“Our conditions are too rough for you?” he inquired solicitously.
“But surely you can continue another hour or so? Especially since this is the most significant story since Desert Storm.” He put one hand out to steady her.
She jerked away. “I’m fine,” she said. Her voice was strong, belying her weariness. “But you still haven’t explained what we’re here for.”
He turned away from her, pointing out to sea, deliberately exposing his back to her. “There. They’ll come ashore from that direction.”
“Who will?”
“SEALs, I think. Or maybe Rangers. Either one it will be Special Forces of some sort.”
“How do you know?”
He turned back to her. With an air of infinite patience, he spread his hands out in front of him, palms up. “Because they were sighted to the south earlier this evening,” he said slowly, as though explaining to a child. “All of our forces on alert there saw them.”
She shook her head, trying to clear out the cobwebs and make sense of his words. If the Special Forces had been sighted to the south, then why were they expected here? It didn’t make she nodded as a trickle of adrenaline energized her thought processes. Of course. What had Tombstone always told her? That the best operation begins with an effective deception.
“So they won’t come ashore there,” she said finally, starting to follow his reasoning. “Because they’re very, very good at what they do. And if they intended to approach from that direction, they would not have been seen. Is that it?”
He nodded. “Perhaps you understand more than I believe.
I will have to remember that.” He turned back to his soldiers and rattled out a harsh stream of commands, the words barely understandable for the speed. She saw men move quickly in response, unpacking an array of equipment from the back of a deuce-and-a-half that had followed them down the rutted road. Metal stanchions, a bar of lights, she realized suddenly. They were an older, less sophisticated version of the very setup she used when reporting from the field. But surely they wouldn’t “I think you will be able to get some exceptional footage of this encroachment on Cuba’s sovereign soil,” he said, motioning to his aide. “Now let’s get you in position. After all, what do they say in America? The show must go on.”
“Hurry up and get back before I run out of gas,” the SEAL at the aft end of the boat grumbled.
Sikes glanced up at him from his position in the water, clinging to the side of the RHIB. “You know what the plan is. If we’re not back in three hours, you scoot back to the carrier. You got that?”
“Yeah, yeah.” The assent was perfunctory. Both men knew that, despite his orders, the SEAL would no more leave his station before the team returned than any one of them would leave a comrade ashore. Giving orders was one thing making sure they were obeyed was another. And Sikes wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
“Let’s go, then.” Sikes slipped his mouthpiece into his mouth and let himself slip below the surface of the water. As the sea rushed up over his mask, he saw the dim forms of the rest of his squad forming around him. The only light was from dim stars overhead and the glowing combination watch and compass on each wrist.
They formed up quickly, each man conducting a last-minute check for safety on his partner, then broke into a single-file line to make their approach to shore. After the first few minutes, Sikes settled into the gentle rhythm. It was barely two miles inland, an easy swim in these waters with flippers and masks. The oxygen tank on his back would be more than enough. Getting in wasn’t the problem getting out was.
“Colonel, I have them.” The Cuban enlisted specialist spoke quietly, a note of excitement in his voice. He motioned toward his screen. “A heat spot.”
Pamela followed the colonel over to the equipment mounted on the ancient jeep. “What are we looking at?” she asked.
“One of the latest advances in technology, my dear.” He pointed to the small screen, which displayed various shades of gray. “It’s a thermal imaging sensor. Superb for noting differences in the heat surface of the water.”
“You can see swimmers?” She hated herself for asking the question as soon as she asked it. Of course they could that was the purpose of this whole evolution.
The colonel reached out and gently touched four white spots on the screen. They almost looked like background noise, and it was only after extended observation that one became aware that they were consistently moving across the screen in a pattern and weren’t part of the random noise generated in the moonless night by the cooling ocean.
“Just one squad more than enough for what they wished to accomplish.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked calmly, dread trickling into her heart. She’d seen war, she’d seen conflict, and she’d seen death and would again, if she ever survived this venture. But she’d never been on the other side, watching her countrymen cold-bloodedly murdered.
“You’ll see.” The Cuban colonel smirked. “It will not involve casualties not unless they provoke us by coming ashore. A peaceful, yet highly effective demonstration of Cuban military capabilities, one they will not forget quickly.”
As the gentle swells turned to chop nearer to shore, the SEALs closed up again, pausing to take their bearings.
According to each of their chronometers, they were exactly on course, creeping in toward land along the least guarded section of the coast.
Another ten minutes and they’d be in.
Sikes motioned to his fellows to stay below water, and gently kicked himself up to the surface to take one last sighting. The landmarks were thoroughly embedded in his memory, as was every target point.
Still, it never hurt to be certain.
He let his head poke up above the surface of the water, maintaining neutral buoyancy with gentle flicks of his flippers. He lifted himself up on the next swell and stared inland, trying to pinpoint the tall tower that was the first landmark. Within a few seconds, he knew he was Kicked.
Lining the shore from one end of the insertion point to the other was light. Large headlights, as though a news crew were awaiting their arrival. And, after Grenada, he knew exactly what that was like.
Fifteen minutes later, they crowded back aboard the RHIB, tired, frustrated, and pissed beyond recovery. The peals of laughter and jeering from the crowd ashore just behind the lights still rung in their ears. Worse yet was the military band that had struck up martial music just as Sikes had poked his head above the water. And the fireworks.
They would hear the sound of laughter all the way back to the carrier, even after they were out of earshot.
NINE
The morning was off to a bad start. Each one of the four men around the conference table had already heard from his civilian boss.
The secretary of the Navy had been particularly unpleasant about the events off the coast of Cuba, since it was his service that was plastered across the early editions of ACN News. The live feed of the SEAL squad lurking in the shallow waters off the coast of Cuba, tracked by their thermal image and the blazing arrays of light along the coast, was already old news by the time most Americans were having their morning coffee. Personally, the secretary had agreed with the President-the marching band had been the worst part of it.