“No, Admiral, it’s just that sir, with the Arsenal ships,” Bird Dog plunged on, trying to feel the raw confidence he always felt in the air, “maybe part of our problem is simplified. This conflict with Cuba-it’s a political issue, not a military one. If JCS-hell, even the president does the actual launch planning and weapons firing, doesn’t that take us off the hook for some of this?”
Batman stood, his face livid. “Ask Major Hammersmith if this is a political problem.” He strode out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
COS glared at Bird Dog again. “You just don’t listen, do you?”
50 Miles North of Cuba Thor was riding low in the water, his body sprawled out across the barely inflated flight suit, his face just out of the water. After six hours of trying to catch the life raft, he’d given up. He was floating on his back, the hard summer sun beating down on it as it had earlier on his front. Saltwater licked at the cuts on his face and body, the sting now fading below the level of perception.
The sea was still boisterous, throwing him up and down in a sickening seesaw over broad, flat roller snot the angry lashing of a storm at sea, but more like the exuberant playfulness of a child much larger than its peers.
He heard it before he saw it, a harsh, mechanical pounding at odds with the natural sounds of the wind and the waves. He tried to prop himself up, plunging his hands deep into the sinking flight suit, straining to see over the swells. A ship, it had to be. For a moment, he felt an irrational surge of hope that it was one of the American destroyers, detached from the battle group. It was possible, wasn’t it? Surely they’d been looking for him for at least twenty-four hours.
Even as he thought it, he realized it couldn’t be. A destroyer close enough to hear would have been easily visible, even for a man plunging from trough to crest over the waves.
A smaller boat, then any boat, he didn’t care. Anything to get out of the ocean. In the last four hours, he’d seen a dorsal fin pop up at irregular intervals in the surrounding water. Once, he’d thought he’d felt something brushing at his leg, and it was only by the most forceful act of will that he had not panicked.
One moment the sea was empty, the next he had company. The fishing boat was hardly impressive by any standards, but to Thor it was the most wonderful sight in the world. The hull had been white once, although it had faded to some colorless shade speckled by seagull droppings and scars. The superstructure looked rickety, as though it were shifting back and forth independently of the hull. Two large booms trailed out from behind, supports for the massive fishing nets the boat would be dragging behind it.
“Hey! Hey, over here!” Thor raised himself as far out of the water as he could and started waving his arms frantically, pumping his legs to lift his upper torso out of the water. Damn the sharks if he didn’t get this boat’s attention, in another couple of days it wouldn’t matter.
At first he thought they hadn’t seen him. The boat continued on a steady course, the noise of its diesel engines growing louder. Thor sucked air into his lungs, took another deep breath, and then screamed with all of his might, “Over here!”
Some vagary of the wind picked up his words and wafted them over to the fishing boat Just before he slid down into another trough, Thor saw one of the men look up sharply, then approach the rail to scan the ocean in his direction. The seconds before he slid up to the top of another wave were the longest ones of his life.
When the boat came into view again, he saw that it had changed course.
Its silhouette had shortened and narrowed, indicating that it was now bow-on to him. Thor was too dehydrated to cry, but he’d never felt more like it in his life.
Five minutes later he was on the deck of the fishing boat staring into four brown, impassive faces and wishing he had taken Spanish in high school instead of Latin.
“Muy interesante,” Santana murmured. He tapped a message with his finger, then glanced across the room at his companion. Libyan Colonel Kaliff Mendiria showed no reaction. “It could be that this is the final element of our plan.
God flies, does he not?” Santana said, intentionally goading the devout Muslim.
Tall, too tall for a Cuban, reaching almost six feet in height, Mendiria was a peculiar dusky color. Brown without looking Cuban, dark without looking black Santana tried to place the coloration and drew a blank.
The Libyan’s hair was short and dark, straight from the looks of it, and clipped close to his head. A few gray patches showed through in odd spots on his head. Not gray from aging, but the peculiar patterning of hair growing back in after a war injury. The Libyan’s face was pockmarked, dominated by a massive nose slightly off center, and a too-full lower lip. The eyes were a startling yellow-green, almost luminescent under anything other than bright sunlight.
The skin around Mendiria’s mouth whitened slightly as his muscles clenched. “As Allah wills,” he said sharply. “It does not matter what happens with this pilot. Our plans are already in place.”
“But don’t you see?” Santana pressed. “The Americans have an obsessively sentimental attachment to their military personnel.
Remember the forces that were downed during their Desert Storm fiasco?
Their pictures were in every newspaper, on every television station for hours on end.
They will be very interested in the fate of this one pilot.”
Mendiria snorted. “If they find out you have him. If you had a proper security program in place, that would not be possible. Now, however, your headquarters leaks like a sieve.”
Santana bolted to his feet. “A sieve that Libya has found more than useful in the past,” he thundered. “Remember, my friend, it was your country who approached us.”
“As though you could have survived without the Soviet money,” Mendiria responded sharply. “Look around you.
Every bit of this building and most of your people were bought and paid for. After centuries of sucking the Soviet’s tit, you needed us.
Needed us more than we needed you.
Without us, you have two choices: anarchy under your good friend Leyta’s leadership or lapdog of the Americans.”
“Bah! Having Libyan troops on Cuba poses more risk to us than it does to you. And the stupid fools on that fishing boat if he heard them talking, there’s every chance that he knows they’re not all Cubans.”
Mendiria raised a lazy hand at the agitated Cuban. “It matters not.
Your next shipment of farm equipment is on schedule, just as we planned.”
“And the only crops it will ever grow are graveyards,” Santana said.
He fingered the sling bolstering his right arm, a reminder of the ejection that had saved his life. It was time America took Cuba just a bit more seriously. “By bringing those missiles to bear on the U.S. just eighty miles away, we can force the President to lift the trade embargoes that now cripple us. With a fair opportunity to sell our agricultural and crop products, Cuba will enter the next century as a great island nation.” He saw the look of amusement on Mendiria’s face.
“Do not laugh,” he said, pointing one finger at the Libyan. “England ruled almost half of the known world at one time. A nation not so much larger than Cuba ruled your own people, as a matter of fact. Have you forgotten so soon how powerful an island nation can be, protected from enemies by the sea?”
“My people will not be the problem,” the Libyan said softly, cold rage growing in his eyes. “But you you little fool. At least next time consult me before you do something rash. Like shooting down any American planes.”
“That was not rash. That was merely payback.” Santana smiled. “And more will follow before I’m satisfied.”