Doll Hanna touched the transmit button on his radio. “Willie, you take the two guys on the north side. Fred, you got the farmhouse. Goose, these two on the main entrance.”
All three men acknowledged.
Doll was wearing his night-vision goggles so he could see Goose crawling behind the milk trucks, then under them, working his way toward the entrance. It was eerie watching Goose sneak along, knowing the guards couldn’t see him.
Taking out two men was a challenge. Either one could raise the alarm.
Goose moved like he had all night.
He didn’t, Doll Hanna well knew. The Osprey was out there now circling, but it wouldn’t come in until he called the area clear. Still, the plane only had so much fuel and the Cubans wouldn’t stay quiet forever.
In fact, a truckload of soldiers could come rolling in here any minute. The troops in the Osprey, when they arrived, would set up a perimeter to keep the Cuban military away.
“Doll, this is Fred. I’m going to make some noise over here.”
“Okay.”
No doubt Goose and Willie heard that transmission. Noise would cause the guards to do something. If necessary, Goose and Willie could just shoot them down.
Hanna heard the faint sound of a slamming door come from the direction of the farmhouse.
The guards near the main door to the dairy got to their feet, looked at each other, then started toward the house. One stopped, told the other to stay, then went on with his weapon at the ready. As he went around the truck out of sight of the guard at the door, Goose got him with a knife.
Then Goose waited.
The man at the door called out to his friend.
Nothing.
The guard looked worried. He called again, got no answer, then walked forward twenty feet or so. He stopped, cocked his head, stood looking into the darkness and trying to hear over the hum of the big air conditioners.
He was standing like that when Goose stepped out from behind the truck and threw a knife. The guard dropped his rifle and pitched forward on his face.
Hanna got up, trotted for the door of the barn. He passed Goose, who was bending over the second guard checking to make sure he was dead. Carefully Doll eased the door open and looked inside.
There were people inside, all right, behind transparent plastic curtains that formed biological seals. They were wearing full body-and-head CBW suits, so they looked like spacemen walking around in there between trays of cultures and rows of worktables.
They had apparently heard nothing above the noise of the air-ventilation system, which was a loud, steady hum.
Doll eased his head back. The people in there would have to wait until the experts arrived.
Major Carlos Corrado walked onto the runway of the Cienfuegos Air Base. The runway lights were off and the night was fairly dark considering that two hangars and at least five aircraft were ablaze. He could hear people shouting, about fire, about water, about missiles, about staying under cover. Straining hard he could hear several cruise missiles — and airplanes — up there in the darkness — American airplanes, because in order to save money, the Cuban Air Force, the Fuerza Aerea Revolucionaria, did not fly at night.
What was happening? Where was the war?
Carlos Corrado had no illusions about the difficulties involved in engaging the American military. His MiG-29, a stripped Soviet export version, had only the most rudimentary of electronic detection equipment and lacked any active countermeasures. And his GCI site was probably in the same condition as the burning hangars behind him.
If he left his radar off he would not beacon on the Americans’ detection equipment. And he would be electronically blind.
Perhaps if he stayed low …
Another cruise missile roared overhead and dove into the last undamaged hangar. The 750-pound warhead rocked the base, then the hangar collapsed outward, its walls silhouetted black against the yellowish white fireball caused by the warhead.
Well, if the Americans were pounding Cienfuegos, they must be pulverizing Jose Marti International in Havana.
Havana. The war would be in Havana, so that was where he would go.
The V-22 Osprey twin-engine tiltrotor assault transport was the ultimate flying machine, or so Rita Moravia liked to tell her husband, Toad Tarkington. It hovered like a helicopter and flew like an airplane, operated from the deck of an airborne assault ship, and was at its best after the sun went down.
So here she was, in the pilot’s seat of a V-22 on her way to a ballistic-missile silo in the Matanzas Province of central Cuba with 24 combat-ready marines, loaded for bear. She had made a vertical takeoff from Kearsarge and was now thundering along at two thousand feet over the Cuban countryside at 250 knots, navigating by GPS and monitoring the forward-looking infrared display (FLIR), which revealed the countryside ahead as if the sun were shining down from a cloudless sky.
Rita’s copilot was Captain Crash Wade, USMC, who earned his nickname in an unfortunate series of ski adventures, not flying accidents. Wade paid careful attention to the multi-function displays (MFDs), computer presentations of everything the pilots needed to know, on the instrument panel in front of him.
Rita was paying careful attention to the voice on the radio, which was that of Asel Tyvek, NCO in charge of the marine recon team at silo number two. Rita didn’t know his real name, just his call sign, Blue One.
“Old Rover, this is Blue One. I want you to hold four minutes out while we get some ordnance on this LZ. It’s sizzling hot.”
“Old Rover, Roger.” Rita keyed the intercom. “Okay, Crash, do a holding pattern.”
“How come we got the hot LZ?” Crash wanted to know.
“Just lucky, I guess,” Rita replied, and selected an intercom button that would allow her to talk to the lieutenant in the cargo bay with his troops.
Asel Tyvek and Jamail Ali were side by side in the ditch, just thirty yards or so from the barn. The other two members of the team were also in the ditch, but well left and right.
“We ought to get in the barn,” Ali whispered, “in case the Cubans want to get in there too.”
“Man, those little boards ain’t gonna protect anybody from anything. You just be ready in case the Cubans start diving into this damned ditch with us.”
“Listen, I can hear our guys coming.”
Tyvek strained his ears. Yep, he could just detect the distinctive beat of chopper rotors. “Snake One, Blue One,” he whispered into his radio. “Cuban troops all around the barn. At least two tanks, eight or nine trucks, a couple hundred men. We’re in a ditch near the barn.”
“Got your head down?”
“Yeah.”
Tyvek could hear the choppers distinctly now. He eased his weapon up, put his finger on the safety. The Cubans were going to be looking for cover very shortly, and he didn’t want to share the ditch.
The SuperCobras eased up over the tree line, barely moving. Tyvek knew what was going to happen next, and it did. He heard the roar as Hellfire antiarmor missiles screamed toward the tanks, and he heard the explosions as they hit.
He lifted his head above the ditch line for a quick peek. The tanks were smoking hulks. Even as he watched, more missiles tore into the trucks.
Not a standing figure could be seen. Everyone was on the ground, crawling or lying still.
The two SuperCobras came closer. The noise of their engines was quite plain now. The flex three-barreled 20-mm cannons opened up and rockets shot forward from the pylons under the stubby wings.
The men in the yard realized they couldn’t stay where they were — the area was a killing zone. Some jumped up and ran for the ditch. Fortunately few of them seemed to have weapons in their hands — the attack had caught them by surprise.