 
# The Eyeball Conspiracy

### Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

### Copyright 2014 Philip Bosshardt

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Prologue

10-22-62

Washington, DC

6:50 p.m.

## The door to the Oval Office opened just as Robert Fleming had finished the last check of lighting arrangements around the room. He was the pool coordinator for the White House press corps this month and the Press Secretary hadn't given them much time to get the office ready. Fleming stood up as John Kennedy came in, grim and quiet, his hands clutching a sheaf of papers with the text of his speech.

## "Good evening, Mr. President," Fleming nodded as he straightened some cabling and lay down the canvas covering over the carpeting.

"Good evening, Bob." It was plain that the President was in no mood for a light-hearted chat tonight. Normally jovial and wise-cracking before a televised speech, Kennedy quickly disappeared through a side door to the Oval Office, heading for the Cabinet Room.

Going over the speech one more time, thought the CBS correspondent. He'd be on the air nationwide in less than ten minutes. Fleming swallowed hard and checked with the camera man and sound technician. "You guys set?"

Rod Lively and Gordon Kiel nodded. "There's something on the desk that's showing up in the camera. Could you wipe it off, Bob?" Kiel had been with CBS for twenty years, maybe more. Fleming couldn't remember. He walked over to the President's Victorian desk, made from timbers from a 19th century ship, and ran a rag over the surface again. The desk top was bare, save for a small lectern and two mounted microphones. "How's that?"

"It's gone now. Some dust maybe."

Fleming checked his watch. Two minutes. Where was he? Evelyn Lincoln, the President's secretary, came into the office, just as the side door re-opened. Kennedy appeared again and went to his desk, sitting heavily in the chair. Mrs. Lincoln busied herself with primping the man for his TV appearance. She fussed with his hair for a moment, then dabbed some more makeup on his cheeks, checking silently with Gordon Kiel for satisfactory results. He nodded back and she backed away, pronouncing herself satisfied.

"One minute, Mr. President." Fleming announced. He stood off to the side and behind the cameras, studying the President's stern look, wondering. On a flickering monitor in the back of the office, Kennedy appeared pale and drawn, yet resolute. His hands clutched the text of the speech tightly.

"Thirty seconds, Mr. President. You'll see the lead-in on this monitor here. I'll cue you."

Kennedy nodded ever so slightly. He pulled nervously at the knot of a blue silk tie and cleared his throat. The swallow was audible over the whir of the cameras.

Fleming began a hand signal countdown. President Kennedy studied the monitor to his side, out of the corner of his eye, observing Walter Cronkite's lead-in to the address. He silently compared the grave and serious image projected by the anchorman with the image he intended to project.

The countdown reached zero and Fleming pointed to Kennedy, silently mouthing "You're on the air, Mr. President."

Kennedy looked up to face the red light.

"Good evening, my fellow citizens. This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purposes of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.

"Upon receiving the first preliminary hard information of this nature last Tuesday morning at 9:00 am, I directed that our surveillance be stepped up. And having now confirmed and completed our evaluation of the evidence and our decision on a course of action, this Government feels obliged to report this new crisis to you in fullest detail.

"The characteristics of these new missile sites indicate two distinct types of installations. Several of them include medium-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead for a distance of more than 1000 nautical miles. Each of these missiles, in short, is capable of striking Washington, D.C., the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City or any other city in the southeastern part of the United States, in Central America, or the Caribbean area.

"Additional sites not yet completed appear to be designed for intermediate-range ballistic missiles capable of traveling more than twice as far—and thus capable of striking most of the major cities in the Western Hemisphere, ranging as far north as Hudson Bay, Canada, and as far south as Lima, Peru. In addition, jet bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, are now being uncrated and assembled in Cuba, while the necessary air bases are being prepared.

"This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base—by the presence of these large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction—constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas, flagrant and deliberate defiance of the Rio Pact of 1947, the traditions of this nation and Hemisphere, the Joint Resolution of the 87th Congress, the Charter of the United Nations, and my own public warnings to the Soviets on September 4 and 13.

"This action also contradicts the repeated assurances of Soviet spokesmen, both publicly and privately delivered, that the arms build-up in Cuba would retain its original defensive character and that the Soviet Union had no need or desire to station strategic missiles on the territory of any other nation.

"The size of this undertaking makes clear that it has been planned for some months. Yet only last month, after I had made clear the distinction between any introduction of ground-to-ground missiles and the existence of defensive antiaircraft missiles, the Soviet Government publicly stated on September 11 that, and I quote, 'The armaments and military equipment sent to Cuba are designed exclusively for defensive purposes,''and I quote the Soviet Government, 'There is no need for the Soviet Government to shift its weapons for a retaliatory blow to any other country, for instance Cuba,' and that, and I quote the Government, 'The Soviet Union has so powerful rockets to carry these nuclear warheads that there is no need to search for sites for them beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union.' That statement was false.

"Only last Thursday, as evidence of this rapid offensive buildup was already in my hand, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko told me in my office that he was instructed to make it clear once again, as he said his Government had already done, that Soviet assistance to Cuba, and I quote, 'pursued solely the purpose of contributing to the defense capabilities of Cuba,' that, and I quote him, 'training by Soviet specialists of Cuban nationals in handling defensive armaments was by no means offensive,' and that 'if it were otherwise,' Mr. Gromyko went on, 'the Soviet Government would never become involved in rendering such assistance.' That statement was also false.

"Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.

"For many years, both the Soviet Union and the United States, recognizing this fact, have deployed strategic nuclear weapons with great care, never upsetting the precarious status quo which insured that these weapons would be used in the absence of some vital challenge. Our own strategic missiles have never been transferred to the territory of any other nation under a cloak of secrecy and deception; and our history, unlike that of the Soviets since the end of World War II, demonstrates that we have no desire to dominate or conquer any other nation or impose our system upon its people. Nevertheless, American citizens have become adjusted to living daily on the bull's eye of Soviet missiles located inside the U.S.S.R. or in submarines.

"In that sense, missiles in Cuba add to an already clear and present danger—although it should be noted the nations of Latin America have never previously been subjected to a potential nuclear threat.

"But this secret, swift and extraordinary build-up of Communist missiles—in an area well-known to have a special and historical relationship to the United States and the nations of the Western Hemisphere, in violation of Soviet assurances, and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy—this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons for the first time outside of Soviet soil—is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo, which cannot be accepted by this country if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again by friend or foe.

"The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: Aggressive conduct, if allowed to grow unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.

"Our policy has been one of patience and restraint, as befits a peaceful and powerful nation, which leads a worldwide alliance. We have been determined not to be diverted from our central concerns by mere irritants and fanatics. But now further action is required—and it is underway; and these actions may only be the beginning. We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth—but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.

"Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted to me by the Constitution as endorsed by the resolution of the Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately:

"First: to halt this offensive build-up, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

"Second, I have directed the continued and increased close surveillance of Cuba and its military build-up. The Foreign Ministers of the Organization of American States in their communique of October 3 rejected secrecy on such matters in this Hemisphere. Should these offensive military preparations continue, thus increasing the threat to the Hemisphere, further action will be justified. I have directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities; and I trust that in the interests of both the Cuban people and the Soviet technicians at the sites, the hazards to all concerned of continuing this threat will be recognized.

"Third: it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.

"Fourth: As a necessary military precaution I have reinforced our base at Guantanamo, evacuated today the dependents of our personnel there, and ordered additional military units to be on a standby alert basis.

"Fifth: We are calling tonight for an immediate meeting of the Organ of Consultation, under the Organization of American States, to consider this threat to hemispheric security and to invoke articles six and eight of the Rio Treaty in support of all necessary action. The United Nations Charter allows for regional security arrangements—and the nations of this Hemisphere decided long ago against the military presence of outside powers. Our other allies around the world have also been alerted.

"Sixth: Under the Charter of the United Nations, we are asking tonight that an emergency meeting of the Security Council be convoked without delay to take action against the latest Soviet threat to world peace. Our resolution will call for the prompt dismantling and withdrawal of all offensive weapons in Cuba, under the supervision of United Nations observers, before the quarantine can be lifted.

"Seventh and finally: I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and transform the history of man. He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction—by returning to his Government's own words that it had no need to station missiles outside its own territory, and withdrawing these weapons from Cuba—by refraining from any action which will widen or deepen the present crisis—and then by participating in a search for peaceful and permanent solutions.

"This nation is prepared to present its case against the Soviet threat to peace, and our own proposals for a peaceful world, at any time and in any forum in the Organization of American States, in the United Nations, or in any other meeting that could be useful—without limiting our freedom of action.

"We have in the past made strenuous efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. We have proposed the limitation of all arms and military bases in a fair and effective disarmament treaty. We are prepared to discuss new proposals for the removal of tensions on both sides—including the possibilities of a genuinely independent Cuba, free to determine its own destiny. We have no wish to war with the Soviet Union, for we are a peaceful people who desire to live in peace with all other peoples.

"But is difficult to settle or even discuss these problems in an atmosphere of intimidation. That is why this latest Soviet threat—or any other threat which is made either independently or in response to our actions this week—must and will be met with determination. Any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed—including in particular, the brave people of West Berlin--will be met by whatever action is needed.

"Finally, I want to say a few words to the captive people of Cuba, to whom this speech is being directly carried by special radio facilities. I speak to you as a friend, as one who knows of your deep attachment to your fatherland, as one who shares your aspirations for liberty and justice for all. And I have watched and the American people have watched with deep sorrow how your nationalist revolution was betrayed and how your fatherland fell under foreign domination. Now your leaders are no longer Cuban leaders inspired by Cuban ideals. They are puppets and agents of an international conspiracy which has turned Cuba against your friends and neighbors in the Americas—and turned it into the first Latin American country to become a target for nuclear war, the first Latin American country to have these weapons on its soil.

"Many times in the past Cuban people have risen to throw out tyrants who destroyed their liberty. And I have no doubt that most Cubans look forward to the time when they will be truly free—free from foreign domination, free to choose their own leaders, free to select their own system, free to own their own land, free to speak and write and worship without fear or degradation. And then shall Cuba be welcomed back to the society of free nations and to the associations of this Hemisphere.

"My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead—months in which both our patience and our will be tested, months in which many threats and denunciations will keep us aware of our dangers. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.

"The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high—but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.

"Our goal is not the victory of might but the vindication of right—not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this Hemisphere and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved."

Kennedy stared into the camera, waiting, until Fleming cued him off the air. The speech, seen by an estimated audience of 100 million, had lasted only 17 minutes. The President sat back in his chair for a moment and took a deep breath. He pulled out a handkerchief, wiped perspiration and make-up from his forehead and, to no one in particular, muttered, "Well, that's it. Unless the son of a bitch fouls up." Kennedy stood up with his text papers and headed for the Oval Office door. "God help all of us."

Eight hundred and fifty miles south of the Oval Office, sixteen F-100s of the 351st Tactical Fighter Wing out of Macdill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida and eight F-106s of the Continental Air Defense Command out of Patrick Air Force Base near Cape Canaveral, turned in unison toward the Florida Straits and Cuba.

On-board aircraft NE15677, an F-106 Delta Dart, Victor Flight Leader Captain Eric LaSalle, scanned the darkening southern horizon, watching for the telltale white contrails of ballistic missiles rising into a moonless night.
CHAPTER 1

10-23-62

Aboard the U.S.S. Clermont (DL-6)

The Western Atlantic

Commander Ron Felder tossed another cigarette butt in the ash tray and stepped out of the Combat Information Center onto the bridge deck. It was cold, windy, but clear, and the seas were running three to five feet over the Clermont's bow. The first purple fingers of dawn were tickling the eastern horizon, as Felder leaned over the railing, buttoning the top button of his jacket. He hoisted the binoculars and scanned the horizon off the destroyer's port bow for the hundredth time, looking, watching, waiting.

Don't show your weasely little faces in my neck of the woods. Felder knew perfectly well that a line of Soviet freighters was less than twenty miles away. They had nothing on radar plot yet, but the Air Force had been combing this sector of the quarantine line all night with B-47s and had been tracking the two lead ships of the convoy. Felder silently muttered the names of the suspects: the Gagarin and the Komiles. The flyboys weren't 100% sure of their ID but the data was consistent with earlier reports from last night. The track was consistent from last reported positions.

More importantly, just after midnight, both ships were reported to have tarpaulin-covered cargo lashed to their decks.

Felder had spent most of the last few hours in the CIC with his Exec, Lt. Commander Wally "Gibby" Gibson, poring over CINCLANT's operation order and the President's own Proclamation of Interdiction. He didn't want any screw-ups or misunderstandings over the rules of engagement. Several times, he had fired off messages to Norfolk and to Admiral Ward aboard the Newport News, just trying to clarify matters. Ward's last dispatch said Hold position and execute Ops Order as explained.

Felder knew when to let well enough alone. But his stomach was still churning and several gallons of Navy coffee the last few hours hadn't done him any good either.

He reached for the bridge talker and rang up Radar. "Mr. Gibson to the bridge." He wanted to check a few items on the Weapons Ready Sheet that bothered him. While he was waiting for Gibby, Felder mentally overlaid the windy whitecaps of the Atlantic Ocean before him with the tactical situation he had just absorbed.

Second Fleet had assigned two task forces to the Caribbean, Task Force 135 and 136. TF-135 consisted of two attack carrier groups, built around the Enterprise and the Independence, along with an underway replenishment group and fifteen screening destroyers. This group was to take up station off Cuba's south coast. The blockading force was to be Task Force 136, stationed in an arc 500 miles off Cuba's easternmost point of Cape Maisi. The arc consisted of twelve destroyer stations, sixty miles apart. The northern end of the arc was anchored by the cruiser Canberra and two escorting destroyers. The southern end of the arc was anchored by Corky Ward's flagship, the Newport News, and two more destroyers. Backing up everything was the old ASW carrier Essex and five more destroyers. Clermont had taken up station two posts south of the Canberra.

Just then, Gibby Gibson poked his head out of the bridge and came out to see the Captain. "What's up, skipper?"

Felder pulled out a rumpled sheet from his jacket pocket. He handed it to Gibby, while he fumbled with a cigarette and lighter, shielding the flame from the wind as he tried to light up. "Read. It's last week's maintenance on the forward 5-inch mounts. I thought we had solved that problem with the traversing track."

Gibby read the sheet with a squint and a frown. "Lieutenant Cole told me they were sliding the gun mounts just fine yesterday. I haven't heard of any more problems, unless this is something new. I'll check into it right away."

"Do that. We may be in combat action within a few hours. It'd be nice to have a full complement of weapons."

Both men leaned over the railing. Gibby looked at Felder. "You get any satisfaction from Ward? I'd hate to go into battle with the Russians and not be clear on the rules of engagement."

Felder snorted. The cigarette tip glowed briefly red as he inhaled, then spat out some smoke. "Admiral told me to shut up and follow orders. Of course, the orders don't make a lot of sense to a destroyer captain." He reached into another jacket pocket and pulled out more papers. The wind nearly snatched them away. "Here's the latest wisdom from Washington..." Both men scanned the telex copy of the President's Proclamation of Interdiction.

Several paragraphs in, Gibby began reading out loud.

'The Secretary of Defense may make such regulations and issue such directives as he deems necessary to ensure the effectiveness of this order, including the designation, within a reasonable distance of Cuba, of prohibited or restricted zones and of prescribed routes.

'Any vessel or craft which may be proceeding toward Cuba may be intercepted and may be directed to identify itself, its cargo, equipment, and stores and its ports of call, to stop, to lie to, to submit to visit and search, or to proceed as directed. Any vessel or craft which fails or refuses to respond to or comply with directions shall be subject to being taken into custody. Any vessel or craft which it is believed is en route to Cuba and may be carrying prohibited material shall, wherever possible, be directed to proceed to another destination of its own choice and shall be taken into custody if it fails or refuses to obey such directions. All vessels or craft taken into custody shall be sent into a port of the United States for appropriate disposition.

