Pamela was no longer sure either statement was true, and she’d made that clear to Keith Loggins during their last conversation.
Regardless of the political realities, she was finally on the last leg of her journey, itself an experience in the degree to which the two groups cooperated. Aguillar’s people had handled the seaplane flight from Venezuela to the Caribbean, while Leyta’s people manned the fishing boat now ferrying her into shore. As she understood it, her contacts within Cuba were almost exclusively Leyta’s people, a fact that caused her some degree of concern.
Well, no matter. A story was a story.
She heard it before she saw it, a brief whine on the edge of her consciousness, like a bothersome mosquito. In seconds it crescendoed to a shrieking scream, and then the boat in front of them exploded into flames. The captain of her vessel had barely enough time to slew the small craft violently to the right to avoid the wreckage and fireball.
A cacophony of swearing and exclamations, coupled with screams, exploded on her own craft. She stared in horror at the flaming wreckage, which was flung up into the air, paused at mid-trajectory, then made its comparatively slow descent back to the surface of the warm sea.
Her journalistic instincts kicked in, and she raised the minicam in her hand and pointed it in the general direction of debris, then passed back down to the burning spot on the ocean. Flames everywhere, hurting her eyes as they seared the night-adapted pupils, throwing oddly flickering shadows of goblins over the bulkheads of her craft. She watched it, caught it all on tape, and felt an absurdly inappropriate thrill that she was present to do so.
“Get below.” Leyta’s hand clamped down on her bicep.
He jerked her away from the railing and shoved her toward the cabin.
“I don’t know what’s happened who did you tell you were coming?”
“No one!” she said, with one eye still glued to the camera.
“Shut up and leave me alone.”
“No. Ten of my friends are dead, and you will not be the one to record it.” He shoved her toward the cockpit hatch.
She swung the camera around to film him. “What happened? Why did it explode?”
He stared at her as if staring at an alien being. “A missile,” he said finally. “The noise. I think it was. And where that one came from, there are probably others.”
The prospect of being trapped below decks, waiting unknowingly for an attack, was unappealing. No, more than that completely unacceptable.
She twisted away from Leyta’s grasp and ran to the stern of the boat, again aiming her camera at the burning wreckage. The vague outline of one side of the ship was now visible through the flames. The superstructure was completely gone. As her vessel drew away from it, secondary explosions probably gasoline tanks, one part of her mind noted dispassionately shook the air.
“We have to get away quickly. The authorities will be coming to investigate.” Leyta stared at her. “You will stay there no other parts of the boat, you understand? And no movement.”
She nodded, still filming the burning wreckage. What a scoop.
After the last flaming bit of wreckage disappeared from the sea, Pamela hunted down her equipment bag below decks.
She carefully stowed the camera, then extracted her second most critical piece of survival gear. She punched in Keith Loggins’s telephone number from memory.
“And your fiancee saw it?”
Senator Williams demanded.
Admiral Loggins moved restlessly in his chair. “So she said. She was calling from her cellular phone. I believe she’s off the coast of Cuba as we speak.” He didn’t believe that at allhe knew exactly where she was: on land in Cuba, a far different matter, and one he wasn’t willing to disclose. “She says she has tape, too, at least of the aftermath.”
Senator Williams groaned. “That’s all we need, a full picture of this U.S. mishap on ACN in the next hour. I’d better brief the President.
“You realize this supports the position I’ve held all along,” Williams continued. “Using a carrier in close like that is just too dangerous.
Accidents happen. Pilots get downed, and collateral damage is excessive. The carrier is a battle-ax, not a delicate political instrument. All we need there is the Arsenal ship. The mere threat of that valiant firepower will be sufficient, and it will be far less likely to cause international mishaps than a group of testosterone laden aviators playing grab-ass in the sky.”
Admiral Loggins wheeled on him. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I do.”
Senator Williams regarded him sardonically. “Once a jet jock, always a jet jock. We all know about your exploits during Vietnam, your career as a fighter jock, the times you were shot down. But that was then, this is now. The public is determined there will never be another Vietnam, and that means no screwing around with our nearest neighbor to the south. The Arsenal ship is the answer.”
“Didn’t you learn anything from Vietnam? I sure did. The first lesson is that D.C. can’t be in charge of targeteering.
It’s micromanaging and it won’t work. The on-scene commander has got to be free to choose his weapons, and that means having somebody with enough savvy to know how to do it. And that, in case you don’t understand it, means the carrier battle group. Besides, the Arsenal ship provides little capability to make the kind of instantaneous decisions that are needed in the air.”
“Like shooting down a fishing boat?” Williams let the question hang in the air.
“Our intelligence is better than it was in Vietnam,” Loggins countered.
“The on-scene commander can make the kind of decisions he needs to.”
“Which so far have led to one missing pilot, probably captured by the Cubans, and one dead fishing boat. A pretty impressive catch,” Williams responded sarcastically.
Williams stormed out of the room, heading for the Senate majority leader’s office. A small worry niggled at the back of his mind. Sure, this was an international incident in the making, but why had Loggins not worried more about the fact that his fiancee was on the other boat?
SEVEN
Pamela Drake glanced at the clock mounted on the cinderblock wall on the other side of the room. The minute hand quivered just millimeters away from the twelve. Good morning, she decided, not good afternoon. That would make her report sound all the more timely.
And timely it was. That they were here on a Cuban naval base had pissed her off at first. She’d blasted off at Aguillar, certain that he’d lied to her about getting the real story.
But his explanation had satisfied her and not even surprised the cynical part of her mind that always doubted the sincerity of any military organization. That the Cuban navy part of it, at least had cordial relationships with both Leyta and Aguillar made sense.
She ran her fingers one last time through the shining cap of brown hair that topped the face more Americans knew than that of the vice president. She took a deep breath, concentrated on centering herself, the normal routine for appearing on camera. Finally, as the minute hand clicked over to the upright position, she nodded at the cameraman.
“Good morning. This is Pamela Drake, reporting from Cuba for ACN.
This is a live report from the westernmost Cuban naval base. In keeping with my agreement with my host, I will not divulge any further details other than to say that the location of this particular installation is well known to the United States government.