“I believe the electrical lead to the left testicle is coming loose,” Santana said finally. He stood up and walked back over to the table.
“Have the Libyans check it.”
“TAO reports small gunboats approaching the carrier,” the operations officer told Batman. “None of the larger vessels, though. I suppose that’s a blessing.”
“Don’t discount those small boats. It doesn’t take a military genius to figure out that they caused us some real problems.” Batman’s voice was tired.
The TAO frowned. “A twenty-four-foot attack vessel versus an aircraft carrier?”
Batman shook his head. “Don’t think of it in terms of tonnage. Think of it in the big picture. What happens if we run over those boats? We simply lend credibility to Drake’s story, that’s all. Worse, there are some ways they can hurt us slow us down, at least. What if they get in our way? We have to avoid them, don’t we? Especially given this morning’s events. Add the fact that they can carry Stingers on board, and we’ve got a real problem.”
“How much trouble is one Stinger? They’ve got a range of less than two miles.” The TAO frowned.
“Maybe, maybe not. Remember the speculation on the TWA downing, that it was done by a longer-range Stinger, an improved version of the one we’re familiar with. Those little puppies are manufactured all over the world now, and who’s to say there haven’t been some radical improvements in them? Besides, what can you tell me about our hangar doors right now?”
The question caught the TAO off guard. “The hangar doors?” He shrugged. “Not much, I guess. They’re open right now, I imagine. I have them open in this heat.”
“Exactly my point. What’s one Stinger shot into the hangar bay going to do to us? How many aircraft will be set on fire and I assume it’s still crowded down there before we get it put out? How much fuel will go up in flames? And how many missiles are down there? Any? I know that they’re not supposed to be, but” “I get your point.” The operations officer looked thoughtful. “We may need to shut the doors anytime small boats come around.”
“Then we end up with heat exhaustion. The temperature in that space is gonna climb like a bat out of hell.” Batman looked grim. “Not many good choices, are there?”
There were, he thought as he watched the operations officer stride out of the room, hardly any good choices left in the world at all. Not down here, not for the USS Jefferson, And not for one Admiral Edward Everett Wayne, in command of Carrier Group Fourteen.
Leyta looked skeptical. “You’re sure about this?”
Santana nodded. “Completely. I’ve got four people who saw that aircraft returning to the carrier, and there were no empty spots on its wings. It hadn’t fired a weapon.”
“How could they tell? In foul weather, at some distance?”
Leyta looked doubtful.
“They could tell.” The quiet confidence in the man’s voice lent weight to his statement. “The background you don’t want to know, but they could tell.”
Leyta tossed the folder he’d been studying across the desk, wincing as it collided with a pencil holder and spilled its contents all over the floor. “It’s almost like the way we fight a war, isn’t it? Tossing things around, wondering what they’ll knock over? Never really any planning? So now what?”
Santana bent over and started to gather pencils up from the floor, leaving the report facedown where it lay. “It depends. We can continue to blame it on the Americans or we can use it against the current regime. Either option poses problems.” He looked up at Leyta and lifted one quizzical eyebrow.
“Starting with dividing our own movement,” Leyta said, finishing the other man’s thought. “Regardless of how much we disagree about methodology, Aguillar and I want the same thing a free Cuba. He just wants it to be free under the United States’ protection and I want it to be a part of the world. No more insularity; no more being a farm plantation for the United States, either. A free Cuba, our Cuba. What we always dreamed it could be.” He paused for a moment, staring down at the report on the floor without seeing it.
“But you don’t care about that, do you? Not really.”
Santana shrugged. “You might be surprised what I care about. If I had to pick sides, I’d be on yours, not Aguillar’s.
Although in this scenario ” Again, the shrug that resigned all their fates to an indifferent god. “I’m not really sure what’s the right course. Maybe we wait. The Libyans are only a means to an end securing our freedom with superior firepower. Outside of that, it makes very little difference to me who runs the government. As long as it’s not Castro.”
“We wait,” Leyta echoed. It was something they were good at they’d been doing it for decades, if not centuries.
“Although I may drop a hint to look into the details of this in a couple of important places. You know the type I mean.”
“I don’t need to. You do what you think is best, my friend.”
“I saw the same report you did.
Admiral,” Tombstone Magruder said, his voice cold and emotionless. “I have no information other than that.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff studied him carefully. “You understand, I find that hard to believe.” He left the rest of the thought unsaid because of your relationship with Pamela.
Tombstone stiffened. “Miss Drake no longer clears her stories through me. Not that she ever did. The only control I ever had over them was when she was on my aircraft carrier and I had to transmit her reports.”
And that went over really well, he remembered quite clearly. The illustrious Miss Pamela Drake had not taken kindly to having her precious copy edited or redacted. While Tombstone had found it necessary to do that on occasion to protect the security of the operation, he’d never enjoyed it. Particularly not the aftermath.
“And I certainly had nothing to do with her being in Cuba,” he continued as a new thought struck him.
“No one said you did. But with your prior relationship, and with you now in command of the Southern Forces, it does look suspicious. You understand that.”
Tombstone nodded, feeling his throat tighten. What was the chairman leading up to? Had there been a decision to relieve him of command because of events far beyond his control, simply based on his prior relationship with a reporter? Was that fair? And, he finally asked himself, would he really care? To his surprise, he did. As tempting as it might be to chuck his entire naval career and not a bad one at that, finishing up with two stars on his collar and simply relax into his marriage with Tomboy, start off on a new civilian career, he couldn’t do it.
Part of it, he admitted, was the sheer headiness of command. As commander. Southern Forces, he had operational control of everything south of the Equator. That included the massively burgeoning continent of South America and liaison with all the foreign navies there. It was an opportunity to build on shaky relationships that were barely in their infancy, to create peace instead of making war, for once. It seemed like a fitting capstone to his career thus far, which had consisted mainly of fighting first the Soviet Bear and then the Chinese Mongoose that had sought to dominate entire parts of the world.
Am I power-hungry? He considered the idea for a moment, then shook his head. Yes, it was true that all the ruffles and flourishes that went with his current position were easy to get used to. And he was eternally grateful for the fact that his uncle had found him a posting in an operational force and not consigned him to a desk in the Pentagon. An expensive, highly polished desk, but a desk nonetheless.
If you couldn’t fly and he was far too senior for that then the next best thing was command of operational forces. And at his current pay rate, even command of a carrier battle group was beyond his reach.
“If the chairman lacks confidence in my abilities,” Tombstone began, finally having reached his decision.
The chairman cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be asked that enough times in the media.
But never here. I’m just trying to prepare you for what’s ahead.”
“A public hanging?” Tombstone’s voice was harsh. “I have that to look forward to?”