'In carrying out this order, force shall not be used except in case of failure or refusal to comply with directions, or with regulations or directives of the Secretary of Defense issued hereunder, after reasonable efforts have been made to communicate them to the vessel or craft or in case of self-defense. In any case, force shall be used only to the extent necessary....

"Nice, huh?" Felder folded the telex message back into his jacket pocket. "We go head to head with the Russians on the high seas and I'm supposed to use force only to the extent necessary. Maybe they want us to just bump 'em a little."

Gibson shook his head. "What else can we do? CINCLANT's ops order isn't much better."

Felder straightened up. "Let's check positions one last time. If there's no change in course and speed in the next half hour, we're going to battle stations."

The men ducked back into the CIC. "Mr. Willingham, latest bearing and speed on the Gagarin."

The radarman reported back. "Contact on Gagarin still at bearing 055 degrees, speed seventeen knots, closing now to fourteen miles, sir."

"Mr. Gibson, increase our speed to twenty knots. Load warshots in the forward five-inch guns, safeties armed."

The Exec acknowledged. "Increase speed to twenty knots, aye, sir." The engine order was sent. "Loading warshots in the forward five-inch now, sir."

"Very well." Felder studied the radar plot. Several contacts speckled the scope, taking data from the SPS-10 surface search radar. One was Gagarin. One was the Dearing, Clermont's companion on the "Walnut" Line. "Sonar, any other submerged contacts?"

Sonarman First Class Jeff McBride responded, "Negative, sir. Contact Coconut One is all we have." Coconut One was a Foxtrot-class diesel Soviet boat. Both destroyers had been tracking her since just after midnight. "Bearing 315, distance 22,000 yards, speed six knots."

"She screening for the Gagarin," Gibson noted.

Felder agreed. "I want to keep us between her and the freighter." He drummed fingers nervously on the console. "Damn it. We need guidance from CINCLANT." Felder shook his head and squinted out the bridge forward windows, then hoisted up his binoculars again. He knew perfectly well the Soviet ships were beyond visual contact range. He punched a fist into his other hand.

"Gibby, let's man battle stations. Advise Dearing."

Gibson. answered, "Man battle stations, aye, Captain." The Exec picked up the bridge talker and switched to the intercom. "All hands, now man battle stations, all hands now man battle stations." The alarm klaxon sounded throughout the length of the destroyer.

"Re-check range and speed, Mr. Willingham."

The radarman replied, "Contact Gagarin at bearing 055, speed now fifteen knots, approaching twelve miles out."

"Weapons status, Mr. Gibson."

"Five-inch forward guns loaded, safeties armed, Captain. Mark 37 warmed up and ready." The Mark 37 was an electronic gun director for the five-inch mounts.

"Very well. Re-check position of the Komiles."

Willingham checked the plot. "Contact on Komiles at bearing 055, speed fifteen knots, range fourteen miles, sir."

Felder stared at the pink horizon until his eyes hurt. He silently willed the Soviet ships to stop. Don't come looking for trouble around here, my friends. But it was apparent with each check of their positions...neither ship was slowing or altering course.

"Radioman, advise Newport News that the Gagarin and the Komiles are still approaching the quarantine line. We are maneuvering to intercept."

"Aye, sir, message is being sent now."

"Mr. Gibson, prepare to signal Oscar November when the Gagarin comes over the horizon."

"Signal lanterns are ready, Captain."

"Very well." To the helmsman, he ordered, "Left rudder, Mr. Miles. Bring her around to 075."

10-23-62

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

4:35 a.m.

Corporal John Delancie gathered up the cards again amid another round of groans from Sheck and Gale. Even Sergeant Snyder was shaking his head.

"Corporal, if I'd a known you could play a hand like that with a straight face back at the Island, I'd a busted your butt on the Confidence Course but good."

Corporal Billy Gale snorted. "He's a con, gotta be right out of Vegas or something. Check his arms and sleeves. I ain't believin' what I'm seein'."

Delancie shuffled the deck with a smooth practiced hand, and a controlled smirk. "It's talent, gentlemen, that's all. Talent and a few years at the Buckeye Club." He dealt another round for their twentieth or thirtieth game of Blackjack. Beside the makeshift plywood and sandbag table, a kerosene lamp guttered and smoked.

"I think it's that lamp," said Sheck. "See how he's keeping it down low. The wick's almost gone. Pour some more oil in there and see what a little light does to his luck."

"Not luck," Delancie insisted. "Simply skill. We can even change the rules, if you want."

"Why bother?" Gale said. "They're his cards. Betty teach you how to deal like this?"

Delancie studied his hand. "Betty taught me a lot but poker and Blackjack..." he shook his head with a sly smile. "...I learned cards from my Dad. Now, he was a real con."

Gale nodded. "Figures. Hey, Sarge, we gonna get to call home today, like they promised? I got me an anniversary to celebrate."

"Sure," Snyder said. "We'll let you make a person-to-person call, right back to Norfolk, soon as the Hyades puts in. Even better, we'll send a limo around. You can use General Collins' personal office."

"Sarge, I was serious," Gale explained. "For real...."

"For real, we're going on perimeter recon in two hours. Shut up and play your hand."

"I hope the ships make it before the Russkies arrive," Sheck said. All of the men had watched the evening before, as four transports dropped anchor in Guantanamo Bay, picking up wives, children and other dependents from the base. By order of the President, dependents were evacuated back to the States, even as Phibron 8 was disembarking. They were to be dropped off at Little Creek and Norfolk, courtesy of Admiral Dempsey, Commanding officer of Amphibious Training Command.

"Leave it to the Navy," said Gale. He checked his watch. "They should be hitting the beaches about noon our time, I figure."

"Yeah, the lizards of 5th Brigade just lost half their combat strength. When the wives and kids go, you might as well surrender."

Delancie was the last to put his hand on the table. It was a twenty, with a joker. Delancie shrugged, grinning. "Sorry, guys."

Snyder spat out a wad on the dirt floor of the bunker. "Jesus H. Christ, man. What's the use? Let's play something else."

The men of Snyder's squad, A Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines were holed up in a tiny earthen bunker just inside the perimeter fence of the base, playing cards by the wan light of a flickering kerosene lamp. Outside, another squad had sentry duty for two more hours, then Snyder's squad would take the handoff. It was still dark on the south coast of Cuba's Oriente Province, sunup an hour or so away. Searchlights stabbed the black wall of forest on the horizon, several hundred yards away, outside the triple fencing and concertina wire barrier of the base perimeter. Fifty feet from the bunker, a TPS-50 radar mast swung around, painting the sky with electromagnetic fingers, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

All the men of Rat Squad, A Company, knew perfectly well that two infantry brigades of Fidel Castro's Eastern Army, were holed up in the forests just beyond the man-made clearing.

By order of Brigadier General Collins, the commanding officer of the Marine contingent at "Gitmo", the men were on high alert. They had only disembarked from Phibron 8's troopship a few hours before. Two days ago, they had been preparing for their part in the annual Marine exercise Phibriglex-62, stocking up for a practice assault on the beaches of Vieques Island, off Puerto Rico. Now, they were holed up in a tiny bunker in a corner of the Worker's Paradise. Along the back wall, M-14s were stashed, magazines loaded, safeties on. The squad's M-60 machine gun and M-79 grenade launcher were nearby, also loaded. There was nervous laughter around the card table.

"So you want to change the rules?" Delancie asked. "Not that it'll do you any good."

Gale had an idea. "What about this?" He pulled up closer to the table, grabbed a few loose cards. "We change the rules just slightly. You got ten cards, right? Plus the Kings and Queens and Jokers, and so forth. Give each card a number, a probability, like say 5 per cent."

"Probability for what?"

"Hell, how do I know? Probability we go into action tomorrow. Probability we get nuked. Each card gets a probability, see. Whoever wins has to total all his probabilities."

Snyder laughed. "Gale, you're a real genius."

"What have we got to lose?" asked Sheck. The men spent a few minutes dickering over how and what to assign to each card. Snyder recorded the details on a scrap of packing paper.

"Deal."

Delancie gathered up the cards again, cut the deck a few times, and dealt. The round started with Gale taking a card, then folding with a 16. Sheck was more adventurous, taking cards in several rounds. Eventually he plopped down an 18.

Snyder and Delancie were left. Each took another card. Their faces revealed nothing but traces of melting camou paint and the red glow of the lamp. Finally, Delancie yielded, dropping an 18.

Snyder yelped with glee. He slammed down a twenty, with two jokers. "Finally!" he said. "There is justice in the world."

"You gotta add up the numbers," Gale reminded him. "Call 'em out."

Gale kept a tally while the adding was going on. When they were done, Gale sucked in a whistle and grimaced. "Nice going, Sarge. The probabilities add up to ninety per cent."

"Shit. So that means a ninety per cent chance we go to war tomorrow?"

Delancie got up and stretched, tucking in a shirt tail. "Don't mean nothing, gentlemen. It's just a game."

There was a bit of nervous laughter around the table, as Snyder flipped over card after card. "What say we go back to the normal rules of blackjack?"

Sheck and Gale both agreed. "Delancie's blackjack or nuclear war...what a choice."

"Yeah, we lose our butts either way."

10-23-62

Moscow

6:00 p.m.

A bitterly cold wind flecked with ice crystals whipped and snapped the hammer and sickle flag atop the Kremlin's Senatskaya Tower as Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev eased his bulk out of the ZIL limousine. Two sentries of the Kremlin Kommendatura stood at attention, as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union slipped into the doorway of the Council of Ministers building. Two floors up on the Chairman's private elevator, the Chairman exited onto a burgundy-carpeted corridor lined with gilded mirrors and statuary. He paused at a bust of Lenin, outside the Presidium meeting room.

You're looking a little tired and pale these days, Vladimir Ilyich. Perhaps a mineral bath or a trip to the spa would do you some good. Or maybe just a few hours in the Presidium room, ducking barbed comments from our Bolshevik colleagues. I recommend it as exercise...really gets the blood going.

Sourly, Khrushchev opened the door and went in.

The Presidium was in its usual state of uproar, called into full session only two hours earlier. Gromyko had phoned Khrushchev at his apartment in the Lenin Hills with the news. President Kennedy was blockading Cuba and threatening world war. Khrushchev had told Andrei Vladimirovich to calm down – he could just imagine the man's bulging eyes on the phone—"not to worry, comrade, we'll get the Presidium together and decide how to teach the youngster another lesson." After he had hung up, Khrushchev had called his personal secretary, Fyodor Bykovsky, up to the top floor study of his suite.

"Call the Presidium members, Fyodor Illych. Tell them to meet me at the Kremlin by 6:00 p.m." Bykovsky turned to go, but Khrushchev called him back. "And get General Mitronov on the line right now." He paced before the huge picture window, seeing the spires and red star of the Kremlin towers in the distance. Mitronov was the Commandant of the Kremlin, responsible for security. "I want the entire second floor of the Ministers Building emptied. Nobody there but the Presidium and Mitronov's men." He jammed his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket. "We may be there all night."

Khrushchev nodded brusquely to the assembled elite of the Party as he came into the Presidium meeting room. A rectangular space dominated by a vast mahogany table inlaid with green baize, the room was otherwise spare. Mahogany wainscoting wrapped the walls, setting off the usual portraits of Lenin, Marx and Engels. Somewhere in the corner, steam shrouded a stainless steel cart that had been wheeled into the room, covered with bottles of vodka and several steaming samovars, along with plates of salted fish, caviar and an assortment of fruits and vegetables. Seat by seat, the cart made its way around the table. The waiter paused at the door, while Khrushchev helped himself to one of the vodka bottles.

"Comrades, I apologize for the short notice," said the First Secretary. He took his usual seat at the head of the table, plopping a small leather satchel down next to the vodka. He continued, pouring himself a finger of the Ukrainian liquid. "Our American friends seem to have discovered what Operation Anadyr is all about. He held up the tiny glass, then downed it in a single gulp. "Na zdorovie." He poured himself some more and sat down heavily. "We must decide our course of action tonight."

They were all present, of course, many of them rousted from dinners, receptions, parties and other engagements. Khrushchev scowled as he scanned the group. Brezhnev, Suslov, Mikoyan...the cautious group. Malinovsky, Gromyko, Shelepin of the KGB, much more forceful and aggressive. And not to forget the swing group: Ponomarev, Kosygin, Podgorny, Rashidov, and Kozlov. Mindless sheep, Khrushchev thought. And Kozlov thinks he will succeed me. We'll soon see about that.

Malinovsky spoke up, gruff and gravelly-voiced, medals swinging from his Marshal's uniform. "We must decide, comrades, tonight, how to respond to Kennedy's ultimatum and the blockade. Clearly, this is an act of war."

Mikhail Suslov, tall and ascetic, an American Marlboro dangling from his lips, disagreed. "Rodion Yakovlevich, it's not so simple as that. We can't just press the nuclear button every time Kennedy jabs a thorn in our side."

Malinovsky hunched forward over some papers bearing the Defense Ministry seal. "It's urgent that we decide soon. There are at present two freighters carrying equipment for the R-12 missile sites bearing down on the blockade line. The Gagarin and the Komiles. They are urgently requesting instructions. Should we stop, reverse course, or run the blockade? This question is upon us now, and events will force the matter within the hour. Already, the American Navy has ships, destroyers I am told, within visual range of the Gagarin."

Gromyko asked, "Who is the captain of the Gagarin?"

Malinovsky consulted some notes. "First Captain Sokolovsky commands the ship. A veteran from our Merchant Marine...he has made two runs to Cuba already. Sokolovsky is requesting permission to take evasive action. He's already armed his five-inch guns and antiaircraft systems."

"It's clear," said Gromyko, "that Kennedy is mad. Blockading a country is an act of war. Or perhaps, piracy, if you like. We mustn't let him get away with this. Our Soviet ships have the right to go wherever they please, the same rights to navigation in international waters as anyone, even the Americans."

Khrushchev sipped at the spertsem, as he followed the arguments back and forth. Mentally, he made notes, tallying up who would side with whom. For the moment, he remained quiet. He wanted to get the sense of the Presidium's thinking before committing to a course of action.

Suslov shook his head. "The Americans respond like capitalists. They prefer to build their empires of money, ignoring the legitimate needs of the working class. They won't fight unless their empires are threatened. When they do feel threatened, of course, they'll fight like mad dogs. But even a mad dog can be distracted by throwing him enough bones." He was doodling on a piece of paper as he spoke. Suslov looked up from his doodles, fingered his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. "Nikita Sergeyevich, I say we throw the dogs a few bones. Socialism is advancing everywhere around the world. This we know from the facts we see. Cuba, itself is the best example. Is it better to have a socialist Cuba and leave the American dogs alone or kick at the dogs with our feet, and fight over scraps in a world of smoking ruins?"

Gromyko slammed a fist on the table. "Mikhail Andreyevich, Kennedy called me a liar yesterday! He said the Soviet Government had lied. He said this to the whole world."

Suslov shrugged. "Kennedy cannot lie about the fact of revolutionary Cuba. He cannot wish Castro away, though he would like to, I'm sure. He has already lied himself, and seen those lies shot down at the Bay of Pigs. So tell me, Andrei Vladimirovich, when a proven liar calls you a lair, are you really so concerned?"

Khrushchev rubbed his eyes. "Comrades, this is getting us nowhere." He saw a hand flash up out of the corner of his eyes. "Leonid Illych, you have a comment?"

Brezhnev steepled his hands on the table in front of him. His bushy eyebrows lowered. "The plain fact is that we are outmanned and outgunned in the Caribbean. Isn't that true, Comrade Defense Minister?"

Malinovsky frowned. His jaw quivered. "If we adhere to this blockade, this quarantine, as the Americans call it, we will be seen by Communists everywhere as capitulating to the enemy. The Chinese already are making trouble, saying we've gone astray from the course of Marx and Lenin. I say we run the blockade and call Kennedy's bluff."

