“Because we are still alive,” Zerquera said. “If you think the Yanquis will not retaliate, you are a dangerous fool.”
Vargas had to restrain himself. Zerquera had many friends; it would be impossible to stop tongues from wagging if he were shot here, in front of these junior officers.
“And then there is this lab,” Zerquera continued blandly, gesturing at the window glass and the laboratory beyond. “Here you grow the poison to murder Cuba. If you use this on the Americans, they will retaliate. If it escapes, Cubans will die horribly.”
Vargas took a deep breath before he answered. “We are moving the cultures.”
“Moving them where?”
“To a place where they will be safe.”
“Excuse me, Señor Presidente, for my failure to understand. What other place in Cuba has the sealed ventilation system and biological alarms and other safeguards that exist here?”
“There are none.”
“So there is no place safer than this building.”
“Tonight the Americans will probably attack this building in order to destroy the cultures. They burned several facilities last night that contained cultures, and they will probably burn this one. I am not a prophet, yet I make that prediction with a great degree of confidence.”
“The president of the United States can destroy this building and everything it contains with a telephone call,” General Zerquera said softly, “and there is nothing on earth we can do about it. In my opinion the viruses should be destroyed, if it can be safely done. An escape of the polio viruses from whatever containers they are in will kill vast numbers of our people unless the containers are housed in a specially prepared place, like this laboratory.”
Vargas looked exasperated. “You exceed your authority, General, when you—”
Zerquera stopped him with a hand. “No, no, no! You exceed your authority when you endanger the Cuban people in order to gratify your ambition.”
“Do not cross me, old man,” Vargas snarled.
“I am not going to interfere in politics, Alejo. I never have. The Cuban people will decide who they want to lead them — neither you nor the exiles nor Fidel nor the president of the United States can dictate who the Cuban people will choose. For forty years they wanted Fidel, a loquacious eccentric with much personal charm and too little wisdom, in my opinion. Yet a new day has come.”
Vargas gestured angrily. “These others have brought you here with lies about me.”
General Rafael Zerquera got to his feet. He leaned on his cane, examined every face, and ended with his eyes on Vargas. “A nation matures much like a man does. Youth makes mistakes: with age and experience comes wisdom.”
“You waste our time,” Vargas said through his teeth.
“You will not remove the cultures from this building. The risk to the population is too great.”
Vargas stepped forward to slap the old fool, but one of the aides stopped him with the barrel of a pistol pointed right at his face.
“Another step, Señor Presidente,” the young man said, “and you are dead.”
Zerquera turned and headed for the door. He went through it, then took the elevator up to street level. The civilians followed him. Alba and the young officers stayed.
“You, Alba? You have betrayed me?”
“I obey my conscience,” Alba said, and posted his men in front of the lab.
“Kill anyone who tries to remove anything from that room,” the general told them.
As the last of the daylight faded, a helicopter from USS United States crossed the southern shore of the island of Cuba flying northwest. The helicopter stayed low, just above the treetops. In the cockpit both the pilot and copilot were wearing night-vision goggles. Behind them in the bay sat Tommy Carmellini and Ocho Sedano. A .50-caliber machine gun was mounted in the open door. The gunner wearing night-vision goggles sat on the jump seat, looking out.
Overhead EA-6B Prowlers and F/A-18 Hornets with their HARM missiles ready crossed the coast at the same time. These airplanes were there to attack any Cuban radars that came on the air tonight. So far, all was quiet. Above the Prowlers and Hornets, F-14 Tomcats patrolled back and forth.
One of the F-14 pilots was Stiff Hardwick. He and his RIO had ejected last night almost on top of silo one, so they had ridden home in an Osprey. The RIO, Boots VonRauenzahn, sustained a fracture to the left arm; he was sporting a cast tonight and couldn’t fly. The junior RIO in the squadron, Sailor Kamow, drew the short straw and was sitting behind Stiff tonight.
Stiff had had a hell of a bad day. First the shoot-down by a Cuban fighter pilot, then he endured a day of razzing from his peers, all of whom had a great laugh at his tale of woe, then tonight he had to fly with Sailor, a quiet woman who never had much to say around the testosterone-charged ready room.
On the way out to the plane this evening, Boots had put his good arm around the shoulders of his pal, Stiff. “Sailor will take good care of you. Don’t fret the program, shipmate.”
Stiff snarled something crude in reply and stomped off.
He was the sole victim of the entire Cuban Air Force — fighter pilots generally ignored helicopters, so the Osprey and choppers destroyed by the MiG pilot didn’t register on Stiff’s radar screen. He was never, ever going to be able to live down the ignominy of last night. His squadron mates would probably tattoo a ribald memorial of his disgrace on his ass some night when he was drunk or chisel it on his tombstone. His skipper had almost put somebody else in his place on the flight schedule tonight — Stiff begged shamelessly: “You gotta let me fly,” he sobbed, “give me a chance to redeem myself.”
“You aren’t going to do anything stupid out there, are you?” the skipper asked, his voice tinged with suspicion.
“Oh, no, sir,” Stiff assured the man.
So here he was, off to slay the dragon if he came out of his lair. And that goddamn Cuban fighter jock was probably still swilling free beer on the tale of the damned Yanqui who pulled up in front of him and lit his afterburners.
Actually Carlos Corrado hadn’t thought much about his aerial victory. He awoke in the early afternoon with a blinding headache and treated himself to his usual hangover regimen — a cup of coffee, a cigar, and a puke.
He felt a little better this evening but thought he should forgo food. He would eat after he flew, he decided.
The powers that be didn’t call the base today, of course, because the telephone system was hors de combat. Alas, a desk-flying colonel drove down from Havana.
“Please stay on the ground, Corrado. I would make that an order, but knowing you, you would disobey it. So I ask you, please do not fly tonight. Please do not allow yourself to be shot down. Please do not shame us.”
Carlos Corrado told the colonel where he could go and what he could do to himself when he got there.
Tonight he sat on the concrete leaning up against a nose tire of his steed, which was parked between two gutted hangars. The troops had worked all day getting the MiG-29 fueled, serviced, and armed. It was ready. Now all Corrado needed to know was where the Americans were and what they were up to. Of course there was no one to tell him.
The walls of the hangars were still standing and magnified the sounds of the sky. As he chewed on his cigar butt, Corrado could hear jets running high. The growl was deep and faint.
The planes were American, certainly, and they had fangs. If he went heedlessly blasting into the sky, his life was going to come to an abrupt, violent end.
Where were they going?
Havana? He thought they would go there last night and they never got near the place.
Of course, the headquarters colonel knew nothing. At least, he had nothing to say. Except that Corrado was a fool. Only a fool would attack the American war machine head-on, he said.