The morning was off to a bad start. Each one of the four men around the conference table had already heard from his civilian boss.
The secretary of the Navy had been particularly unpleasant about the events off the coast of Cuba, since it was his service that was plastered across the early editions of ACN News. The live feed of the SEAL squad lurking in the shallow waters off the coast of Cuba, tracked by their thermal image and the blazing arrays of light along the coast, was already old news by the time most Americans were having their morning coffee. Personally, the secretary had agreed with the President-the marching band had been the worst part of it.
The reaction around the world had been immediate and vehement. There were too many small nations that had begged assistance from the United States, along with massive infusions of cash from the State Department, then immediately turned upon their supposed saviors as soon as a new, more repressive regime was installed. These nations’ guilt over their inability to take care of themselves would transform itself immediately into righteous indignation that the United States would interfere with the political events of any country their own included.
Still, the other chiefs of services refrained from commenting on the events. Each one of them knew that it could just as easily have been their own forces. The Army, the Rangers, the Marines, or even the elite Delta Force. That the SEALs, and by extension the Navy, were taking the brunt of world outrage was sheerly a matter of luck and timing.
While they might fight viciously among themselves over which service would win that high-visibility tasking, when the world united against them the Joint Chiefs of Staff stood firm. To admit to wrongdoing on the part of one service was to damn them all, and further jeopardized the fragile funding that kept a barely adequate core of forces in beans and bullets.
“They’re there illegally,” the Air Force chief of staff said finally.
He looked off into the distance, avoiding eye contact with the chief of naval operations. “They’ve got no business being in Cuba.”
“The First Amendment. I wonder if our founding fathers ever had this in mind,” the Marine Corps chief of staff grumbled. “It’s one thing to allow them to say anything they want in our own country, another matter entirely to be providing aid and comfort to the enemy.”
The CNO nodded. “You won’t get any argument from me. But like it or not, they’re there. These days, the media’s usually there before we are. You know that.”
The Air Force chief of staff stirred restlessly in his chair.
“Regardless, the question now is, what do we do?”
“We take the damned island! And keep it this time,” the Army barked.
“Damn it, if we” “Quit posturing, Carl,” the Marine Corps snapped. “We tried that before, remember?”
“Hardly. The Army didn’t head up the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the CIA did.
Besides, this isn’t at all similar.”
“And why not?” the Air Force asked. “Missiles sitting on the ground, capable of striking the continental United States, foreign support for a repressive regime if that’s not similar, I don’t know what is.”
The four men fell silent, each lost in his own thoughts. All were well schooled in the history of war, and the parallels to the Cuban Missile Crisis could not be avoided. Each one of them knew in his heart that if the military had been in charge of that operation, the results would have been different. Indeed, the present situation might have been avoided altogether if the United States had just done the right thing the first time through.
“You know what we’re going to have to advise the President,” the Marine Corps chief of staff said, finally breaking the unpleasant, heavy silence that had descended on them. “We’ve got to follow through.”
The CNO shook his head. “We’ll endanger civilian lives.
Reporters, even. How are we going to explain that to the American public?”
“We’re not. The President is.” The Marine Corps officer looked stubborn. “We’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
We can’t be protecting Americans in every rinky-dink rogue state in the world if they insist on going there illegally.
Weighing the cost and the benefits and the correlation of forces, we can’t allow those weapons to remain in Cuba.
Not aimed at our cities.”
The chairman glanced around the room, taking the measure of each man.
He saw agreement on every face, coupled with reluctance and a knowing dread for the situation that would surely follow. “I see we’re in agreement. You know,” he added unnecessarily, “there will be civilian casualties.”
The looks of resignation deepened. “How do you want to weaponeer this?” the CNO said. He sighed heavily. “We’re on station, of course. And I think we’d all rather the shots weren’t fired from the continental U.S.”
The chairman stood suddenly, his mind made up. “I’ll speak with the President this afternoon. My recommendation will be a surgical strike against those weapon sites.
Rather than risk an air crew and aircraft, I’m prepared to recommend that we use your Arsenal ship.” He managed to eke out a wry smile.
“It’s about time it got an operational test, don’t you think?”
“But not like this,” the CNO said softly. “Not like this.”
The ship cut cleanly through the light chop, making twenty-five knots with only one of her powerful gas turbine engines on-line. On both the fore and aft decks, sailors scampered over the hot nonskid painted-on steel, conducting weapons checks on the vertical launch hatches, dropping antennas and guardrails, and generally securing anything loose on the ship that might be damaged by the firing of a weapon.
On the bridge. Captain Daniel Heather paced back and forth, stopping only occasionally to take a hurried swig from the ever-present coffee cup perched on the ledge next to his chair. Captain Heather was a tall man, powerfully built, darkly tanned from hours of skiing and fishing.
Dark blond hair, clipped short but still managing to look unruly, topped sharp features and ice blue eyes.
Captain Heather had tried sitting down, tried staying in Combat, but found himself unable to stay away from the bridge. From his very first tours at sea, even before potent Aegis ships and combat control systems shifted the heart of the ship from the bridge to Combat, his station had always been here. Now, even under current combat doctrine, he found the familiar routines of navigating and conning the ship reassuring. All too soon, as the ship took station within her firing basket, he’d find himself relegated to controlling the operation from Combat.
It still seemed unnatural, even after his two tours on Aegis cruisers, to be so far from air and light and targets and to watch the battle take place on a large TV screen instead of along the horizon.
Besides, being on the bridge gave him room to pace, a way of working off the nervous energy he always felt at sea.
His officers and crew encouraged it. It made him easier to live with.
He felt the bridge team getting nervous, could see it in the small movements they made adjusting equipment that didn’t even need to be touched, in the snapping of a pencil point by the navigator on a chart, in me insistent queries to Engineering to reassure themselves that all was well with the main propulsion. He wasn’t helping any, he knew. His nervousness was transmitting itself to them, adding on to the worries of the present tactical situation. With a sigh, he forced himself to slide into the large brown leatherette captain’s chair located on the starboard side of the bridge, made himself prop his feet up on the window ledge and finish the cup of coffee calmly. It had an immediate effect on him.
“Thirty minutes,” the officer of the deck said.
The captain finished sipping on his coffee, swallowed, and then made a point of not answering immediately. “Be good to see the ship actually work,” he said finally, his voice determinedly casual.
“Yes, Captain, it will.” The OOD seemed on the verge of unbending, of saying more, but then fell silent.
That’s what we’re here for, you know,” the captain said, raising his voice without seeming to so that every