Mikoyan spoke up. "Just exactly what forces are the Americans assembling?"

Malinovsky consulted his notes again. "At noon today, our time, there were over a hundred and fifty ships of their Navy in and around Cuba. I have intelligence from the rezidentura in Washington, thanks to Comrade Shelepin here, indicating the carriers Independence, Enterprise, and Essex, have taken up station in the waters around Cuba. In addition, the Americans have augmented their battalion at the Guantanamo Base, with approximately 6000 more Marines. They have moved large numbers of aircraft to staging bases in the southeastern part of their country, as well as moving units of the 1st Armored Division and several airborne divisions to ready positions. Finally, the American Strategic Air Command has now two-thirds of its long-range bomber force in the air, on continuous alert. These bombers, B-47s and B-52s, carry megaton-size atomic warheads. Their alert patterns bring the bombers to pre-set launch points at some distance from our borders, where the bombers are held until authorized to proceed. The remaining one-third of the bomber force is on fifteen-minute alert at various bases around the United States." Malinovsky paused, while shuffling through his papers. Finally, he found what he was looking for. "Comrades, we have another bit of intelligence from our sources...it seems that the top American military command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will issue a notice tonight...we already have a draft of the notice ourselves...advising all American forces around the world to set Defense Condition Three. Defcon Three causes the American strategic nuclear forces to increase their alert status. Several additional steps are taken to ready their atomic devices for use."

Mikoyan snorted. "And facing this military force, you advise running the blockade and calling Kennedy's bluff? I am not so sure who is really the madman here."

Gromyko said, "Anastas Iossifarionich, we are not exactly defenseless ourselves, you know. If Kennedy wants to play with fire, he should get his fingers burned a little."

"Exactly," Khrushchev said. "We could send more submarines into the Atlantic, could we not? Perhaps even fire a warning shot at an American ship, to disable her, not to sink her. We have many ways to getting our message across without resorting to atomic war."

Malinovsky added, "I think we should issue orders to ready a small squadron of our Foxtrot-class submarines. A contingency plan, if you like. It will take several hours for the submarines to be made ready for sea. Nearly a week to reach the Caribbean. We have submarines shielding our freighters now. I have given a standing order to all commanders to maintain maximum battle readiness."

"So we are prepared to shoot back," Brezhnev said, "but are we prepared to begin the shooting? That is the issue we have not decided."

"Comrades, I suggest we agree at least to raise our defense readiness. To at least category two, to match the Americans' Defcon Three."

There was general assent to the Marshal's advice. Khrushchev scribbled a note to himself.

Mikoyan was massaging his thin black moustache. "We shouldn't do anything to provoke the Americans now."

Gromyko slapped his own forehead in exasperation. "Ya zaby'l, Comrade Anastas, I had almost forgotten that you have no education beyond that of a horse's ass."

Mikoyan turned florid and half rose in his seat. Khrushchev motioned him down with a flick of the wrist. The arguments flared again, militarists versus the crybabies, and Khrushchev wearily removed his pince-nez frames and rubbed his eyes. A long night ahead of us, I can see that already.

Throughout the debate, Khrushchev had been strangely silent. He knew that Kennedy had already called his bluff and raised the stakes. Five months ago, he had sat in this very seat and described how Operation Anadyr would create new objective conditions in the conflict with the Americans. In glowing terms, he had read from the plan authored by Gribkov, relating how with a single bold stroke, he would change the balance of power and help their Cuban colleagues fend off another American attack. Nuclear missiles only ninety miles away, able to reach all of North America in minutes, just as the Americans had ringed their country with the same missiles.

Now Kennedy will know what it is like to toss and turn at night thinking thoughts of Armageddon.

And they had applauded him in this very room. A daring and brilliant plan, Nikita Sergeyevich! A master stroke of strategy! A bold move, worthy of Lenin himself!

Khrushchev snorted at the thought. Puppies flocking to their milk. And now that the Americans had discovered the plan, half of them wanted to turn around and run back to the Motherland with their tails tucked. But I know this young man Kennedy. Younger than my own son....

"Your mouth is moving, Nikita Sergeyevich, but there are no words." Mikoyan smiled quizzically at his old Party mentor. "Please..."

"Comrades, I have some suggestions. Of course, we will never back down to Kennedy's threats and intimidations. But perhaps, some quieter discussions, out of the glare of world opinion, may be useful. I have in mind a more private channel."

Shelepin nodded knowingly. "We have several operatives in the Embassy who have high-level contacts. I'll get you their names."

"In addition," Khrushchev went on, "we must prepare for action if action is needed. To Malinovsky, "Comrade Marshal, we should be prepared to move in Berlin if the situation warrants. Our forces are ready?"

"I have ordered Marshal Koniev to increase readiness as of this very morning. Additional tank and artillery regiments from the 75th Guards Army are moving into position even now."

"Good. And we should send additional ships into the Atlantic. Let the Americans confront the might of our Soviet Navy on the high seas."

"This is rather provocative, Nikita Sergeyevich, is it not?" Brezhnev looked around the table for support. "Perhaps now we should be of cooler heads, not letting Kennedy drive us into rash decisions."

Khrushchev reddened angrily as arguments flew around the table. He glared bullets at Brezhnev, who avoided his stare. This bear already has one foot in the tent, he told himself. The time has come to set bait for a trap.

Khrushchev held up his hands. "Comrades, comrades, please." The uproar died down a bit. "Enough. Let's sleep on the matter for a few hours. I suggest you all stay over in your Kremlin apartments tonight. If our enemies see limousines coming and going at all hours of the evening, they'll surely be suspicious."

Malinovsky said, "We must send instructions to our ships before we leave. They are at the blockade line now."

"Very well, Comrade Marshal, I propose this to the Presidium: I will issue an order directing that all Soviet ships approaching the blockade line are to stop and hold position for now. They are to resist by all means necessary any attempts to board and inspect their cargo." Khrushchev brandished a fist in the air. "We must not let our rocket technology fall into American hands." He watched the faces of the Presidium members, looking for any signs of dissent. "Is this acceptable to the Presidium?"

There were murmurs of agreement around the table.

"Very well. In addition, " Khrushchev rose from his seat and stood at the end of table, "I have been making some notes while we debate. I will dictate a brief letter for Comrade Fidel Castro tonight, for overnight transmission to Havana, through our Embassy. In this letter, I will detail what we are doing in response to the Kennedy speech, what we are doing to counter this brazen act of piracy." Khrushchev pounded the table for emphasis.

"We must be a firm hand behind our fraternal Cuban comrades in this dangerous hour."

10-24-62

Havana

7:30 a.m.

Gusting rain squalls lashed the old seawall of Havana's Malecon Wednesday morning, crashing against the stone and rock barrier, drenching fruit stands and coastal defense batteries alike, as the tropical storm scudded low across northwest Cuba. At first light, residents of La Habana Vieja were out on the streets, picking up tree limbs, pieces of plaster, roof shingles and other debris blown about by the storm. October had been a particularly nasty month for weather in the West Indies; Havanistas were still picking up from Daisy when this latest storm had blown in from the Antilles, dumping torrential rains and high winds on the pearl of the Indies.

Already, lines had formed outside the markets from the old colonial quarter to Miramar, la cola the queues were known locally, as residents stocked up on the remaining scraps of bread and milk and cooking oil. Last night, Fidel himself had gone on television and the radio stations, warning of Yanqui treachery and threats. The Presidente had issued a high-level alert, just before 6:00 pm, an alarma de combate, and the people were worried. "President Kennedy threatens us with war," Fidel had thundered, "but he knows we are well armed. We have armed ourselves against our wishes, because we were forced to strengthen our military defenses on pain of endangering the sovereignty of our nation and the independence of our country."

Within two hours, the markets were depleted.

Several miles away, in the quarter named Vedado, lightning crackled over the Plaza de la Revolucion, lighting up the moss-draped stone face of the old Memorial Jose Marti. Under the stern and unyielding gaze of El Libertador, a long and massively columned building bordered one side of the plaza, giving on its opposite side to a view of the Avenida de la Independencia. All along the avenida, fierce storm winds bent the craggy royal palm trees almost to the ground. Pedestrians scurried for cover, from one building to another. Early morning shoppers mixed with militiamen huddling against stone walls, seeking any shelter from the ravages of the storm.

A hundred feet below the plaza, the rain and wind were only distant rumbles. In the subterranean interrogation chambers of the former Ministry of Justice building, the Commandante en Jefe paced nervously around the map table, sucking and chewing loudly on a cigar stub. Fidel Castro Ruz paused briefly at one end of the table, tossed away one cigar he had been chewing for the last hour and promptly inserted a fresh one in the corner of his mouth. He tucked his green fatigue shirt in his trousers for the hundredth time and rapped on the map with his knuckles.

"Kennedy will not be so foolish this time, comrades. I'm telling you, it's Puerta Esperanza, Mariel and Matanzas we have to worry about. The Yanquis will send their Marines against our northwest beaches." He bent over the map, dribbling some tobacco juice into the Gulf of Mexico near Florida. "Playa Giron was a terrible mistake, a stupid military move and he knows it. No, the Americans aren't stupid. They won't be coming ashore at the Bay of Pigs again."

Major Sergio del Valle, chief of the General Staff, stood rigidly still at the other end of the map table. His black moustache twitched. "Commandante, we are well prepared this time. Ask the Minister." He indicated the other man standing midway between the two of them.

Minister of the FAR (Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias) Raul Castro crossed his arms and nodded gravely. "He's right, Fidel. We have deployed well this time."

Fidel Castro started pacing again, circling and circling the map table, as a vulture orbits its killed prey. He had been up all night, edgy, hyper, nervous from his speech to the nation. "But you agree, don't you, that these three beaches are the likely assault points? See here...all three are near Havana and the bulk of our population. All are flat and wide, shallow in approach, with plenty of hard ground nearly. Not like the swamps that trapped the Gironistas last year. Our own experience and our own intelligence sources point this way. We must reinforce, now."

"Commandante, we have regiments at all three locations." Del Valle said.

"Which regiments? How many?"

Del Valle moved to the map. "At Matanzas, we have a cavalry regiment, the Fifth Mechanized, and five squadrons of the Guardia Rural. They are equipped and trained in our new BTR-40 fighting vehicles. Also, two infantry battalions: the Seventh and the Twenty-first are based here. At Pinar del Rio," Del Valle's hand swept to Cuba's westernmost province, "we have another cavalry regiment, four infantry battalions, and six squadrons of the Guardia Rural. Bridging the gap, and able to swing east or west as events dictate, we have combined several regiments at Camp Columbia. Now there are four infantry, the Sixth, the Seventh, the Thirtieth and the Eighteenth, plus a cavalry regiment. You reviewed these regiments just last month."

Fidel Castro studied the terrain and the map icons carefully. "I remember. Go on."

Del Valle continued. "In addition, at La Cabana Fortress, we have stationed three coastal artillery battalions, one field and two mountain batteries, and a company each of sappers, signalmen, and railway troops."

"Where is the armor, Sergio? I don't see any tank units."

Del Valle unfolded an envelope containing armored unit icons and spread them out on the edge of the map. "We are re-deploying now, even as we speak. In Pinar del Rio..." he placed three of the icons, "three regiments fully equipped and trained in our new T-62s." Del Valle placed more icons around the map. "In Matanzas, two regiments, one T-62, one T-55. And in the Havana area, four regiments, two of them T-62, the rest T-54s."

Castro seemed satisfied. "Excellent, Sergio. Don't you think so, Raul?"

Raul Castro nodded. "Outstanding staff work, Major. The General Staff is to be commended. What about the SAMs, the SA-2 sites we are manning? Are they operational? Are they on this map?"

Del Valle said, "They are, Comrade Minister. Here," he pointed to a small rocket icon in western Cuba, "at Artemisa, four batteries, four launchers, with eight missiles each. Also at Santa Clara, here, and at Camaguey and Holguin. The sites are all four-battery installations. Incidentally, we are still in training at the Holguin site. Our Russian friends haven't released live missiles to us yet, but they will within the week."

"I will speak with General Pliyev about that," Raul commented. "Cooperation with the Russians has generally gone well. But they still insist on limiting the number of Cubans who work at the missile sites. Some incidents have occurred, but they've been resolved."

Fidel paced around the room again. He could not stay motionless for more than a few minutes. "Yes, yes, that was part of the original agreement, I remember. Still, we are a sovereign nation. We have the right to defend ourselves. The training should be speeded up. We will be at war in a few days."

Raul located a pointer and tapped the map at Mariel and Havana. "The Americans will assault us from the air, and from the beaches. We have to be ready for them. DGI has agents in the States, reporting on movements of military units. And the Russians have been sharing some intelligence with us. We know the 101st is staging from Kentucky. Also the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg. The 1st Armored is already at Fort Stewart, Georgia. And the Marines are reinforcing at Guantanamo."

"We are doing the same?"

"Yes, Commandante, we have one cavalry and four infantry regiments at Santiago, ready to block any move by the Marines out of the Guantanamo area."

Fidel Castro stopped at a wall map depicting the United States and the western Atlantic. It was covered with ship icons. "I know they are coming, Raul. I can feel it. Kennedy wants me dead, he wants the gangsters back in power. We can't let the Revolution down."

Raul tossed his pointer on the map table. "Patria o muerte, Fidel. It's been this way since we stepped off Granma. You know that."

Fidel rubbed his eyes wearily, laying his thick glasses on the table. "Si, I know. I know. Venceremos...we will overcome them. But...is there more we can do?. I keep thinking...there must be more...."

His musings were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. Raul Castro opened it and an aide, Subteniente Guzman stuck his head in.

"Excuse me, Commandante. Capitan Rafael Ramirez is here on appointment. He is in your office."

Fidel Castro retrieved his glasses and tucked his fatigues shirt in again. "I'll be right there, Guzman." To Del Valle and Raul: "Keep at it, comrades. I doubt Kennedy will give us more than a day or so." He left and went to his office at the end of hall.

In the anteroom, he found FAR Capitan Rafael Ramirez standing by an oil portrait of the Granma, the small boat that had borne the first revolutionaries from exile in Mexico to the beaches of Oriente province so many years and battles ago. Ramirez was tall and lean, almost emaciated. He had a full black beard and moustache. His face, though young, was pocked with several knife scars from an adventurous childhood. He wore the tan fatigues of the General Staff, and a chestful of medals.

Castro's face lightened up. "Capitan Ramirez, welcome. Welcome." After Ramirez saluted, the men shook hands. "Please," Castro opened the door to his office, "come in and sit." Ramirez worked for Del Valle in the General Staff quarters a few blocks away. The Presidente had always liked the young infantry officer. He had been one of the heroes of the Playa Giron battle, fighting off Cuban traitors sent by Kennedy to the Bay of Pigs.

"What have you got for me today, Rafael?"

Ramirez unzipped a small pouch and extracted a small folder, sealed shut with tape. He handed the folder to Castro.

"These are the plans for the operation we discussed a few days ago," Ramirez said.

Castro accepted the folder but didn't open it. "The operation?" He looked puzzled at Ramirez.

"Operation Moncada, Commandante. You instructed me to write a summary of the plan."

Castro nodded. "Ah, yes, I do remember now." He hefted the folder, as if weighing the contents, but didn't open it. "Not very thick, is it? Please, explain to me. I want to hear."

Ramirez had spent two weeks, much of it without sleep in the evenings, after hours, writing up a summary for the Presidente. He knew every word by heart.

"As you know, Commandante, our Russians friends have many fine weapons and pieces of military equipment on Cuba. They are training our troops in how to fight the new T-62 tank, how to operate the artillery systems, fuel and launch the SA-2 air defense rockets, fly and fight the new MiG-21 fighter jets. But they keep us away from certain areas, certain installations. One of these installations is at Bejucal, only a half hour ride south of here."

