Ten minutes later, they were ready. She took a deep breath, made the last cursory pass of fingers through hair, and nodded.
“This is Pamela Drake, reporting live from western Cuba.
We have just received notification that the United States intends to execute a tactical strike on Cuba. While no doubt one of the factors that figured into its planning was minimizing collateral damage, my sources here tell me there is little chance the United States will be able to achieve that objective.”
She took a deep breath. Her voice felt unexpectedly shaky this was going to be harder than she thought. She looked upward, wondering if a satellite was staring down on her as she taped this scene.
“This missile installation will undoubtedly be first on the United States’ target list. As you can see, I am standing only fifteen yards away from what is probably the aim point. My sources here inform me” she paused, taking a moment to make eye contact with the cameraman and nod at him, putting him on alert that something unexpected would happen” that I will not be allowed to leave this area until the attack is over. Isn’t that correct. Colonel?”
She smiled approvingly as the cameraman swung around to get a shot of her senior-most guard.
The Cuban officer appeared startled, and his face contorted in a flash of fury. “This was not part of” From off camera, Pamela persisted.
“Isn’t that correct?
You’re leaving me here as a hostage or as the first civilian collateral damage. How can you justify that, given your party’s consistent insistence on human rights policies in Cuba? Doesn’t using foreign nationals as hostage shields, as was done in Desert Storm, cast doubts on the legitimacy of your claims to represent the real Cuban interests?”
The colonel covered the distance to the cameraman in five quick steps.
He yanked the video cam out of the man’s hands and threw it to the ground, then stomped on it. Pamela could hear delicate mechanical structures twisting, cracking, and snapping.
As though nothing had happened, she held the microphone back up to her mouth. “This is Pamela Drake, no longer reporting live from Cuba.”
“Come!” The colonel walked over to her, grabbed her roughly by the upper arm, and started steering her back toward the battered jeep.
“What? You’re not leaving me here?”
He smirked. “And this is why women should not be involved in military planning. There is no further need for that. Your live report convinced them that you were here, and the satellite undoubtedly confirmed it. They may see us move you, but they won’t take the chance that it’s permanent. If they shoot now, they must do so believing that they will kill you.”
The ocean churned against the carrier, disrupted in its orderly sea state two march toward the coast by the presence of the massive gray hull. While the carrier barely deigned to acknowledge the long, slow swells, the SEALs Special Forces boat tethered to the aft landing platform was another matter.
“Catch.” Sikes heaved his backpack down into the boat, flexed his knees, and leaped lightly from the stable carrier into the pitching boat. He took the impact mostly in his knees, consciously keeping his body loose and relaxed as he hit, sticking the landing like an Olympic gymnast.
“Catch, yourself,” Huerta snapped, thrusting the pack out toward him.
“Back in the old days” “I know, I know you weren’t sissies back then,” Sikes interrupted, taking the pack. He slipped his arms through the strap, buckled the waistbelt, then turned back up to face the admiral on the platform. “We’re ready. Admiral.”
Batman nodded. “Get some good pictures. I want to be able to send something home besides postcards from the ship’s store.”
“You’ve got it, sir.” Sikes turned to the rest of the boat crew and assessed their readiness one last time. Everything was on board it had to be. There was no running back to camp during the middle of a mission to retrieve forgotten batteries or repair parts for neglected equipment. Satisfied with the still, taut readiness he saw in his teammates, he made a sharp hand motion to the coxswain.
The low thrum of the engine increased slightly, but not much, since every orifice was sound-muffled. The engine noise was barely audible over the sound of water slapping against the carrier, but that would change all too soon. As soon as they put some distance between themselves and the massive mother ship, every decibel of noise would increase the possibility that they would be detected.
Sikes turned back toward the carrier, snapped off a last sharp salute at the admiral, then settled into his seat. There was no need for further orders. The mission had been thoroughly briefed, just as thoroughly talked through and committed to memory. The team was working like a well-oiled machine.
Twenty minutes later, they were four thousand yards off the coast of Cuba. The sky was just starting to darken in the east, and shadows were creeping away from the buildings he saw ashore. A few guards walked the pier, and there was little chance that they hadn’t seen the gunboat. Would they do anything about it? That was the key question.
Their best estimate had been no. The Cubans weren’t likely to want to provoke an incident just then.
Fine. So much the better. As soon as he established for certain that the Cubans had seen them, they’d head back to the carrier.
And if the Cubans began mobilizing to repel a SEAL force coming ashore on the southern coast of Cuba, even better. Because coming ashore there was the last thing any one of them intended.
Pamela had just started dozing when the sound of her door opening snapped her awake. She resisted the temptation to rub at her eyes, tried to discipline her face into an expression of watchfulness. The last thing she wanted was for the Cuban men to suspect she was tired.
But, oh. Lord, wasn’t she? The last few days, the constant travel at night, the confrontation with the colonel earlier today at the missile launcher it had all taken its toll. After the brutal execution of her cameraman, she’d slipped into a state that wasn’t quite insanity or rationality. It was somewhere in between, a state that mostly consisted of waiting for the world to deal out its next brutal shock.
The colonel stepped into the room, as sharp and nattily dressed as he’d ever been. The hours that had passed seemed to have had no effect on him, hadn’t even darkened his jaw with a five o’clock shadow. She felt his eyes roam over her, note the wrinkles in her clothes and the expression in her face, and she saw a trace of amusement.
“The waiting is almost over, madam.” An odd note of formality was in his voice.
She stood, ignoring the odd popping in her left knee.
“You’re shooting the missiles?”
He shook his head. “No, certainly not. I’ve told you before, Cuba is a peaceful nation. No, it is your countrymen they’re planning on coming ashore. I want you to be there to witness it” “How?”
He stepped into the room, walked slowly to her side, and grasped her gently by the elbow, his fingers brushing across the bruises he’d left there earlier that day. “You’ll know when we get there. Not before.”
“My camera,” she began.
“Has been replaced, with a more reliable operator.” A small sneer tugged at his lips. “You, my dear, are professional enough to work around any technical flaws, I hope.”
“But where are we going?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
“Here it is,” he said as the jeep ground to a shuddering halt.
“Move quietly. No more surprises.”
Covering ten miles along the rough, potholed roads in an ancient jeep without any apparent suspension had taken its toll on her. Every muscle in her body felt as if it had been stretched past any reasonable limits, and her legs felt shaky as she tried to stand. She held on to the side of the jeep, took a deep breath, and tried to gather her strength before attempting a few steps.