but I don’t know if we have time to get one down here. Any other thoughts?”
“We could swim.” The SEAL who suggested it looked displeased. “I don’t favor it, though.”
Sikes shook his head. “Me neither. Sure, we could do it, but we’d be dragging ass when we got ashore.” He looked at the men’s faces and saw them harden. “Not that we couldn’t do it,” he added hastily. “It’s an option. But not the best one.”
“Helicopter or a boat, then,” Garcia mused. He shrugged again, a peculiarly Latino gesture of resignation. Then his face brightened.
“Our odds go way up if we use the Army’s Stealth helos. Think we could get the carrier to send us back to Miami and deploy from there?”
“No doubt. Even on a no-fly day, we ought to be able to arrange that sort of transportation.” Sikes grinned, a wolfish expression crossing his face. “I surely do love those Special Forces helicopters.” The other men nodded.
“I don’t think so,” Huerta said, speaking for the first time.
‘Too much radar, even with Stealth technology.” He shook his head.
“We go in with what we’re best at small boats, then swimming. Less chance of a casual observer seeing us that way, too. Go with our strengths.”
A grizzled veteran, ancient at me age of thirty-five, Huerta was still in superb physical condition. Sikes had watched him outrun, outswim, and outshoot almost every man in the team. He might be beat occasionally at one of those particular skills, but never in all three categories by the same man. Overall, he was the strongest, most indestructible-looking man Sikes had ever met.
As he looked at Huerta, a familiar feeling of pride flooded him. Don’t ever think about being a SEAL, he told himself.
Not unless you are worthy of commanding men like this.
A quick shorthand discussion of equipment and timing followed, the men thinking as one team and each contributing his own comments on particular capabilities and assets they would need. Less than ten minutes after he’d first walked out on the flight deck, Sikes had his answers. And a plan.
He motioned back toward the ocean. “You kill a whale, you file the environmental impact report. Other than that, shoot the hell out of it.” He made a brief gesture, then turned and trotted back toward the island.
Batman stared at the overhead speaker as he spoke into the handset. The COSMIC circuit was the most secure form of radio communication available on the carrier, and this call from Tombstone was hardly unexpected.
“So you think we’ll be ordered to conduct the strike?”
Batman asked. He ran a hand across his forehead, feeling the deep grooves that the pressures of daily living were cutting into his forehead. Even after commanding a squadron and two tours in D.C nothing had prepared him for the awesome weight that fell on the shoulders of a carrier battle group commander. “Come on. Tombstone, I need some answers.”
Admiral Magruder’s voice sounded tired. “I’ve seen the same pictures you have. If it were my call, you know what my answer would be. Damn the political consequences just get the mission done.”
“But it’s not. It’s not mine, either.” Batman felt the beginnings of a headache start at the base of his neck.
“Jesus, Tombstone, how much of this would we have believed when we were still flying? Back then, we thought the admirals had the easy jobs.”
Tombstone chuckled, his voice thin and reedy over the secured circuit.
Not laughing at you, my friend, laughing with you. At least you’re at sea you could be stuck flying a desk, like I am.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that. So, how long will it take to get an answer?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Batman could hear the resignation in his friend’s voice.
“Hell of an answer. Tombstone.”
“Sometimes it’s like that. Batman. As soon as I hear from the eight-hundred-pound gorillas, I’ll let you know.”
Batman knew Tombstone was referring to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “But when? I’ve got preparations I need to make out here, you know.”
“Of course I know that,” Tombstone said sharply. “Look, as soon as I hear anything, I’ll let you know. It shouldn’t be long, though. I understand the President’s in conference on the matter right now.”
Batman sighed as he hung up the telephone. The President might be consulting his top political and military experts, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Weapons poised on Cuba could have only one target the continental United States. And, when a decision was finally made, it would be up to Batman to walk that thin line between defense and aggression, between preserving the integrity of the United States and provoking war.
The President stared down at the photos strewn around his desk. In his past twenty-five years as a political animal, he’d seen satellite imagery often enough never before, however, in such telling detail.
He leaned back in the custom-built chair, feeling the sinking sensation of resignation. Around him, his staffers and aides fell silent. The President steepled his hands under his chin and thought. Finally, he glanced back at the man standing in front of him. “So it comes down to this? Again?”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so, Mr. President.”
The President sighed. “Kennedy thought he had the problem licked forever,” he said reflectively. He gestured at the photographs. “We should’ve known better. They won’t stop not really. Even with the fall of the Soviet Union, there will always be power-mongers and terrorists in the world. Whole nations, even.”
The chairman shifted uneasily. “We have some options.”
The President spun his chair around to stare out at the Rose Garden.
“Oh, I’m certain we do. We always do.
There’s not a spot on the world that we haven’t projected out as a terrorist or rogue state and tried to figure out what we should do about it But in the end, what it comes down to is American men and women setting foot on foreign soil, doesn’t it?”
The roses were in full bloom, each bush carefully and lovingly tended by the White House gardener. Some of the plants were decades old, he guessed. There was no garden on earth that got finer care than this collection of roses. “We should take care of other things just as well,” he said out loud. He heard the uneasy scuffle of feet behind him. And now the President is talking to himself. Wonder if that makes them feel any worse as if it could. He spun his chair back around to face the group.
“One of the reasons I was elected,” he said slowly, organizing his thoughts as he went, “was my commitment to a strong defense policy.”
He grimaced, shrugged slightly.
“You all know I’ve seen all ends of this, from the ground up as a young Army officer in Vietnam to the crises I saw as vice president. I know what I’m about to do, more than any President since maybe Eisenhower.
The other military men that have held this post came from some of the more refined fields of warfare submariner, fighter pilot, that sort of thing.” He gestured dismissively. “But it takes an old Army dogface to understand what fighting’s really about. It takes men hell, and women, too, no won the ground, face-to-face.” He finally came to a decision and looked up at the assembled group. “Cuba is a sovereign nation, but this is our part of the world. I won’t have a land strike capability in Cuba-I won’t. And I’m not going to sit in this office and watch the spectacle of an American fighting pilot being dragged through the streets of Cuba and tried for war crimes.” His voice got louder and stronger. “It will not happen on my watch am I absolutely clear about that?”
The chairman seemed to stiffen. New conviction and pride filled his voice. “As you say, Mr. President not on my watch. On our watch, sir.”
The President nodded sharply. “We understand one another. Thank you for coming. General. I’d like to see