"I've heard of it, yes. Go on."

"From our colleagues in the DGI, we have learned many of the details of what is stored at the compound at Bejucal. This facility is the central storage depot for all atomic warheads, warheads for use on the R-12 and R-14 missiles now being erected. The Bejucal complex is commanded by a Colonel Beloborodov, of the Russian KGB. Our DGI contacts in the area and in Statsenko's 134th Missile Regiment near Havana have given us numerous details on how the Bejucal complex is guarded. We now have very detailed information on how the garrison is armed and deployed."

Castro was thoughtful. "When we talked earlier, you mentioned a plan to borrow a few of the warheads at this compound."

"Yes, Commandante, that is the essence of this plan. I've given it the title of Operation Moncada."

Castro smiled broadly at the reference. "A pleasant memory to be sure, Capitan. Batista's barracks were the beginning of our revolution. Tell me more."

Ramirez leaned forward in his seat. "Commandante, by your direction, I formed and trained a small unit of men. I trained them to assault the weapons compound at Bejucal. We trained for many months in the forests and hills south of Havana, practicing night-time assault tactics around El Rincon, Punta Brava, using some abandoned hangars and shops near the airport. The men are ready."

Castro pursed his lips, stroking his beard, as he opened the folder and scanned a few pages. "What is your time to begin this operation?"

Ramirez said, "We propose to start our assault at 2:00 a.m., on the morning on October 27. This Saturday. If we are successful, we will be able to obtain three to five atomic warheads, 200 to 700 kiloton range we expect. These warheads will be trucked south to the port of Batabano. My plan calls for the warheads to be taken out to sea on a torpedo boat we have arranged. The crews will await your orders about where to go next."

Castro smiled. "Our Russian friends will not appreciate losing a few of their atomic bombs, will they, Capitan?"

"No, Commandante, they won't. Colonel Beloborodov has a reputation for strong discipline among his troops. They will fight well."

"I see there is more to your plan."

Ramirez stood up and came around next to the Presidente, pointing out several maps of the Gulf of Mexico and North America. "Planning work is going on now, with contacts and sympathizers in the States, to ensure that the warheads can be safely smuggled into America and placed in sensitive locations, to bring the Norteamericanos to heel."

Castro nodded approvingly. "I don't trust our comrade Nikita Khrushchev, Capitan. I don't trust him to stand up to the Norteamericanos. Even after all the weapons and the help they've brought, all the soldiers and the advisors, I still don't trust him. The Russians don't understand our revolution. It's been too long for them; Lenin is just a corpse in Red Square. Do you know what comrade Alekseev said to me the other day?"

"No, Commandante."

Castro snorted. "He told me that several members of the Presidium were acting like young boys again, full of energy, frisky and playful. It seems that they never expected to live long enough to see a country go Socialist on its own. Alekseev said it was like the blood of the Old Bolsheviks was pumping in their veins. They were invigorated by the Cuban Revolution. Imagine that."

Ramirez was silent, hoping and silently willing the Presidente to give the word, to let his men start the operation they had given their lives for these last four months. We are like a coiled spring, needing only a slight touch to release....

Castro sensed his tension, his readiness. "This way, Capitan, we'll be able to provide for our own defense. And demonstrate to the Yanquis that we can threaten them just as they threaten us."

"We need only your command, sir."

Castro pronounced himself satisfied with the plan for Operation Moncada. "Who else knows about this?"

"Outside the unit, only two. Comrade Minister Raul Castro and my immediate superior: Major Luis de la Madrigo."

"I don't know this Madrigo."

"He is the G-3 for the General Staff, Commandante. Plans and operations. He works for Major del Valle."

"Sergio? Does Sergio know anything about this?" Castro frowned.

"No, Commandante, he doesn't. The Minister asked us to keep knowledge of Moncada only to men he had designated."

"Good. Sergio is a good man, but it's better if he doesn't know right away. We should do as Raul says...keep the number of people who know of the operation to a minimum. My friend Alekseev has eyes and ears all over the country."

Ramirez stood up rigidly. "As you wish, Commandante. Your orders?"

Castro slowly closed the folder and patted the cover. "Well done, Rafael. Well done. Go back to your base at Camp Columbia. Get your men ready to go on an hour's notice. Wait for my command."

Ramirez hardly breathed. All he had worked for.... "As you wish, Commandante." He saluted briskly and left the room.

Castro followed him a few minutes later, returning to the map room. He found Raul Castro and Major del Valle poring over maps of the Atlantic approaches to Cuba.

"Amigos, amigos, sorry for the interruption. Let's get back to work."

Raul noticed the change in Fidel's mood right away. He seemed more relaxed, more confident. Perhaps, Celia Sanchez had come by for a "visit." "We're looking at ways to deploy the Komar patrol boats Nikita has just given us. Any ideas for a better defense?"

Castro loosed his belt a notch and jammed a new cigar in the corner of his mouth. He bent over the table, murmuring, "Si, Raul, I do. I have an idea that the defense of Cuba is proceeding very well."
CHAPTER 2

10-26-62

Camp Columbia, Havana

4:30 a.m.

Only a few lights were on in the Bolivar Barracks at Camp Columbia Friday morning. At the far western end of the compound, Building E housed freshly trained and equipped troops of the Ejercito Revolutionario's 18th Motorized Infantry Regiment, an elite unit of the FAR just bivouacked last week from maneuvers in the hills of Pinar del Rio Province with "special advisors" from the Soviet Red Army's 60th Guards Army. Flush with success from a well-planned training assault on the small village of Isabel Maria, the troops slept soundly in their bunks. Like soldiers everywhere, the fact that reveille would come all too soon, in fact in half an hour, was of no consequence. They slept the sleep of the dead, dead with exhausted satisfaction, knowing they had finally mastered the intricacies of a combined arms action with their new T-54 tanks and BTR-40 fighting vehicles.

Even the senior Soviet advisor, a Major Goncharev, had complimented them, noting in his report to regimental headquarters, the evident courage and tenacity of "true revolutionary soldiers." Capitan Somoza had been so pleased with the Major's report that he had issued a unit citation to the men. That and a few hours' liberty could have substituted for all the Christmases yet to come to the fatigued infantrymen of the 18th.

Unknown to the snoring soldiers, Building E also housed another squad of "revolutionary soldiers." Men specially screened and selected, sworn to absolute secrecy, spirited away to a training base at an abandoned militia post in the piney hills south of Jose Marti Airport. These men were also asleep in the barracks of Building E, though not bunked in the same wing as the troops of the 18th Infantry. They had been given quarters in an old and dilapidated subterranean ordnance bunker, renovated into a crude bunking area, but still smelling of gunpowder and cleaning oil. The doors to the vault were padlocked and guarded. Outside the bunker, in a corner office on a little-used stub of a hallway, two men in tan fatigues pored over a small map by the light of a kerosene lamp. Outside the window to the office, the reveille bugler was already sleepily making his way to the flag stand.

The two men, ostensibly infantry officers in the Western Army command, paid no attention to the stirrings of the regiment around them. The door to the tiny office was locked. The windows were also locked, blinds cords tied in a knot. The air was heavy with smoke, and stuffy.

Capitan Rafael Ramirez flicked a cigarette ash onto the floor. He and his subordinate, Subteniente Felix Calderone, were going over final plans for the assault on the warhead bunker at Bejucal.

Calderone spoke softly. "Three platoons, Capitan. Nearly a hundred men. Is it enough?"

Ramirez chewed on his cigarette, subconsciously imitating Cuba's Commandante en Jefe. "It will have to be, Felix. We have good men, we have the element of surprise, we know how to use our equipment. We know how Beloborodov's men will be deployed." He patted the map. "We know what has to be done."

Calderone nodded silently. He had seen this look in Ramirez's eyes before, more than once. Both of them had served in Che Guevara's Eighth Column. "I feel like the night before we attacked Santa Clara. Don't you feel it?"

Ramirez smiled. "Si, I can't explain it, but I feel it just the same. It's like a good rum drink. A warm feeling." The smile abruptly faded. "I talked with Tomas last night."

Calderone knew the Capitan had many conversations with his brother, killed at Playa Giron the year before by an American shell. "What did he say?"

"The same...'Vamos ahora...juntos. We go now...together.' Just like when we were the Mountain Boys in Santiago." Ramirez turned with a quizzical smile on his face. "Let's go downstairs. It's almost reveille. I want to see the men."

The two of them left the office. With a curt nod to the sentry guarding the padlocked vault door, they pulled back the wooden hatch and crept down the stairs. As Ramirez had suspected, most of the men were already awake. Squad leaders circulated among them.

"Atencion!" came a hoarse voice. Men scrambled out of their bunks.

Ramirez held up his hands. "At ease, men. Squad leaders, gather around." A circle of men materialized and formed a perimeter around the Capitan. Calderone silently counted them off: Gallegos, Saguente, Ortega, Aleman, Oriente....

Ramirez spoke quietly. "Comrades, Fidel just sent me an envelope." He held up the brown paper. "He's given us the word: Moncada goes!"

The men erupted with a cheer but Calderone waved them quiet as Ramirez went on. "Compadres, get your rest today. Reveille will sound in a few minutes but I want you in this bunker until 2300 hours tonight. Check and clean all weapons. Tonight, we fight for Cuba!" Another cheer was waved silent.

"Squad leaders, meet me in this corner..." he indicated a platform near the stairs landing, where a makeshift table had been erected. "The rest of you get back into your bunks." The men began to disperse, shuffling and jostling in the close quarters of the bunker. Calderone moved several lanterns around the table and unfurled a map. The map detailed La Habana and points south, all the way to the Golfo de Batabano. Ramirez leaned against the stairs while the squad leaders assembled. He shook hands with each one in turn....

Luis Gallegos, Oscar Oriente, Geraldo Barracoa, Teodoro Aleman, Alejandro Saguente, Manuel Ortega.

Ramirez was proud of all of them. Each man had distinguished himself in training, each had shown the initiative and the courage and the tenacity that Moncada would need. They would be going right into the nest of the American eagle, armed with the kind of teeth the Yanquis would respect, nuclear teeth.

"Comrades, let's get started." Ramirez bent to the map, removing his pistol from its holster and laying the weapon on the stairs. "Our primary concern must be the T-54 and T-62 tanks the Russians have stationed at the base. Felix, our latest intelligence?"

Calderone extracted a rumpled sheet of paper. "Observers in the village report that security around the compound has been tightened. There are towers with machine gun emplacements at every corner of the base. The Russians have cleared fields of fire in all directions for several hundred meters. Each tower is manned by two marksmen, around the clock. Also, high-power searchlights regularly sweep the ground, out to the main gate and beyond.

"The main gate has been strengthened. Now there are three barriers, each staggered from the next. New towers for marksmen have been erected at the last barrier. The base perimeter, as you know, is a triple barrier of iron anti-tank traps, concertina wire, ditches one to two meters deep, and in some places, stacked cement blocks. All roads around the complex have been closed and fencing put in. They're patrolled regularly. The road leading up to the gatehouse has been straightened; just last week, construction troops cleared an arc of a hundred meters radius on both sides of this road of all trees and brush, to give a better view of approaching vehicles."

Corporal Aleman spoke up. He was broad heavy man, with thick black hair. "What about the warhead bunkers? Any changes?"

Calderone shook his head. "None that we know of. Still cement foundations, with a poured concrete revetment and iron grating or fencing at the top of the ramp. The bunkers are well insulated with air conditioning equipment providing treated air. Additional lightning towers have been erected. The Russians are taking no chances, with all the storms we've been having."

Ramirez interjected. "Comrades, the Russian order of battle is well thought out and deployed in depth. We're dealing with units of an elite Guards Army here, the 75th, plus troops of the KGB, Ninth Directorate. Our contacts indicate that the majority of these men are billeted in and around the Moscow Military District. They're well trained to perform nuclear security and transport duties. The garrison is capable and experienced. They'll fight well, I assure you."

"We'll fight better," said Corporal Oriente. There were murmurs of agreement.

"The tank situation bothers me," said Aleman. "This diversionary plan...we have trained on it, yes, but there are many things that could go wrong."

Ramirez said, "Teo, you're right, too many things. But I see no other way. We can't just roll up to the gatehouse with an armored division and expect Beloborodov to invite us in. The diversion will work."

The men discussed the tactics of the maneuver for several minutes. With some careful planning, Ramirez had managed to requisition several new T-54 tanks for Moncada. They had trained on operating the tanks in close quarters, in heavy brush and woodland, just like the dense pine forests around Bejucal. The plan was for both tanks to be trucked to a highway crossing just outside the small village. At the planned time, both tanks would dismount and move through the woods toward the warhead bunker. At a distance of a thousand meters, both would fire several rounds into the Soviet barracks tucked in a small clearing to the west of the main approach road. Shortly thereafter, the plan anticipated that the Russians would send their own T-62s out after the Cuban tanks. Ramirez knew he was gambling on this point. Successful penetration of the compound with their BTR-60PK armored fighting vehicles depended on the Russians sending all their tanks into the field. If any remained behind, the BTRs would be little more than cannon fodder for the 105mm guns of the Soviet tanks.

"Drivers, you all know the signal to advance," Ramirez said. The BTR-60 drivers nodded in unison. "Two red flares followed by a white flare. When you see the flares, go fast and hard."

Ramirez knew that speed and timing was everything. He had timed their training assaults to the second and he knew precisely how long it would take for the BTRs to breach the tank traps, ditches, wire barriers and cement blocks. As long as they haven't installed any surprises....

Ramirez laid down a second map over the first. This map showed greater detail. "Here are the warhead bunkers. Standard chevron deployment, about fifteen meters between the bunkers themselves. Watch out for the cabling running along some of these ramps. Most of the conduit is buried, but the rains have slowed work. Our latest intelligence on the grating is that they're bolt and clevis combinations, very heavy duty, but not anchored more than five to six centimeters. A BTR at ten kilometers per hour should be able to spring them."

Saguente spoke. "How sure are we of the warhead dimensions?"

Calderone shrugged. "Our contacts at the Mariel docks could only give estimates. That's why we have five BTRs. One per warhead."

"If there's room," said Oriente. Left unspoken was the order all of them silently recalled from training. The warheads come first. Assault troops remain dismounted if the warhead takes up the squad compartment.

Calderone said, "We have good intelligence. Most of the sub-megaton warheads are 1.2 meters in diameter, about 1.5 meters long, basically conical."

"And heavy," said Oriente. "Four to five hundred kilos, counting the containers."

"They're strapped to dollies inside the bunkers. The dollies are designed to run down a track, out the entrance to the ramp and down the ramp. There, normally, the warhead container would be winched onto a truck for transport to the missile launch site. We can use the same dollies and track to load up our vehicles."

"Let's discuss contingency and escape procedures," said Ramirez. "I expect the Russians to fight hard. Casualties could be high. You knew this when you joined Moncada. But our mission will be a success if we can liberate two or three atomic warheads. In particular, we must take at least one high-yield device. Our intelligence indicates that the R-12 missiles operate with warheads up to 700 kilotons yield. Men, it's vital that we seize one of these warheads. Now," his fingers went back to the first map, "follow me along the escape routes.

"Each BTR departs in a different direction. You have your orders on the roads to take. Under no circumstances should you go back to Bejucal. The village will be crawling with Russians and FAR troops. Leave by these routes...Highways 6 and 8 east and south, and get off the roads if you have to. There are old logging trails marked on your maps. The BTRs will just fit them...that's why we trained so hard in maneuvers and tactics in the woods. Use these trails as much as you can."

"What about aircraft? The Russians have helicopters right here at Camp Columbia. MI-4s stage out of Artemisa as well."

"At night, you should be safe as long as you stay in wooded areas. If you have to stop, stop and conceal as we trained. We have the advantage of surprise and our diversionary tactics should cause plenty of confusion. In any case, here..." his finger rested on a small coastal town south of Bejucal, "is where you must go. The docks will be secured...you have the password in case you're challenged. We have 'borrowed' several new P4-class patrol torpedo boats from our contacts in the Armada Revolutionario. We'll load the devices on them and put to sea. We must be underway before dawn."

