukov replied, straining to be heard over the orchestra, the arc welders, and the steelworkers.
A crew was already painting the sub’s new name on both the starboard and portside flanks of the gleaming black hull.
Zukov recognized the new name instantly.
José Martí.
Named in honor of the great patriot who had liberated Cuba from Spain after a long bloody war, the José Martí was a splendid symbol of the new Cuba. The excitement inside the submarine pen verged on hysteria. Flags and bunting hung from every corner of the building in preparation for the celebration of May Day, the great Communist holiday, just three days hence. The mood inside was frantic, but festive.
One man had started whistling the “Mango” melody and soon the whole construction and support battalion was singing the ironic lyrics at the top of their lungs.
The mango, the mango, even though it is green, it is ripe and ready to fall ...
Mercifully, the swelling voices drowned out the band.
Admiral Carlos de Herreras, CNO of the Cuban navy, and his two brothers had boarded the sub soon after Zukov guided it expertly up the narrow shoaled river and into its slip. After the sub was properly moored and her propulsion systems shut down, Zukov had welcomed them aboard. He had offered them some chilled vodka in the wardroom, then given them the official guided tour, stem to stern.
Although their questions were outrageously naive, it was obvious the Cuban officers were more than delighted with their new toy. They were giddy with excitement, and hurried from one end of the boat to the other, laughing with glee.
The Cubans were especially excited, he noticed, when they entered the starboard hull compartment where, in their silos, twenty gleaming warheads sat atop twenty ballistic missiles. Over on the port hull, a matching set of twenty more. With forty warheads, you could blow up the world. No one had yet told Zukov what his first mission would be, and he had only a rough idea of the primary targets. But the very thought of going to war in such a magnificent machine sent an electric charge racing through him. A feeling he hadn’t experienced since the glory days of the Cold War.
The commander’s Russian crew of one hundred thirty men, all former submariners under his Cold War command, were also in a jolly mood. All of them were now, like Zukov himself, mercenaries. And all of them, after a frozen winter in Vladivostok, were equally ecstatic at the very idea of a shore leave on the beautiful tropical island of Cuba.
For Zukov, this return elicited deeper emotions.
Zukov had been deeply humiliated when the Soviet empire collapsed. As a naval officer in command on an Akula, he’d spent his entire life playing undersea cat-and-mouse with the Americans. Endless days and nights
rehearsing for a war that would never get fought. He’d spent months under the polar ice cap, stalking the SSN George Washington, praying for any excuse to engage. Once he had tracked the carrier John F. Kennedy for weeks, staying dead astern of his prey, so that the signature sound of his screws went completely undetected by enemy sonar. All this, at a time when the ultimate weapon, his new command, Borzoi, was still on the drawing boards.
Like many of his warrior comrades, he was bored to stupor with the decade or so of “peace” following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
On a purely personal level, Commander Zukov was happy just to return to his homeland. Memories of his beautiful birthplace haunted him still. On a professional level, he was ecstatic at the prospect of killing a whole lot of Americans.
He sensed in the wild-eyed Cuban admiral, Carlos de Herreras, a kindred spirit. He’d seen the man in the missile compartment out of the corner of his eye. He had been rubbing his hands together gleefully, almost maniacally.
Bloodlust. He knew it well, for it coursed through every vein in his body.
32
“Hey, Doc, you awake?”
“Alex? Yes, I guess so. What time is it?”
“I don’t know. A little before midnight, I think. Sorry. I just need to—no, don’t turn on the light. It’s all right.”
Alex had temporarily given Vicky her own stateroom in the vain hope that she might get more rest the first few days. He’d promised himself he’d stay away from her for at least three days. He hadn’t even made it through the first night.
“Alex, your hand is freezing. You’re trembling. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry to bother you. I got up to use the loo and—sorry—can I climb in with you?”
“Of course you can, darling. Here, let me move over.”
“Thank you. Oh, God, you feel warm.”
“You’re trembling all over!”
“I know. It’s the strangest thing. I think I passed out. I went to my stateroom right after we—we said good night. Went right to sleep, too, out like a light. Something woke me up. A bad dream maybe. Anyway, I was looking in the mirror over the basin and then—I woke up on the floor.”