El Ocho, alive and well! It seemed like a miracle. Truly, she had thought he was dead, lost at sea.
“I have seen the tape,” Ocho had shouted over the noise of the helicopter as they rode above the lights of Havana. “Fidel wanted Hector to lead Cuba. His opinion will sway many people.”
Yes, she nodded, fighting back tears.
“Why did you give the tape to the Americans?”
“Vargas would have taken it from me,” she replied.
Ocho accepted that because he knew it was true. That tape would destroy Alejo Vargas.
“Make them show it on television,” Ocho had shouted. “We will get Hector out of prison.” He grinned broadly, showing all his teeth. The future was arriving all at once.
She watched the helicopter disappear into the night sky, then turned and walked into the television station.
One of the most horrifying threats any soldier can face is being in the bull’s-eye of a modern guided weapon. The stealth fighters were out tonight, dropping their weapons with extraordinary precision. The bombs came in too fast for the human eye to follow, especially in the light conditions prevailing in Havana this night. For the Cuban troops surrounding the old prison, it was as if a giant invisible sharpshooter were somewhere in the clouds hurling bombs.
The two bombs on the antiaircraft guns frightened the soldiers and made the crowd nervous. Watching from the Osprey, Jake Grafton thought for a moment the crowd might stampede: with this many people jamming the streets that would be a human disaster. Still, he could not take the risk the guns or tanks would open fire on the inbound helicopter or the Osprey, both of which he wanted to land on the prison’s roof.
Through the infrared viewer Jake could see the soldiers instinctively moving away from the tanks. He could see men getting out of the hatch, jumping to the ground, walking away.
On the street the crowd was also pushing back, crowding away from the old fortress.
Minutes passed and nothing happened. The packed rows of humanity on the street seemed to relax, to thin as the people instinctively sought their own space.
Jake heard the first bomb tone come on. An officer — Jake assumed he was an officer — climbed up on one of the tanks, waved his arms at his men.
The bomb tone ceased: the weapon was in the air.
Now the officer standing on the tank put his hands on his hips — Rita had the Osprey down to a thousand feet, only a mile from the building, set up to begin her transition to helicopter flight, so the activity in the prison courtyard was as clear to Jake as if he had been watching it on television.
“Angel One, this is Battlestar One. Come on in.”
“Roger that, Battlestar.”
The Cuban officer was still standing on the tank when it disappeared in a flash as the bomb hit it.
When the cloud of smoke and debris cleared, no one was moving within a hundred feet of the blasted tank, of which only tiny pieces remained. The bomb must have penetrated the armor in front of or behind the turret, Jake thought.
Now the second bomb tone ended. Cuban troops were running out of the prison complex through the main gate, which Jake belatedly realized was open. The men were dropping their weapons, throwing away their helmets and running as fast as their legs could carry them.
The five-hundred-pound bomb from Night Owl Four Four exploded in the gate and the running men disappeared in a flash.
“Put it on the roof,” Jake Grafton told Rita Moravia.
“Okay, I got this guy,” Sailor Karnow told Stiff Hardwick. “He’s bogey one.”
The symbol was right there in front of Stiff on the heads-up display.
“About thirty miles or so,” Sailor said matter-of-factly. She would sound bored if they were giving her an Academy Award. That was another thing about her Stiff didn’t like. Well, the truth was, he hated her guts, but he knew better than to say so in the new modern politically correct gender-neutral navy to which they both belonged. A few off-the-cuff remarks like that to the boys could torpedo a promising career.
“Lock the son of a bitch up,” Stiff told his RIO.
“You can’t shoot this dude,” Sailor said, still bored as hell. “There are four stealth fighters flapping around down there, three Ospreys and a helicopter, or did you sleep through the brief? You can’t shoot without the blessing of Battlestar Strike, which you ain’t likely to get.”
Twenty-five miles now. Stiff had the F-14 coming down like a lawyer on his way to hell, showing Mach 1.7 on the meter. He was fast crawling up this MiG’s ass.
“Don’t just sit there with your thumb up your heinie, honey. Get on the goddamn horn.”
“Battlestar Strike,” Sailor drawled on the radio. “This is Showtime One Oh Two. We got us a situation developing out here.”
Rita didn’t use her landing light until the last possible moment, snapping it on just in time to judge the final few seconds of her approach. As it was, only one of the demoralized snipers on the roof took a shot at the plane, a wild, unaimed shot that punched a hole in the fuselage near the port gear and spent itself against a structural member. Then the marines charging out of the back of the beast fired a shot over his head and the sniper threw down his rifle. The other snipers had already done so.
In seconds the chopper from United States came out of the darkness and set down alongside the V-22. Tommy Carmellini and Ocho Sedano came scrambling out.
All this was new to Ocho. With wide eyes he looked at the Osprey, at the marines, at the skyline of Havana, at the bonfires in the street and the tens of thousands of people.
Toad Tarkington appeared at Jake’s elbow. “I think I know how to get off this roof,” Toad said.
“Lead on,” Jake told him.
“Uh, Showtime One Oh Two, negative on the permission to shoot. That’s negatory, weapons red, over.”
“Strike, goddamn it,” Stiff Hardwick roared, “We’re sitting right on the tail of a goddamn MiG on his way to Havana to kill some of our people. I got the son of a bitch boresighted.”
“Showtime, there are too many friendlies over Havana. Weapons red, weapons red, over.”
“How about I pop this guy with my gun? Request weapons free for a gunshot. Over.”
“Wait.”
Stiff was off the power, idling along at about 400 knots, five miles behind the bogey. Of course, the bogey didn’t know he was there. The Cuban MiG-29s had very primitive electronic detection equipment, which consisted of a light and an auditory signal in the pilot’s ear. These devices told Carlos Corrado he was being looked at by an American fighter radar but failed to tell him where or how close the thing was, the two pieces of information that he needed the most.
As he closed on Havana and listened to the tone and watched the light, which didn’t even flicker, Carlos Corrado pondered on the irony of knowing American fighters were out there somewhere and not being able to do anything about it. If he turned on his radar, he would beacon to the Americans, who would then come at him like moths to a flame. His only chance was to keep the radar off.
If the Americans launched a weapon at him, he had a few flares he could punch off, of course, and some chaff. It was not much, but it might be enough. If it wasn’t, well, he had had a good life.
Carlos began looking right and left as he crossed the suburbs of the city. Amid all the lights he spotted some fires, and the center of the city was dark, without power, but all in all, Havana looked pretty normal. Amazing, that!
“Battlestar Strike, this is Showtime. Still waiting on that permission. This MiG is posing right here in front of me, begging for it. Do I zap it or what?”
“We are still checking with the air force,” Battlestar told Stiff, “trying to find out exactly where everyone is. Don’t want any accidents out there, do we?”