paint.
They moved slowly, brushing vegetation aside carefully to prevent inadvertent rustling of leaves, watching where they placed their feet in order to avoid twigs and branches underfoot. Not that the woodland debris would have cracked under their feet the entire area was as sodden, and as dark, as a rain forest.
Ahead of them, the wire-mesh perimeter fence barely reflected the ambient light in a regular pattern. The SEALs crept up to within six feet of it, still hidden by the underbrush.
The SEAL leader motioned to his second in command, using only hand signals to convey his intentions. The other SEAL nodded, reached into his belt, and withdrew a heavy-duty set of wire cutters. Intelligence had indicated that the fence was electrified, but not alarmed, and that the Cubans lacked even rudimentary pressure sensors and motion detectors along the perimeter.
The SEALs waited. Their luck held within a couple of minutes, a bulky Cuban patrolling sentry came into view, his presence announced five minutes earlier by his clumsy, stumbling progress along the perimeter.
The SEALs held their breath, watched him pass by them on the interior of the fence and then disappear in the dark.
They waited a little bit longer, until they were certain he was out of earshot. Then Sikes motioned sharply Move out!
Garcia scampered up to the fence, slipping on his heavily insulated gloves as he moved while holding the heavy wire cutters with their rubberized handles in one hand. He crouched low, blending in with the low vegetation already struggling to reassert its domination over the trimmed area.
He worked quickly but carefully, snipping away the heavy strands and finally tossing aside a semicircular portion of the fence. Grinning, he held it aloft for a moment for his compatriots to admire, then laid it carefully on the ground. He scuttled back to join his teammates and resumed his normal position in the formation.
Sikes led the way, moving quickly across the open area.
Behind him, at two-minute intervals, the rest of the team followed.
They regrouped at the rear of a ramshackle wooden building. The short, hundred-meter dash had driven the last traces of stiffness and cold from their muscles. They paused for a minute, regrouping, then employed the same silent dart-and-wait maneuver to move steadily across the rest of the compound.
Their target was the open field to the north of the main cluster of buildings, the one the satellite imagery had shown as under construction.
“I need altitude,” Bird Dog said as a warning. He slammed the throttles forward, kicking the massive jet into afterburners, and yanked back on the yoke. The Tomcat rotated in the air to stand almost on end, its nose pointed toward the one clear patch of sky Bird Dog had found. Rain still spattered the canopy, the drops driven quickly aft by the jet’s wind speed to leave most of the forward part clear. Five hundred knots of airspeed was better than any windshield wiper ever designed.
“They’ll think you’re getting into firing position,” Gator warned.
“That’s what I want ‘em to think. Let’s see if we can get him to play our game.” Bird Dog tightened his stomach and torso muscles, forcing blood up from his extremities into his brain to prevent graying out.
“I’m staying in search-right radar mode, so he shouldn’t have any reason to get excited.”
“Cubans don’t need a reason,” Gator gritted.
The construction churned up the vast field to their north, raw, black dirt furrowed and rent, bearing an odd resemblance to the sea they’d just crossed. Past the square of disturbed earth, the field resumed its green march to the hot horizon, low shrubbery and tall grass surrounding the construction.
Sikes nudged his partner and pointed. Black iron girders jutted out of the ground at improbable angles. To the right, a yellow crane sat silently waiting, poised at the edge of the disturbed surface like a praying mantis. Just to the right of the crane, a stack of neatly arranged metal and wooden boxes rested. The metal ones were at least forty feet long, and bore the scrapes and gashes Sikes associated with shipping containers. The wooden boxes were smaller, measuring merely six feet in length. Associated equipment, he supposed. Based on their intelligence, there was little doubt in his mind as to what the larger crates held.
The girdered structure had the look of something almost complete, as though the addition of a few more support members would transform the collection into a stark, meaningful machine, one capable of handling the missiles he was certain were nestled in the longer boxes.
He glanced to his right, and saw his partner had already extracted the portable Geiger counter from his carryall.
Huerta pointed the probe toward the field.
The light on the face panel, which glowed a barely discernible zerozero-zero in the dark, shivered, the movement then picked up by the other two digits. Figures mounted rapidly, rising well above the threshold of what Sikes knew was regular background radiation.
He shivered despite the warm night. The trip to shore on the boat, the silent creep through the quiet compound, hell, even his last operation in the Middle east none of it chilled him more than those three green digits staring at him now out of the gloom.
“He’s onto us!” Gator twisted around in his seat to try to maintain visual contact with the approaching Cuban aircraft.
“Got a VID-visual identification?” Bird Dog queried.
“No.” Gator rapped out the word more harshly than he’d intended as a twinge of pain spasmed through his lower back. Turning around to look over his shoulder in the cramped confines of the cockpit probably provided more business for chiropractors than he liked to think about.
“Doesn’t matter. We know who he is.”
“And he knows who we are.”
“That’s the whole point of it, isn’t it?”
“Not if that puts him in a shitty mood.”
Gator gave up trying to see through the clouds and mist and turned back to the radar display. The other aircraft was plainly visible on the scope, a fluorescent green solid mark against the scattering of returns generated by the thicker storm cells in the area. Solid, its edges well defined and moving toward them at six hundred knots. He tried one last time. “Bird Dog, we need to rethink this.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to think. Gator. He’s close enough now, I’m going to turn tail and let him chase us.”
“Missile lock!”
Bird Dog swore. Without responding, he tipped the nose of the Tomcat back toward the water and began trading altitude for speed and distance. Distance most of all with the MiG, he needed at least another five miles of separation before he’d feel even relatively safe.
“Still no visual too much haze,” Gator said rapidly, his fingers flying over the peculiarly shaped knobs and buttons around his seat. Each one had its own special shape, one that no RIO could forget, even if there was no illumination. Bird Dog might be able to fly the aircraft by the seat of his pants, but Gator could launch weapons by the feel of his fingers.
“We’re out of range,” Bird Dog announced. “Especially if he’s carrying” “It’s not falling off. Bird Dog,” Gator said urgently. “It should have by now.”
“Jesus! What the hell? Hold on.” The Tomcat’s dive steepened, throwing both aviators against the ejection harnesses that held them in their seats.
“Watch your altitude.”
“I am, I am! Get ready with the chaff.”
Gator’s world narrowed down to the small round scope in front of him; nothing else was important. A few small surface contacts. Fishing boats, probably, one part of his mind noted dispassionately. Then the one aft of them, the only radar contact that mattered. Indeed, unless Bird Dog was successful with his latest maneuver, nothing else would matter in the next five minutes except his view of the Almighty. Or, more important, how the