Calderone said, "I've requisitioned several large trucks from a sugar mill owner near Alquizar. The mill is on a spur off this road, the old Rivera Highway. The trucks are in a shed. The owner, Hector Garcia, is a friend of my family. When you see the shed, stop and flash your headlights. Four times off, two times on, then leave them off. You'll see a red lantern in the shed door. Drive up slowly. We'll only have a few minutes to transfer the warhead."

"Trucks leave the mill all day and night without suspicion" Ramirez said. "I want to do everything I can to throw the KGB and the GRU off our trails. The Russians have deeply penetrated our officer corps and our General Staff. It'll be easier to make Batabano in unmarked vehicles."

Gallegos snorted. "I'll kill the weasels with by bare hands, if I have to."

Ramirez smiled. All throughout training, Gallegos had been a fighter. Even disciplinary days confined to quarters hadn't smoothed out the rough edges.

"You'll have your chance, Luis. With the Norteamericanos." Ramirez re-holstered his pistol, after checking the chambers. "All details of Moncada have to be kept secret as long as possible. That's why we've got you caged up in this bunker half the time. I don't want you spilling anything over beers at the club."

The men laughed.

"Even the disposition of these platoons has been given a cover story. We've put out the story, through the General Staff, that you're on training exercises. There's even some truth to that. I've had orders drawn up, signed by Minister Raul Castro himself, that you're on maneuvers. You're practicing to repel an airborne assault from American forces south of Havana. That should explain to any nosy Russian officers why Cuban tanks and infantry fighting vehicles are on the move in the dead of night."

Gallegos looked around at the faces of the assembled men. "Capitan, we're ready. We want to fight, Russians, Americans, it doesn't matter. The bastards will see what a sting little Cuba has."

"You'll get your chance soon enough, Corporal. The Russians have enough men and firepower on Cuba to make this a bloody mess. And if the Americans come...."

The men started arguing with themselves, shoving each other about. Ramirez knew that Gallegos was right. The coiled spring had to be released.

"See that your men rest today. No one is to be up and about. We have a busy night ahead of us. But if all goes well, we'll finally have the means to threaten the Yanquis and keep them out of Cuba."

Ramirez dismissed the men. He left Calderone in the bunker and retreated up the stairs to his cubbyhole office. As he pulled the door to and sat at the battered old desk, he heard the first notes of the reveille bugler, awakening the troops all over Camp Columbia. He listened quietly to the sound for a few moments, visualizing the routine. How many mornings had he cursed that sound, jarring him out of a deep and dreamless sleep? Yet now he couldn't sleep, hadn't slept in days. Ramirez lit up a cigarette and fished for the memo pad he always kept in his breast pocket. A stub of pencil was in the desk drawer.

Silently, with the air filled by the heavy trod of feet in the hallways beyond the bunker, Ramirez composed a letter. He addressed it to his wife of seven years. He would place the letter among his pouch of personal effects in the desk drawer. If he was killed in Operation Moncada, he knew that General de la Madrigo would mail the letter.

Before he started writing, he removed the bronze cross and shield of his Medal of Revolutionary Merit and placed it in the envelope.

Dear Miriam...I am writing this because I love you....

10-26-62

Aboard the oil tanker V.S. Sandino

6:15 a.m.

First Officer Jorge Perez waved at the harbor pilot as the tug pulled away, pitching in the light chop of the Sandino's bow wave. The tug soon came about and headed back toward Caracas' inner harbor. Perez listened as the deep grumbling chug of the tug's diesel engines finally faded beyond the wind noise. He had just ordered Ahead Standard on the engine annunciator. The engine room had answered bells promptly and the tanker plowed on past the last of the harbor buoys and into the deep green waters of the Caribbean.

It was just after dawn Friday as the skyscrapers of the Venezuelan capital slipped over the horizon. Perez waited for a few more minutes, making sure the helmsman successfully brought the 75,000 ton tanker around to a more northwesterly heading, steering course 325 degrees to pass through the channel separating Curacao and Aruba. Once clear of the Netherlands Antilles, the Sandino would increase speed to 18 knots and make for the Pedro Banks off Jamaica.

Perez turned over the conn to the First Mate, and lay below to his stateroom, one flight of steps down and two hallway turns aft of the bridge. He locked the door and sat down at the tiny desk by his bunk, extracting some routing documents from the shipping line. The Sandino's real routing book was stored in a locked cabinet on the bridge; only Captain Figueroa had the keys. But before the ship had weighed anchor at Slip Number 4 in Caracas, Perez had "borrowed" a stack of blank forms from the dispatcher's office at Petrocal-Alliant Lines. He snapped open the case of an old typewriter and inserted one of the blank routing forms now.

Jorge Perez knew perfectly well that he was doing was both illegal in every maritime country on Earth and a termination offense from the shipping line. Still, in less than ten minutes of hunt and peck typing, he had created a reasonable facsimile of a legitimate ship routing and manifest summary for the Sandino. The real routing showed that their destination was to be Houston, Texas USA, bearing a full load of Venezuelan Number 5 light crude to the Texaco refinery at Baytown. Perez left all the cargo loading and manifesting data intact. It was the ship's departure and expected time of arrival that he altered, pushing back their port appearance outside the Houston Ship Channel by several hours. Though it was unlikely that the revised document would raise any eyebrows with U.S. Customs, he took no chances. Under "Incidents", he typed in a ready-made explanation for the discrepancy. Since the original departure time would be logged in at the dispatcher's office, any Customs agent who wanted to check would note deviations from the original. Eyebrows might be raised, questions asked. Perez's explanation should help to deflect any inquiries.

Perez noted the time: 6:45 am. He read over the routing form, removed it from the typewriter, and placed it flat inside a notebook he often carried with him around the ship. He consulted a nautical chart of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

Ten hours, he told himself. Ten hours underway. By the map, if all went well, they would be several hundred miles north of Venezuela's Punta Gallinas by then, over deep water and hours from land in all directions.

That was when they would kill Captain Figueroa.

Perez lit a cigarette. From the cabinet, he poured himself two fingers of Gosling Black Label rum and sipped thoughtfully. He had no love for Antoni Figueroa but, just the same, he regretted that the man would have to die. Still, business came first. And he figured that a man's family could live for quite a few years on the $25,000 US that the Cubans were paying him. He knew the Sandino crew well. He'd been the First Officer for seven years while Petrocal-Alliant management had shuffled captains around like cabin dogs. Figueroa was only the latest in a long line of mush-headed bridge jockeys to come aboard his ship. Management never learns.

Perez knew he could count on six of the crew to follow through. He's seen to that with some of the advance the Cuban charge d'affairs had slipped him in the cantina on Salazar Street. Wave enough dinero and any crew can be bought, he told himself. Still, that wasn't quite fair. The First Mate, Oliveira, and Machinst Mate, Guayacano, were honorable men, though perhaps a bit slow of thought.

No, we'll have no trouble with the crew, Perez figured. When the time came, they'd pitch Figueroa overboard like a sack of garbage for the money he could offer them. After that, it was a simple matter of following the plan, the plan the Cuban diplomat insisted on.

Perez studied the nautical charts. He knew from the mariner's notices posted in Caracas that the United States Navy's quarantine task force 135 was deployed around the southern and western approaches to Cuba. He had read with great interest how two American carriers, the Independence and the Enterprise, had taken up station guarding the sea lanes to the island of the workers' paradise. A screening force of fifteen destroyers accompanied the carriers, with continuous reconnaissance air patrol of all sectors from five hundred miles south-southwest of Cabo de San Antonio to a line just east of the 80th parallel, near the Grand Caymans.

And it was into the teeth of this naval task force that the Cuban diplomat de la Vega had bribed Jorge Perez to go.

A few hours detour, de la Vega had described the proposed mission. A quick rendezvous with boats from the Armada Revolutionario, our Revolutionary Navy, is all that is needed.

Perez took a deep breath. He knew that what they were about to do was risky in the extreme. It was one thing to murder Captain Figueroa. Quite another to deliberately sail in harm's way and trust to the good will of the United States Navy.

De la Vega had asked him to steer the Sandino to a set of coordinates. He had given the location to Perez after the first advance on the cash payment. Plotting the coordinates, Perez had seen that the "rendezvous" placed the Sandino only a few hundred miles off Cuba's southern coast, off the southwestern flanks of the Isle of Pines, approaching the Golfo de Batabano. More importantly, this rendezvous placed the Venezuelan tanker well inside the quarantine line established by the Americans.

Perez was not at all certain how he was supposed to navigate that.

De la Vega told him they were to pick up "vital cargo", to be offloaded from a torpedo boat of the Cuban Navy. A hailing sign and password were provided...Perez had them written down on a piece of napkin, now tucked inside his jacket. Just what the cargo was, the diplomat hadn't said, though Perez could well imagine. Apparently, he had told the First Mate, the Cubans are trying to smuggle some contraband into the States. Probably cigars or some priceless art or antiques. Hard cash was the motive. Eisenhower had slapped an embargo on the island last year and cash was short.

Perez snorted. Castro's revolutionary credentials were impeccable, until he checked what was left in the banks.

The Cuban had said only that the cargo was destined for America, and that he should summarize the contents for the ship's manifest as "machine parts for repair," ostensibly from oil rigs offshore of Caracas. That's cute, Perez thought. Still, he had made a list from the Cuban's suggestions. When they were finally rid of that dog Figueroa, he would alter the ship's manifest to reflect the new cargo they would be picking up.

The risk of it all was the chance that Sandino would be stopped and boarded by the Americans. Already, he had learned from the dispatcher that morning that the Americans had stopped a Soviet ship in the Atlantic. Marucla was her name. A Lebanese freighter chartered by the Russians. The Navy had even sent a boarding party but the dispatcher hadn't said what they had found, nor whether the Lebanese ship had been taken into custody.

Perez figured the risk was fairly high that Sandino might suffer the same fate. Then he'd have a lot of explaining to do, both to the Americans and the Petrocal-Alliant people. He could simulate being off course to a degree, and make some course changes due to weather and sea conditions. But the rendezvous was so far inside the quarantine line that a feasible explanation would be difficult to create and maintain.

He'd have to think about this for awhile. There had to be some way....

Perez checked the brass clock on the desk. He poured himself another finger of rum and finished up the document work. Before he was done, there was a loud knock on the door.

Perez froze as the door cracked open. It was the Captain. He poked his head halfway inside the cabin.

"Are you okay, Jorge?" Figueroa asked. His weathered face crinkled with concern. "Jaime said you weren't feeling well."

Perez had mentioned something like that to the First Mate. He feigned a dizzy smile and held up the rum bottle. "Too much wine last night at the cantina, Captain. I was a little unsteady so I came below." He indicated he was feeling better.

Figueroa nodded. "Good. I need you on the bridge for awhile. The engine room is calling for some assistance and I'm going down there."

Perez broke out in a cold sweat at the news. He stood up abruptly, knocking the chair over. Not now, you idiots! The plan was to murder the captain in the engine room. Perez straightened himself up and re-buttoned his jacket.

"Right away, Captain." He followed Figueroa out onto to the catwalk. He didn't know if Guayacano had changed the plan for some reason or if this was a real engine room problem.

"I'll call you from the bridge."

10-27-62

Over the Arctic Ocean

5:35 a.m.

Major Chuck Malzby rapped on the compass face with his gloves but the needle stayed stubbornly stuck. Shit, he realized, this ain't gonna be any fun. For the last five minutes, the compass needle of his U-2 aircraft had inexplicably bobbed, then stuck as if frozen. Maybe there's some ice in the mechanism.

Or maybe it's the North Pole.

He chanced a glance out of the cockpit. Pitch black, but the chart said he was dead center over the Arctic Ocean, 65,000 feet up, course 355 degrees, maybe ten minutes from the Pole. He'd come up from Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska that morning to do a routine air sampling calibration run. The boys at Los Alamos and the CIA needed better data on winds and air quality so they could monitor Russian atomic bomb tests. They wanted to keep calibrating their instruments so they could sniff out radioactive trace elements that wafted up over the pole from a-bomb detonations in the Soviet Arctic, off Novaya Zemlya. Malzby had drawn the mission, just a week before he was to rotate out of the squadron and back to warmer duty in the Lower Forty Eight. He could hardly wait.

He thought briefly about calling in the compass problem—maybe the control boys

could vector him back on a radio tone. But the mission rules said maintain radio silence so he kept his thumb off the button. Jesus, this is a pain.... He rapped at the compass face again without success.

Now what?

His last known course was still 355. If he was still true on that course, he ought to be able to turn left and bring the aircraft around to a more southwesterly heading, toward the Bering Sea and the Alaskan coast. Trouble was if he made a course change and the compass wasn't tracking right, he'd have no idea what his new course was. But he'd have to chance it. He knew if he kept on 355 degrees for too long, he'd stray into Soviet airspace once he went past the Pole.

Gently, Malzby nudged the control yoke over, keeping his eyes glued to the compass. He held the turn for a few seconds, mentally ticking off degrees, yet the compass never budged. Damn! He quickly straightened up, leveling the aircraft with the artificial horizon. He didn't have any visual references outside the aircraft. He knew for sure he wasn't heading 355 anymore. But where?

Malzby reached down beneath his ejection seat and unstowed a small bag. He pulled out a small sextant. At least the air was clear overhead and the sky was bright with stars. He'd even witnessed a few shimmers of the Northern Lights awhile back. He set up the sextant and aimed it over his head, squinting for Polaris or some other recognizable beacon.

He'd almost managed to hold a sighting long enough to read off the dial when the Northern Lights came back, a glowing pulsating curtain of purple, yellow and red. Beautiful, iridescent, like a ghostly cloth waving across the heavens, the Lights quickly flooded out his sighting. Malzby silently cursed. All he could do was wait.

He tried several times more, but the Lights were just too bright. He'd have to find another way, and soon.

Malzby was well aware of the events occurring seven thousand miles away in the Caribbean. He knew the inherent dangers of the mission were intensified by the Cuban crisis, especially since once he neared the Pole itself, he would be tracked by Soviet radar. Any overt moves off his planned course, any probes south beyond a certain latitude would most likely generate a scramble and he's soon find himself with plenty of unwelcome company in the air. That was something he definitely wanted to avoid.

Malzby decided to switch off the air sampling gear for now. He had a serious navigation problem and he knew it. If only he could get a track off the compass...was he drifting south, west, toward the Bering Sea, toward Alaska? Or toward the Chukotski Peninsula? He dialed the nav set to frequency after frequency, getting only static and weird chirps and bird calls. The Lights were screwing up everything.

Six hundred and fifty miles south, Eielson Air Traffic Control was in a panic. Radarman Joe Dykstra had seen the MiGs appear on his scope several minutes ago and alerted the duty officer, Major Bridges. Now, the radar room was filled with people, making it hard for Dykstra to hear anything on the comm frequency assigned to the flight. He tuned back and forth, centering on 235 megacycles, but got only screeches and an eerie whining moan from the box.

"No dice, Major. Sixty-six November's not responding."

Bridges bent over the radar scope. "What have we got, Joe?"

Dykstra showed him the tactical situation. "These four contacts are Soviet MiGs, bearing 265 relative to Sixty-Six November. Speed 550 knots, now passing through 20,000. They're being vectored to intercept. Sir, the Russians have him on radar."

"He's still a hundred miles from Soviet airspace. What the hell's he doing? He shouldn't be that far west."

"Could be instrument failure, sir. We're getting a lot of static on all nav and comm channels."

"Keep trying to raise him." Bridges turned to Lieutenant Coles, operations officer of the 317th Intercept Squadron. "Roy, what have we got on the ramp right now?"

