If they can’t get her out, I’ll send a strike in anyway.”
“And Thor?” Batman’s voice was hard and cold. “What about him?”
Tombstone levered himself up and swung his feet back down on the floor.
“Same answer, for a different reason.
Major Hammersmith’s paid to take chances. He’s a Marine; he understood the risks he was taking. I’ll try my best to get him out, but if I can’t …”
“You’ll go ahead with that strike, too.” Batman had not realized how much he wanted to believe that wasn’t true.
Deep down, he’d known this was exactly what Tombstone would order, and why Tombstone had been sent up to the battle force. Even before he himself had suspected it, Batman’s superiors had known that he might flinch from this last and deadliest military decision. He tried to feel resentment, but all he felt was relief. Relief that the decision was someone else’s, an unwillingness to face the ultimate reckonings of life and death that took place in the correlation of forces.
“I think-I think I’m happy with one star. Admiral,” Batman said slowly.
He stood, walked to the center of the room, and offered a hand to his old lead.
Tombstone took Batman’s hand, used it to lever himself up from the couch, then turned the grip into a warm handshake. “You never know what you’ll do until you’re there, shipmate. You know it’s the right decision. It’s the same one you’d make if you were in my shoes.”
“Let’s get some sleep, Stoney,” Batman said. “If tomorrow is as long a day as I think it’s going to be, we’ll need it.”
Colonel Santana ran his hand over the.45 pistol holstered on his hip. The gun was smooth, gleaming better cared for than 90 percent of the houses and people living in his country. But his life did not depend on people right no wit depended on this gun. And on the temper of the man seated opposite him.
Santana left his fingers resting gently on the butt as he glared at the Libyan. “Your plan is not working. The Americans are here in force and have already penetrated and destroyed our deception.”
Kaliff Mendiria lounged lazily in the chair, seemingly unaware of the gun at Santana’s hip. He lifted one hand and waved away Santana’s concerns with a light flip of his fingers. “You think short-term, my friend. That is why our partnership is so good. You have experience and are excellent in executing the immediate, the tactical. But for the longer-range planning, you need an outside viewpoint to balance your impetuousness. Ah, that hot Cuban blood it has landed you in trouble more than once, has it not?” The Libyan took a deep breath, then yawned. “It is growing late.
I suggest we retire until tomorrow morning.”
Santana jerked the pistol from his holster and slammed it down on the table, butt first. The nine-inch barrel pointed menacingly in Mendiria’s direction. Not at him directly no, Santana was not willing to make that threat just yet but certainly in that direction. “What of the missiles!
You promised them by now.”
Mendiria frowned. “You threaten me, then demand concrete evidence of our friendship? Is this how Cuba thinks?”
“We had a deal,” Santana said tightly. “A distraction here, so that you could proceed with your plans in Africa. We have drawn the American battle group away from the Mediterranean as you requested, and what good has it done us? Merely invited a missile launch that decimated an empty field.”
“An empty field,” Mendiria echoed. “And do you suppose that if we had already delivered the missiles to you, they would have been in that field? Undoubtedly so. You see, Santana, you simply must learn to look ahead.”
Santana paused uncertainly. Was it possible? Had the swarthy African sitting across from him actually foreseen the American strike at Cuban soil, and planned around it?
He studied the Libyan more closely now, cataloging his features. An ugly man, but one with a compelling sense of power about him that even Santana only rarely dared to brook.
Santana holstered the pistol and sat down in the chair opposite the Libyan. “So. Enlighten me, then. Explain to me how this is all a part of your plot, how every movement is accounted for and proceeding exactly as planned. I’m ready to believe, Mendiria just not yet convinced.”
The Libyan leaned forward on the table, resting his weight on his elbows. His piercing eyes were half hooded with sleepy eyelids, the mouth slightly slack and barely covering the even row of white teeth.
“And this is why you keep me up so late at night?” He shook his head.
“Let me explain this to you one more time. Then either shoot me or start cooperating, I don’t care which one but quit waking me up in the middle of the night with your stupid nightmares.
“The Americans are here, occupied by what they perceive as the Cuban problem. Your soil is vulnerable, my friend, especially with reinforcements so close at hand. But now that the Americans have actually conducted a first strike, the balance of world opinion will shift in your favor. The United States will find neither support nor approval for further action against Cuba. And you you have lost nothing.
Turned up a few dirt clods, perhaps missing a few agricultural workers, but that is it. And furthermore, you have this excellent videotape of American Special Forces intruding on your soil. That is bound to weaken support for America within the Caribbean basin. This opens new opportunities for you and for us.”
“But the missiles,” Santana began.
Mendiria cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Are on their way, even as we speak. Do you think we would leave them here for the American attack to destroy? Are you so confident of your ability to hide them that you would risk all in this matter?” The Libyan shook his head disapprovingly.
“No, we will keep you from such mistakes. As soon as matters are settled in my country, we will off-load the missiles to you. They are even now a bare three hundred miles away from here, nestled in the hold of a merchant ship.”
“What exactly is happening in your country that requires the Americans to be otherwise occupied?” Santana asked bluntly. It was the question that had lingered unasked in every discussion he’d had with the Libyan, and one that the Libyan had never volunteered the answer to. Now, sensing the Libyan’s willingness to reassure him, Santana asked for the first time.
Mendiria shook his head. “You have no need to know, but I will tell you this much: There are certain border disputes that are even now being resolved in a manner favorable to us. Certain … political considerations … that are being realigned to be more in keeping with a modern, powerful Libya.”
“A coup?” Santana asked.
“A realignment,” Mendiria corrected. He smiled, teeth flashing in the dim light. “There are many of us who believe that Libya should take a more active role in world affairs.
With our natural resources, our strategic coastline well, there are many opportunities for a nation such as Libya, especially under an enlightened leadership. If the United States is preoccupied with her backyard, it gives us a free hand in ours, the Mediterranean.”
“The missiles,” Santana insisted.
“In two days,” Mendiria said finally, grudgingly giving up the delicate cat-and-mouse game. “We will unload them in two days. And then, you may make whatever use you wish of them.”
The ship steamed back and forth in her firing basket like a caged tiger. Six knots on gentle seas induced a slow, hypnotic roll. The few sailors still in their racks were lulled into even deeper sleep, while three decks below complex fire control circuitry compensated for the motion in the targeting data it fed to the launchers.