Coles checked the board. "Two F-106Bs with engines warm, ready to roll. Two more B's on thirty minute alert. The pilots are in the ready room."

"Get 'em airborne right away. Joe, vector our guys on a speed intercept course. I want them to form a screen between Malzby and those MiGs. The last thing we need now is an international incident near Soviet airspace."

Less than five minutes later, a pair of F-106B Delta Darts lit off their afterburners and rocketed off Runway 32 Left into the night sky, immediately turning hard left to make tracks for Malzby's U-2.

Fifteen hundred miles further west, four Mig-21 aircraft of the 51st Troops of Air Defense of the PVO Strany topped out above the clouds at 55,000 feet, screaming past the icy mountains of the Chukotski Peninsula. Flight Leader Victor Patseyev tweaked his control stick slightly to line up his flight on the intercept course radioed up from the ground control station at Norilsk a few minutes before. Now, with the coastline far behind them, Kolyma Flight One had a clear vector to cross the path of the American intruder some two hundred miles north of the Siberian frontier.

Patseyev smiled at the prospect of a little excitement. No more training flights, comrades. No more chasing down phantoms in the sky. Now it's for real. He reached over to toggle on some switches on a side panel, arming his pair of AA-2 Atoll air-to-air missiles. Immediately, the "ready" tone sounded in his headset. He switched on the comm circuit to Kolyma Two, Three and Four, ordering them to arm as well.

Now, it was only a matter of minutes.

Chuck Malzby was breathing hard now. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest. He had made a serious navigational error and he knew it. Screw the mission rules, he decided. He switched on the radio, dialing over to the emergency frequency of 380 megacycles, listed on his flight card.

Broadcasting in the clear, he thumbed the mike. "Eielson Flight, this is Sixty-six November. Eielson Flight, Sixty Six November. Do you read, over?" He kept at it for several minutes, interspersed with uneasy glances at his compass, airspeed indicator and the black night sky all around him. Outside the cockpit at 65,000 feet, he knew the air temperature was minus 50 degrees or colder. The Lights were still shimmering green and gold. No use trying the sextant again. "Eielson Flight, Sixty-Six November, over. I've got no compass and need a vector, over."

Malzby was startled when his headset erupted in a crackle of static, then the welcome voice of Joe Dykstra.

"Sixty-Six November, this is Eielson Flight. Do you copy, over?"

Malzby breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Eielson Flight, I read you. You're breaking up bad but I can hear you." What a relief. "I need some help up here."

Dykstra's voice wavered in and out of range. "—ectored to your position. You're--...--have some...'pany in a few minutes. Four MiGs, about a –dred miles, bearing 260."

Malzby strained to hear. "Understand I've got company, Eielson. My compass is kaput. Can you send help?"

All of a sudden, Dykstra's voice boomed loud and clear. "Roger that, Sixty-Six. We've got Caribou Flight on the way, ETA in about fifteen minutes. We need to get you turned around the right way, over."

"Eielson Flight, I've got no heading on my compass. It's stuck on 355 degrees. I think I've been drifting left, west I guess, I'm not sure. Can you get me a vector?"

"Negative, Sixty-Six. I don't have a good track yet. Interference. Just hold on."

Malzby gritted his teeth. Hold on, he said. He craned his head around, peering into the black night for lights, flashing beacons, anything. He knew it was a race now. Caribou Flight against the Russians.

"Sixty-Six November, this is Eielson Flight." A new voice, gruff but familiar. "This is Major Bridges. Do you copy?"

Malzby grinned. Probably gonna tell me my PX privileges are revoked. "Roger that, Major. I read you five by, over."

"Sixty-Six, I have an idea. It's almost dawn, your local time. Do you see the sun anywhere?"

Malzby scanned the horizon as far as he could see, left and right. "Negative, Major. No sun. It's black as coal out there."

There was a long pause. Then: "Very well, Sixty-Six. Let's try something. I want you to turn left, turn 90 degrees left, as best you can. Estimate and hold the turn."

Malzby acknowledged and nudged his control yoke left. The U-2's long cantilevered wings bit into the cold Arctic air and the nose swung around. Malzby counted seconds, four, five, six, seven...estimating from memory the U-2's rate of turn at this airspeed. He waited a few more, then eased out of the turn. Then he looked over the panel, through the forward windscreen.

A faint purple glow was faintly visible on the horizon, dead ahead. And it wasn't the Lights.

"Sixty-Six November, Eielson Flight. Do you the see the sun yet?"

Malzby practically yelped with joy. He pounded a fist on his knee. The glow was

growing more orange by the second.

"Roger that, Eielson. I see it! I see the sun just beginning to lighten up the horizon."

Bridges came back. "Very well, Sixty-Six. Very well. Chuck, you hold that bearing, no matter what. That's East. Now, we got you heading away from the Russians."

Malzby sank back in his seat, cold sweat dripping onto his nose and lips. He had only a few seconds to rest before another voice crackled through his headset, a welcome voice with a deep Southern drawl.

"Sixty-six November, this is Caribou Leader. We have you in sight. Maintain speed and heading. And welcome home, Major."

10-27-62

Over Banes, Cuba

9:15 a.m.

Nearly ten thousand miles southeast of Chuck Malzby's wayward U-2, Major Rudolph Anderson could see the green hump of the Sierra Maestra range on the horizon. He would be over the northern coastline of Cuba in minutes, his own U-2 cruising now at 55,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico, heading 135 degrees. Approaching Cayo Coco and a long necklace of islands known as the Camaguey Archipelago, Anderson checked behind him to see if he was leaving any contrail. No sense giving the Russians a better target. For the last two days, AAA batteries had sporadically fired on low-level recon planes from VFP-62, out of Jacksonville. No one had been seriously hurt yet, but there was no sense in taking any chances. Anderson knew that at his altitude, they would be firing missiles rather than guns.

He made a notation on his chart: "On course 135. 0915Z." Then he put the chart away, and nudged the throttles forward. The U-2's J-57 engine responded, pushing the aircraft along smartly. He pulled the control yoke back and began a slow climb to 65,000 feet. Ahead, the first dark green of land peeked in and out of the clouds.

Finally, some decent weather for a change.

Rudolph Anderson knew how important this mission, designated G-3109, was. He'd departed out of McCoy Air Force Base only a hour and half before, lifting off into a brilliant hard blue sunshine that only central Florida in late October could offer. The flight plan was simple enough: fly south to Cuba, cross the north coast at Cayo Coco and head for the small city of Santiago, capital of Oriente Province. After passing over Santiago at 65,000 feet, he was to turn northeast, toward the village of Banes. An SS-4 Medium-Range Ballistic Missile site was known to be nearing completion near Banes and Strategic Air Command, cooperating with the analysts at the National Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington, wanted another look. U-2 duties had been split between Anderson and Major Richard Heyser for several weeks now. Colonel Raines, chief of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing had told them the politicos in Washington didn't want another Francis Gary Powers incident. SAC pilots being shot down was okay, the Colonel had said, then shrugged as if to say Don't even ask. When the CIA lost a man, though, the politicos got real nervous.

G-3109 was supposed to fill in some intelligence gaps. Anderson knew that rumors had been flying around the McCoy operations office for several days. Scuttlebutt had it that the Air Force was assembling data for mission target folders. He had already put down some money at the O Club on the odds of an air strike by Monday. Heyser thought it would be Tuesday. And everybody was sure we'd be at war by the end of the week. So the U-2's from SAC and the Voodoos and Crusaders from VFP-62 kept flying, building up the data base.

Videmus Omnia was their motto. "We see all."

Anderson switched on the radio, tuned to 255 megacycles, and made a terse report back to McCoy. "Feet dry. Mountains ahead." Topping his climb out at 65,000 feet, he checked his airspeed: 425 knots indicated. Only a few knots above stall speed. He made a sharp left bank, rolling out on a heading of 073 degrees. Santiago flashed by below, hidden in the damp mists of morning. Ahead, forested hills, the northeastern flanks of the Sierra Maestra. He turned the camera switch on and checked the voltage needle: it showed 24 volts, just like the manual said.

Somewhere ahead, nestled in a foggy valley, lay Banes. A few miles away, in a clearing scratched out of a pine forest, stood twelve SS-4s and their launch stands. Flanking the site, two batteries of SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missiles lay poised and ready, slaved to Spoon Rest radars probing the skies overhead for unwanted visitors. In a tent near the Moskva Battery of launch rails, a young radarman named Musabeyev, Corporal First Rank of the Twentieth Air Defense Troops of the PVO Strany, noticed a blip lighting up the edge of his scope. He started a track on the intruder, then called his duty officer, Captain Antonyets, over for a look.

Three minutes later, Moskva Battery was tracking Major Rudolph Anderson.

Anderson knew about the SA-2s. Everyone did. So far, the Russians hadn't fired on any of the U-2s. How long that would last was anybody guess. Lately, the Russians had been painting recon aircraft with tracking radars. But the NPIC guys needed the pictures, so they flew anyway. He took a deep breath and concentrated on keeping wings level, steady on heading 073.

Underneath his feet, he could hear the whine of the camera's motor, thumping each time the long barrel of the panoramic lens locked into one of its seven positions. Good, Anderson thought. The clunks were a reassuring sound. They ought to get some good shots of the base. He knew that each shot would cover an area a hundred nautical miles wide, from one horizon to the other. With any luck, he'd be back in McCoy in a couple of hours with a canister of 4000 paired aerial photos, recording objects as small as 2 ½ feet directly below the aircraft.

The first run was gravy, no incidents at all. Anderson began to relax a bit. For the next run, he had to slow down to 420 knots and change heading slightly. He banked right, bringing 51 November to a new course heading of 085 degrees. He checked the compass, satisfied. In seconds, he'd be over his next target: the Los Angeles SS-4 site and some weird gun emplacements the photo boys were interested in. After that, the flight plan was to bank left on heading 340 degrees, hop up to 70,000 feet, and hightail it out of town. With any luck, he'd be meeting the NAVPIC courier on McCoy's Runway 15 Left in two hours.

Then, there was the usual debrief, followed by a few cold ones at the O Club and some rack time in his bunk.

Rudolph Anderson set to work configuring the camera system for the next segment of his run. Voltage was holding steady. The lens started thunking again. He never saw the brief flash of a rocket motor twelve miles below and behind him,

At 10:15 a.m., his world exploded in a fireball of flame and smoke. The SA-2 missile detonated below and slightly to port of U-2 aircraft serial number 51 November. The high-yield, armor-piercing warhead spewed shrapnel and shock waves upward, slicing 51 November into two pieces, just forward of the vertical stabilizer and tailplane. In less than four seconds, the J-57 engine and various aft fuselage debris separated from the cockpit and the wreckage of the cantilevered wings.

In his last fleeting fragment of conscious thought, Rudolph Anderson was pinned in his seat by the force of the spinning cockpit. He noted the striking visual impression of 51 November's tail and vertical stabilizer corkscrewing like a top as they both plummeted toward the green, mist-shrouded valley below.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Control: 17340

Rec'd: October 27, 1962

4:25 P.M.

FROM: JCS

TO:Secretary of State

NO:125510Z, October (Army Message)

PRIORITY: Elite

ACTION: CINCAL, CINCLANT, CINCARIB, CINCONAD, USCINCEUR, CINCSTRIKE, CINCNELM, CINCSAC, INFORMATION DEPT STATE

JCS 6887 from JCS

Defense Condition 2 (DEFCON 2) is established for US forces worldwide, effective 121555Z. Reason: Cuban situation. USCINCEUR authorized to exercise his discretion in complying with this directive in light of JCS 6830 NOTAL. JCS request that as SACEUR, he use his influence with NAC to get NATO to assume comparable defense posture. GP-3.

KEA:2

NOTE: Advance copies to Mr. Meyers and SECDEF.

NOFORN. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED UNLESS REVIEWED BY OASD 21
CHAPTER 3

10-27-62

Bejucal, Cuba

2:15 a.m.

On a narrow dirt road off the main highway to the Soviet warhead bunker at Bejucal, Capitan Rafael Ramirez crouched in the open hatch of the BTR-60 armored personnel carrier. Inside the cab, eight infantryman sat poised with Kalishnikov assault rifles, ready to spring into action when the outer barrier defenses of the compound had been breached. Ramirez scanned the pine woods around him with satisfaction: six other BTR-60s with infantry lay scattered among the trees, all concealed with camouflage netting and heavy brush. On the other side of the highway, out of sight for the moment, were two new T-54 tanks given to the FAR by General Goriev's 134th Motorized Rifle Regiment, equipment on which Ramirez's men had trained for week after grueling week with their Russian teachers.

Now we have learned our lessons well, companeros. Ramirez thought back to the days when he and his brother Tomas had joined the Mountain Boys in Santa Ana de la Dominguez. How often had they lay in the dirt on the outskirts of town, faces painted in mud, waiting for the signal from Hector Arrangues to attack the bank or the post office. They'd leap to their feet and run screaming into Santa Ana's streets, waving pistols, machetes, shotguns, whatever they could find, just for the sport of it. Just to frighten people. Sometimes, they even managed to escape with a few pitiful bags of pesos. Sometimes not. It didn't seem to matter.

Today, thought Ramirez, checking his watch, it does matter.

He flashed his flashlight on and off five times, carefully aiming it in all directions. In seconds, the woods came alive with the rumble of diesel engines. Then, he aimed the flare gun at the sky and fired. A bright flower of brilliant white petals exploded over the trees. Ramirez slipped into the cab and slammed the hatch down.

"Go, Paco!" He peered through the forward porthole as the driver, Paco Quinones, slammed the vehicle into gear and they jerked forward. The twin GAZ-49 in-line engines spooled up to a high keening pitch.

The opening phase of their plan was simple enough but Ramirez knew that surprise, speed and timing would determine their success. The warhead compound lay on a slight rise in the terrain, a hill cleared and graded off by Russian construction troops. Roughly rectangular in layout, the compound was surrounded by deep trenches, multiple rolls of concertina wire fencing and staggered mounds of cement blocks interspersed with iron tank traps. At each corner of the rectangle, a guard tower on 6x6 beams had been erected, each one twenty-five to thirty feet in the air. The towers were open on the sides, and covered with corrugated metal roofs. Inside, Ramirez knew, two riflemen of the KGB's Ninth Directorate, were stationed on eight-hour rotations. Their equipment included the same Kalishnikov assault rifles, along with an RPG-7 grenade launcher and a standard issue 7.62-mm PK machine gun.

The compound's gatehouse was a simple hut, like a bohio, Ramirez thought, with similar equipment, manned by three to four riflemen of the KGB or the 134th Regiment, depending on the time of day. More importantly, the garrison force at Bejucal maintained several tanks, T-62 and T-54 types, with several BTR-60 and BTR-40 fighting vehicles to provide mobility to the encamped infantry. From the beginning of their surveillance months ago, Ramirez had learned, the Soviets always stationed two of the T-62 tanks with guns trained on the twin swing arms of the gate entrance. He had no doubt the tanks had warshots loaded.

As he watched through the BTR's porthole, one of the Cuban T-54s lumbered out of the woods, crushing a red and yellow warning sign that read Ceda el Paso (Yield to Passer), and swung onto the highway. The T-54 clanked down the highway for several hundred meters, before turning off into the woods again, this time on the opposite side of the road. Ahead, through the dense groves of pine and kapok lay two, low wooden-beam barracks, housing off-duty soldiers of the garrison force. After plowing through the tangle of brush and vines, the T-54 burst out of the woods into the clearing where the barracks lay. A pair of single yellow lanterns lit the barracks entrance.

The tank paused for only a moment. From the latrine enclosure beside the barracks, a bare-chested man emerged, zipping up his trousers. He looked up startled at the sight of a T-54 staring him in the face, engine idling, 100-mm gun swinging around. He froze still, then yelled and ran just as the first round was fired.

The shell slammed into the wooden beams of the barracks, shredding the side of the building and collapsing part of the roof. In quick succession, two more rounds flew, demolishing the structure. In the dust and debris, wounded men, some missing arms and legs, staggered about.

For good measure, the tank commander, Capitan Luis Alvarez, raked the smoldering ruins with 7.62 PKT machine gun fire from the coaxial gun, then shot out the remaining lantern. He ordered a reverse, and the tank backed into the woods and turned, traversing its turret to lay down more suppressive fire as it rumbled off into the trees.

From half a kilometer away, Ramirez heard the exchange of fire. He wanted to charge on to the bunker entrance but the assault plan they had devised required a few minutes' wait. This was the hardest part, holding back when every instinct from his years as an infantryman told him to go, go now! But he couldn't.

The tanks have to come out. We have to get the tanks out.

Long minutes passed. He had stationed several observer teams at the last bend in the road, just before the earthen bridge over the trenches that led up to the gatehouse. He waited anxiously, sweat staining his shirt, rolling down his cheeks in the stifling cab of the BTR. Around him, the riflemen in the cab were grim, yet poised. He was so proud of them all.

Then, he heard it. Feet, running, a commotion of voices outside. He popped open the hatch.

"Capitan, they're coming out! They're coming out, just like the plan!" It was Oliva, once a private in Batista's cavalry, now a sergeant in the FAR. Ramirez had picked him for his mechanic's knowledge...dirty fingers Oliva, they called him. Indecente. "The tanks are coming, Capitan!"

Ramirez motioned for the two BTRs behind him to swing around in single file. He waved Oliva out of the way. A squad of Soviet main battle tanks had come to life. He could hear their V-2 water-cooled diesels echoing through the woods, filling the little clearing with a deep-throated rumble. He had stirred the hornets' nest with a stick. Now, they had to run.

Ramirez told Paco to head into the woods. "That way," he pointed, spying an opening in the brush. The prickly branches of kapoks scraped along the side as they dove for cover. He had planned this maneuver as intricately as a ballet movement, and practiced the diversion for long hour after hour in and among the dilapidated hangar buildings of the old Rancho Boyeros airfield. Everything depended on how the Soviets reacted.

Screening themselves with trees, Ramirez pulled his assault force off the highway, waiting for the Soviet tanks to pass by. If the Soviets did as he calculated, they would fill the highway with tanks and riflemen, trying to outflank and run down the "bastards" who fired on the barracks. He was counting on overreaction. Everyone was tense, everyone was on edge. He planned to use that.

Sure enough, three T-62s came around the turn and clanked and belched their way past, hunting for the enemy, slowing only slightly at the off-road tracks and broken branches littering the road. The tanks ran past the first diversion and kept on going down the highway. Soon, they turned and were out of sight.

But only three! Ramirez knew the garrison force had eight tanks. Their surveillance had been quite precise on that. Where were the others? Had they turned right out of the gatehouse and made for the barracks, plowing through the woods between them? He had to find out. But to wait now...time was critical....

The assault plan was designed to proceed without radios. They had practiced hand signals, used flashlights and runners, flares, and horns. Ramirez knew perfectly well that their T-54 radios could be easily monitored by the Russians. Yet he had to know where the other tanks were. He popped open the hatch and looked around in the dark for Oliva.

"Antoni!" he yelled. "Antoni! Where are the other tanks?"

Oliva materialized out of the settling smoke. "I saw only three, Capitan."

Just then, another observer came sprinting up. It was Perez, out of breath, shirt torn into rags.

"More tanks, Capitan! On the other...side...of the base!" He was heaving in great gulps of air. "Tanks moving out. T-62s...outside the base!"

"Outside?" Ramirez was stunned. There were no tanks outside the base. In four months of surveillance night and day, Ramirez's men had never spotted more than one tank at a time outside the compound. "Are you sure, Pedro? Did you count them?"

"Si, Capitan! T-62 tanks, four of them! Single file, moving out toward the barracks."

Ramirez shook his head. Maneuvers. It had to be that. To Oliva and Perez: "Find cover now." He ducked back in the cab, ordered Paco to pull out onto the highway again. "To the entrance, Paco! Let's go, let's go!" He loaded up the flare gun again, inserting the special charge they had practiced with so many times. Packed with copper-enhanced ammonium nitrate, the shell would burst out bright red streamers, flooding the woods with a fiery glow. Ramirez pushed the round home and discharged the gun through the open hatch.

Seconds later, they had made the last turn on the highway and were bearing down on the gatehouse hut and barrier arms. Ramirez swung the hatch down and traversed the 7.62 mm machine gun until he had the hut in his sight. Through the reticule, he saw soldiers scrambling for cover. Muzzle flashes erupted from inside the hut. More flashes from a small gun tower on the right. Ramirez emptied a magazine into the hut, collapsing the roof and frame siding in a heap. He re-loaded while the BTR barreled on across the earthen bridge. More firing burped from somewhere behind him, as Calderone's BTR opened fire on a guard tower further away.

Paco drove straight and true, slamming through the wooden barriers in a loud splintering crash. He swerved to avoid the first set of cement blocks and they were in! Ramirez raked the ground in front of them with fire, as Paco turned first one way, then another.

"Over there!" Ramirez yelled. He indicated the first of the concrete bunkers, a low dome surrounded by wire fencing and a pair of tents. Behind the first dome, a tall lightning tower and more domes, arranged in neat rows on concrete foundations. Each dome had a concrete ramp leading up to an iron grate. Floodlights mounted on poles dotted the grounds; as he watched, Paco crashed right into one.

Behind Ramirez's BTR, more Cubans poured into the compound. Dismounted infantry charged across the bridge, huddling behind the last of the BTRs, Saguente's vehicle, spraying automatic weapons fire at anything that moved. Bodies were strewn all around the grounds, some dead, others dying. Small-arms fire crackled the air as the Russians retreated to defensible positions around burning wreckage, shot-up generator carts, trucks, jeeps, anything they could find. From the center of the compound, a deafening explosion geysered dirt and flaming debris into the air; a stray round had set off the ammunition magazine, or maybe a fuel tank.

Ramirez soon found what he was looking for. He'd memorized the photos for so long they were burned in his mind forever. One bunker larger than the rest, this one with a double iron grate for an entrance. A small five-ton crane truck had backed up to the ramp. This was the prize he had been looking for. El Tesoro, he whispered to himself, almost in awe. The treasure they had sweated for months.

"Pull up there!" he ordered Paco. "Push that van away from the ramp!" As they skidded sideways, a squad of Soviet infantrymen appeared out of nowhere, clambering over the bed of the crane, diving for cover. They opened up, spraying the front of the BTR with fire. 7.62 mm rounds clanged and rattled off the bow of the vehicle. Ramirez grabbed the handles of his own machine gun and returned fire. He got two of them right away, their bodies jerking in the dust, as they died. The other three retreated scrambling to the other side of the crane. One of them belly-crawled underneath the truck, and jumped onto the foredeck of the BTR, quickly pumping a few rounds through the canvas hood of the vehicle.

Ramirez saw his leg flash by the porthole. "Get out! Get out! Dismount now!" The soldiers shoved open the rear hatch just as the Russian fired into the cab. Two were hit right away, Ruiz in the arm, Palmerella in the face. There was a mad scramble out of the BTR cab, even as Paco maneuvered to sideswipe the van and knock it aside. A Cuban soldier rolled off the ramp and came up firing, knocking the Russian off the BTR. For a brief moment, there was an eerie silence across the compound. Then the air crackled with small arms fire once more.

Ramirez' squad cleared bodies and debris away from the ramp. While Paco maneuvered the BTR to back up the ramp, Ramirez saw another BTR trundling toward a bunker a few hundred meters away. It looked like Calderone's vehicle. Good, good, Ramirez thought. He ducked as an errant bullet spanged off the lightning arrestor at the corner of the bunker.

To several men: "Errante, you and Lopez and Guevista come here!" The men hustled over. "Take two more men and form a perimeter, ten meters out, a semi-circle around that van! Take the grenade launcher too! We're gonna crash through that gate. When I say go, pull back and we'll drive by. You jump in as we go by." The men loped off, rounded up a few more of the squad and set about building a defensible perimeter around the bunker. For the moment, the worst of the fighting was elsewhere. A grenade went off near the base entrance and Ramirez heard the air rip with heavy-caliber machine gun fire. PK's, he told himself. He didn't know if they were Russian or Cuban. In this close quarters, it didn't really matter.

Paco got the BTR squared up with the ramp and began reversing the vehicle. It groaned and started up the slope, digging into the concrete, its twin 90-horsepower water-cooled engines straining and belching. At the entrance, an earthen berm had been built up around the masonry walls, giving onto a recessed double iron grate and cast iron door burrowed in the dead center of the bunker face.

Ramirez watched as Paco slammed the back of the ten-ton vehicle right into the grate. It groaned and sagged a little but didn't give.

Ramirez walked down to the base of the ramp to be in Paco's field of view through the porthole. With hand signals, he told Paco to shift gears and try it again. He did, revving the engines to a high whine, before releasing the brake. The BTR lurched backward, smashing into the grate once again. The concrete door jamb cracked and two hinge brackets gave way, knocking the grate sideways, still hanging by a third hinge.

"Again!" Ramirez yelled. Behind him, another grenade went off, then a more ominous sound. He turned and watched as a Soviet T-62 came crashing through the wire and cement block barrier, twisting like a beached whale as it negotiated over the obstacles. Its 100-mm main gun fired a round off to Ramirez's right. Shit, we got company! "Again, Paco! Go hard, companero!"

This time, Paco edged forward down the ramp a few meters, gunned the engine to maximum rpm and let off the brake. The vehicle leaped into the air and careened backward, nearly sliding off the ramp. Several troopers jumped off to keep from being crushed. The BTR impacted the grate and tore it completely from its jamb, pinning the iron cage under its tracks with a loud sickening screech. The BTR angled into the cast iron door behind the grate and shuddered from the impact. Ramirez watched as the door buckled and flew open, the lock and handle a mangled sculpture of broken metal.

"Whoa! Whoa!" Ramirez called out. Paco slammed on the brake but not before the back end of the BTR struck the earthen mound and its underlying concrete dome. The entire bunker seemed to jump off its foundations as dirt flew everywhere. On top of the bunker, an air conditioning unit slipped off its mount and slid off to the ground with a crash.

But they were in, they were in at last!

Ramirez waved the rest of the men inside. Past the door and inside, the bunker was cool and barely lit, a few bare bulbs swinging from the roof. The remains of several flood lamps were scattered in pieces all about the cement floor. A wheeled cart bearing a console full of electronic gear lay along one wall, dangling cables.

In the very center, a huge dolly supported a large coffin-shaped device. Ramirez saw that the dolly was pinned to a steel mounting table, so that the entire structure could be rotated 180 degrees.

The warhead containment, he realized. Inside the "coffin" was a Soviet nuclear warhead, yield and design details unknown. Ramirez whispered a silent prayer: Mi hermano Tomas, vamos ahora...juntos. This was what they had trained for...this was the prize!

Six feet long by four feet wide, the warhead containment looked to weigh a thousand pounds easily. He could see the dolly arrangement was designed into the bunker plan, with a short length of track and a pull handle at one end of the container. Their intelligence was spotty on the details of how the warheads were handled, but he knew that the troops of the KGB's Ninth Directorate were responsible. He remembered the van outside, the one with the crane. Probably use the van's crane to pull the warhead off the dolly and transport it to the missile launch site.

"Capitan!" His thoughts were interrupted by a face. It was Barracoa, gesturing toward a darkened corner of the bunker. Ramirez squinted in the light...a man...there was a man sitting at a desk. A man, Russian he presumed, sitting at a metal desk. Several circuit boards were spread out before him. He stared back wide-eyed at the Cubans.

"Bring him here!" Ramirez watched as Barracoa and several others roughly hauled the man to his feet and dragged him over. He was blond and white, not Cuban at all, and sweating profusely. "Who are you?"

The man said nothing as his face hardened. He was strangely dressed. Checkered short sleeve shirt, khaki trousers, black shoes. A military man? Ramirez wondered. The Russians had strange, almost laughable ideas about camouflaging the military assistance advisors on the island.

The man winced as Barracoa jammed the barrel of his Kalishnikov in his side.

"You have a name, Russian? What is it?"

He mumbled, "Kapitonov, Dmitri Andreyevich."

Ramirez waited for more, but the man was reluctant to continue. He nodded at Barracoa, who motivated him with another jab. "Your duties, companero? What are your duties?"

"I am engineer, Component Engineering Branch, Glavatom Plant Number Seventeen."

Ramirez indicated the warhead. "You build these?"

Kapitonov glared back at the Cuban with a cold fury, a contemptuous set to his lips.

Several explosions outside thudded across the compound. "No matter," said Ramirez. "We have a job to do. You can help." He grabbed Kapitonov by his shirt collar. "Release the warhead. Those pins there, get to work now!" He shoved the Russian to the ground. Kapitonov looked up in a boiling rage and started to rise but Barracoa's rifle barrel in his face changed his mind. Sullenly, he set to work, unbolting the dolly.

In seconds, Ramirez had organized a loading party. Three men at the pull handle, including Kapitonov, two men behind pushing. Over the staccato ripple of small-arms fire and occasional detonations, the dolly wheels squeaked and groaned under the weight of the warhead containment. Inch by inch, the men eased the device toward the back hatch of the BTR cab. Ramirez watched, wondering, calculating. Had they figured correctly? Would the damned thing even fit in the cab?

Two feet from the hatch, they stopped the dolly.

"Okay, now release it," Ramirez ordered. The Cubans fumbled for a few seconds with the buckling, until Kapitonov snorted with derision. Barracoa started to lay his rifle butt on the man's face but Ramirez grabbed the soldier's arm in time. "Companero, you're here to assist Cuba, are you not? Assist us now, or you'll die at my feet." The Russian glared back at Ramirez. The men were eyeball to eyeball. Then Kapitonov's eyes narrowed. His face dropped. Ramirez knew then that Kapitonov believed him. The Russian pushed the Cubans away and had the warhead containment free in seconds.

"How much does it weigh?" Ramirez asked.

Kapitonov smiled at the prospect of watching Cubans try to lift the device. "Almost four hundred and fifty kilos."

Ramirez mentally calculated weight versus the number of men. "Barracoa, you and Gallegos there." He pointed to one side. "Munoz and Arrantes, the other side" To Kapitonov, "at the back, with Fuentes."

The men arranged themselves. Paco and another soldier pulled the cab hatch wide. At Ramirez's word, the men grunted and strained, slowly hoisting the coffin container off the dolly. Carefully, bumping the BTR as they maneuvered the device, the men eased the warhead forward. Ramirez helped guide it into the opening.

The container was a tight fit, scraping along the sides of the hatch. Twice, Ramirez feared the worst, that the container would become irretrievably wedged on the way in. The loading party worked the container first left, then at Ramirez's direction right, then left again, twisting and inching the coffin forward. Paco went to the front hatch, dropped inside, and applied all the brake power he could muster, to keep the BTR from being pushed down the ramp.

Finally, the warhead was inside the cab. The men stretched and shook their arms and shoulders. Ramirez wondered if Calderone and the others were having the same problem. A final kick at the back end of the containment vessel and the warhead settled half on the squad seats, half on the decking of the cab.

"Vamos, amigos!" Ramirez yelled. "Let's go!"

Four men were able to squeeze into the cab. The rest stayed behind. They would fight their way out of the compound, seek a ride with another BTR, or disappear into the woods. Ramirez had foreseen the tight fit of a warhead in the vehicle. The men knew what was at stake. They knew what they had to do.

Ramirez glared at Kapitonov. He made a quick decision. Operation Moncada planning had never made any provision for kidnapping Russian advisors. Kapitonov would be an extra worry, a dangerous security risk. He should be shot and dumped here, yet Ramirez had a premonition. He knows the weapon, we can use him. He can teach us how to arm the warhead.

"You will come! In with me...." He grabbed the Russian by the shirt collar again. The Russian started to resist, but thought better of it. He scrambled onto the top deck of the vehicle ahead of Ramirez, and slipped inside the hatch, finally wedging himself into a spot on top of a magazine housing between Ramirez and Paco. The three of them were elbow to rib, as Ramirez reached up and slammed the hatch down.

"Go, Paco, go, go, go!"

Paco slammed the BTR into gear and roared down the ramp. He turned hard left and almost immediately, they both saw the T-62. Paco slammed on the brakes, and spun them to the right. A Soviet tank was bearing down on them, main gun traversing as it bumped over blackened debris and bodies.

"Where are they coming from?" Ramirez yelled. "We counted three out of the gate!"

Paco yelled back. "I don't know, Capitan! But we better get out of here!" He drove over some wooden beams and a fallen lightning tower, gripping the wheel hard to keep the vehicle under control.

They rounded a bunker. "Look!" Another BTR was pulling away from a bunker, back hatch still clanging open as the vehicle accelerated. Russian infantrymen scrambled from behind a burning truck and ran after the BTR, pouring fire, bright muzzle flashes speckling the heavy dust and black smoke. "Look...it's Calderone!"

They watched as Subteniente Calderone dashed up to the BTR, firing his Kalishnikov single-handed, peppering the open ground with bullets. He leaped to the open top hatch and fell on his side heavily, apparently wounded, his rifle clattering to the ground. He started to slide back but strong arms grabbed his hands and kept him from falling. The BTR driver twisted and turned through piles of flaming wreckage and Calderone's body jerked with each abrupt turn.

"Where are the others?" yelled Paco.

Ramirez spied another T-62 churning up dirt in an attempt to block the two BTRs from escaping. Its gun boomed and a 100-mm round exploded right over their heads, sending gobs of earth, concrete fragments and truck parts raining down on the hood.

"I don't know but we gotta get out of here! Go that way, between those bunkers!"

"The bridge is to the left, Capitan!"

"Through the fence, Paco! Go, go, go! Drive! Get us out of here, before that tank re-loads!"

They spun and rocked over some debris, following close on the treads of Calderone's vehicle. Another gun boomed, another tank somewhere. He heard the round whistle by. The explosion thudded and rocked the ground under them. The Soviets had somehow mustered a better defense than he had planned.

"Paco, I think we found the other five tanks!"

Paco grinned through a cake of dirt and sweat. "Si, they must have been outside the base to begin with."

The BTRs rolled down toward the perimeter trench, rocking back and forth as the wheels negotiated the cement blocks. Down into the trench they bumped, then up the other side, plowing through the wire barrier. A line of trees lay just ahead. Ramirez directed Paco to make for a small opening in the woods. Calderone had seen the same opening; already, his vehicle was swerving toward it.

At that moment, an anti-tank round struck the ground between the vehicles, ripping the air with a hot, thundering BOOM! Dirt and concrete fragments sleeted down, pelting the BTR, blinding Paco for a moment. When the dust settled, they could see Calderone's vehicle was limping off minus its rear half. The warhead container poked out the back of cab, barely held in place by arms and legs of Felix's squad. Their right rear wheel and tire had been shredded and the BTR gouged a narrow trench right across the open ground.

For a few seconds, Ramirez was sure Calderone would break down. The vehicle wobbled, spinning dirt as it negotiated uneven ground, then seemed to gain its breath and began picking up speed.

Keep going, keep going, Felix! Only a few meters more.... Ramirez made sure their own vehicle was intact. The round had thrown gobs of dirt against the portholes. He poked open the top hatch and peeked out behind them. The blast shock wave had blown off their PK machine gun and a few aerials, but otherwise the vehicle was clean. As he watched the scene, two more BTRs rumbled into view, closer to the main entrance. Between the bunkers, he counted four Soviet tanks, T-62s from the look of them, in pursuit. Main guns flashed and several rounds rocketed overhead, crashing into the tree line a few hundred meters ahead.

Before they made the woods themselves, Ramirez saw the last two BTRs struck and hit by Soviet rounds. Both vehicles lurched off the ground and capsized like squat boats, erupting in flame as they careened out of control. He didn't know if the squads had been able to grab any warheads but it was too late for that now. The vehicles exploded as their magazines cooked off, a dull whump! sending stray rounds streaking off like fireworks.

Two T-62s had seen them exit the compound. The Soviet tanks turned out of the grid of bunkers and came plowing across the remains of the earthen bridge. One let fly another round in their direction, its 115-mm smooth-bore gun belching flame. Ahead of them, several pine trees exploded. Branches and limbs crashed down on the hatch as Paco swerved to avoid the debris.

Only two had made it out, that was all. Ramirez clanged the hatch down and sat back. Paco drove them into the woods. They could hear Calderone's BTR whining against heavy bush ahead of them.

"Capitan, I don't know how far we can go in here!"

Ramirez chanced a peep again, lifting the hatch up only a few centimeters. One T-62 was barreling straight for them, already snapping trees off at their trunks. It charged into the woods like a crazed elephant, coaxial machine gun spitting fire. A hailstorm of 7.62 spanged off the back of the cab. Inside, Kapitonov and the others instinctively ducked.

"Keep going, Paco! Keep going, deeper! We gotta lose this bastard soon!"

The BTR's two GAZ-49s whined and groaned as the vehicle negotiated vine and heavy brush. Out the forward porthole, nothing could be seen. Limbs and branches smacked and scraped the hull, sounding like rifle reports in the distance. Paco downshifted and twisted the control wheel to the right, as much by feel as anything, probing for an opening, a clearing, anything. Behind them, over the din, heavy treads flogged the ground, chewing up the distance.

Jesus, Madre de Dios, Ramirez thought, he must be right on our tail! He nudged Paco with a thumb, jerking left. Turn, hard turn!

Paco swung the wheel over and immediately, the BTR rode up over something, perhaps a fallen tree limb, and nearly flipped. As Ramirez held on, the warhead shifted its weight and pinned Barracoa against the hull. He screamed and his face shone with sweat in the dim red light of the cab. Then the vehicle bounced back to level ground and the warhead shifted again. Barracoa collapsed forward, hugging the warhead container, panting and swearing. Another bounce and he screamed in pain.

"My rib! It's my rib....!" He shut his eyes and grimaced.

There was no room in the cab. Ramirez couldn't do a thing and he knew it. Barracoa shrank back against the hull, his arms folded tightly against his chest. He seemed pale.

Hold on, companero! Just hold on awhile longer.

For a second, Ramirez listened. They'd burst into a clearing and skidded on some loose dirt. He signaled Paco to stop. The BTR slid sideways and rocked as their forward motion slammed them into a tree.

Cautiously, Ramirez peered out of the hatch. No sign of the T-62. He could still hear the beast, rampaging through the pine and kapok, but it was some distance away. Maybe half a kilometer. For the moment, they had shaken free. But where was Calderone? Where were the others?

For that matter, where the hell were they?

Ramirez slipped back inside. He glared at Kapitonov, who averted his eyes. The Russian smelled like a pig. His shirt was dark with sweat and his eyelids were caked with mud.

From the back of the cab, Gallegos called up. He had crawled over top of the warhead and was trying to tend to Barracoa. "He's got a broken rib, Capitan. It's almost through the skin."

Ramirez turned. "Just keep him still. Keep his arms in. We have to find out where we are."

Paco rubbed his hands and wrists. They ached from gripping the wheel so hard. "Capitan, didn't we leave the compound on the north side? Same side as the gatehouse. I thought I saw the gatehouse to my left as we went over the trench."

Ramirez nodded. "Probably. You have an idea?"

"Just that, if we did, we've been heading mostly north by northeast, the way I figure it. Until we made that last turn. We can't be more than a kilometer north of the base. I got a map that says Highway 16 runs toward Guines and Pedro Betancourt just two miles north of the base entrance. If I'm right, we should be able to make that highway if we keep going the way we are."

Ramirez was thinking fast. Timing was critical. They had to be at the docks in Batabano before sunup. The torpedo boats would have to start their regular patrols then. And the Sandino would be at the rendezvous point a few hours after that, shortly after noon if all went well. They couldn't afford to stay lost for long.

"Companeros, I don't know where the hell Calderone is. I don't know if any of the others made it out. But we've got to be in Batabano before dawn and get this warhead on the boat."

Gallegos was in the back of the cab, half draped over the warhead, still tending to Barracoa. "I say we go on, Capitan. We got our baby right here." He grinned, patting the warhead. "It's for sure the Russians will have their entire army out looking for us."

Ramirez studied the Russian in their midst. He stared straight ahead. "How many men do you have in this sector, comrade?"

Kapitonov frowned, thought to hold his tongue, then took a breath, when Ramirez produced a bayonet. He shrugged slightly. "Perhaps five hundred. The 134th has two battalions that use this highway for maneuvers."

Paco added, "Our own Twentieth Infantry has a garrison around Statsenko's Missile Defense Headquarters as well. That's at Managua. Can we trust them?"

"Probably not. General Somoza will have his men out before Havana can react. He's close to Statsenko, too close if you ask me. The Russians give him gifts and toys, like tanks and artillery."

"Yeah," said Gallegos, "and he gives Statsenko a truck full of Cuban whores in payment."

Ramirez lowered the bayonet and rubbed a grimy beard. His eyes stung with heat. "We'll have to chance it. There's still several hours of dark. Paco, let me see your map."

Paco handed it over. Ramirez ran the tip of the bayonet along his proposed route. "Get to Highway 16. If we're lucky, we'll be ahead of any convoys. But we have to keep a watch for helicopters. Pliyev'll have the air full of them in no time. Go east to the Quivican Road. Remember that old cane shed, Ortiz's, wasn't it?"

Paco nodded. They had practiced night maneuvers there a month ago.

"Turn at the shed. Quivican Road goes south there, right through the cane fields. It's open country but with luck, the Russians won't be looking. We can make up time on that road."

"What about Quivican itself?" asked Gallegos. "There are two intersections, easily blocked."

"We'll have to take that chance," Ramirez said.

"I know a way around the town," Gallegos told them. "I used to spend my summers there. Three kilometers before the town, there's an old farmhouse. There's a narrow road there, a dirt road, that we used to get timber from the woods. It's an old logging road. But it goes back west, then south. It cuts clear around the outskirts of Quivican, back of a line of cane sheds."

Ramirez gave it some thought but decided against the detour. "We don't have time to go sightseeing in the countryside. If the Russians block the town, we'll decide then. Paco, let's get moving. Highway 16."

And the longer we stay in the open, Gallegos thought, the better for Marti squads to ambush you.

The BTR rumbled to life and began moving. Ramirez opened the top hatch to get a better view of the terrain. For the moment, at least, they had lost their pursuit. Outside, the sky was dark and moonless, with a dense canopy of tree limbs overhead. As Paco drove them deeper into the woods, Ramirez could see they had plowed a path through heavy vine and underbrush. The air was thick with pine and the grape smell of palm leaves. He kept his head down to avoid the worst of the brush, occasionally giving Paco orders to bear left or right as the terrain dictated. By a small flashlight and compass, he navigated them generally north by northeast, riding up the rocky slopes of a limestone ridge, then plunging down into a small valley. At the bottom, they forded a narrow stream, the Jovinos River, Gallegos told them, and soon enough, surged out of the denser woods into rolling open countryside. Cane fields, Ramirez realized. A sea of razor sharp stalks swaying in a steady, ten-knot breeze. Ahead, bumping in and out of view through the stalks, he saw lights. Either a house or a mill, he thought.

But no sign of Highway 16 yet. They crashed on through the fields, while Ramirez squinted ahead for any sign of a road.

He checked his watch anxiously. Nearly 4:00 am. He was sure they had grabbed at least two warheads, though he didn't know what type or yield. Operation Moncada depended on getting at least one high-yield device, something approaching a megaton, to better threaten a large American city with utter destruction. He didn't know what Calderone had, or even if Felix had escaped the Russian tanks. But he couldn't worry about that now. Calderone knew the plan. He would know how to get to Batabano. And what might happen if he didn't make the docks in time.

Of potentially greater value was the Russian himself, Kapitonov. An engineer, Ramirez realized. Quite a catch, if he could be made to assist the Cubans. He and Calderone had discussed the possibility of seizing a few hostages, in case they were needed for bargaining. But to have a nuclear engineer...a man who really understood the device.

A strong gust of wind had kicked up and the cane stalks whipped back and forth like a prickly ocean. A strange smell came to his nostrils...it was fuel, gasoline or diesel. Fumes. Something burning?

Straight ahead, the truck loomed out of the darkness like a house.

"Stop! Stop the vehicle!"

Paco slammed on the brakes and the BTR's wheels bit into the slippery ground. They came to a halt scant meters from a two-ton open bed truck. "Turn on your lights!" he yelled down to Paco. The BTR's floodlamps flared into brilliance, momentarily blinding three men loading sugar cane into the truck bed.

In a flash, Ramirez was out of the cab, standing on the top deck, waving his Kalishnikov at the men.

"Off the truck! Now! Move quick!"

The men, startled and frozen with fear, raised their hands and clambered down. Gallegos and Barracoa scrambled out the back hatch, Barracoa steadying his AK one-handed against his hip. Ramirez grabbed one of the men by the collar. "ON THE GROUND!" he commanded. The other two followed suit.

"This your truck?"

One of the men looked up cautiously. Gallegos planted a boot on top of his head and buried his face in cane cuttings. He mumbled in the dirt. "Senior Ortiz's truck. We're just loading..."

"Quiet!" Ramirez told them. Behind, Arrantes had squeezed out of the cab with Kapitonov. He had an AK snugly pressed into the Russian's back. Ramirez looked around for a moment. "Where's Highway 16, comrades? Quickly."

The mumbler squirmed under Gallegos's boot until Ramirez told him to let go. He turned over slightly on his side. Ramirez could see that he was just a boy, maybe fifteen years at most. "Highway 16? It's right over there, past the shed. A few hundred meters."

Ramirez had an idea. "Get up! On your feet!" He and Gallegos yanked the field hands to their feet. They were cut and bleeding from the sharp edges of the cane. "Get that cane off the truck!"

The teenager started to protest. "We just finished load—"

Gallegos wrapped his face with the butt of his rifle. The boy staggered back and fell heavily to the ground. He looked up sourly, rubbing bloody pulp from his face. When Gallegos chambered a round in his rifle, though, the boy was on his feet in a second.

"Hurry! Hurry up!"

The field hands climbed up onto the truck bed and started throwing cane off the back.

To Paco, Ramirez ordered, "Get this thing turned around. We're going to put the warhead in back, and cover it with that tarpaulin."

A minute later, the BTR-60 had backed up to the end of the truck bed.

Only Barracoa was excluded from the lifting party. Ramirez guided the blunt end of the container carefully as the men grunted and strained, rocking the device back and forth, edging it slowly out the back of the cab. As the warhead slipped over the edge and began falling toward the ground, Ramirez and the field hands helped steady it. It fell from the hatch with a thud.

Kapitonov was quickly there like a newborn father. He checked over the container carefully, running his hands along a visible seam at the edge. "I think she'll be all right," he announced. Ramirez nodded, massaging his neck from the strain.

"This mother is heavy," he said. "We have to get it up to that truck bed."

One of the field hands noted that there were several loose wooden beams in the back of the shed. "We could make a ramp."

Ramirez nodded to Gallegos to accompany them. He didn't have to remind him what to do if they tried to get away.

Five minutes later, Gallegos and the field hands had returned, dragging a collection of 4X4 and 6X6 pine beams. They braced them against the truck bed, forming a crude ramp.

Getting the warhead container onto the ramp was an effort, but the men had the device leaning against the beams in a few minutes. The coffin-shaped container was so heavy, however, that any effort to shove it up the sides of the beams simply overwhelmed the truck's brakes. Finally exasperated, Ramirez ordered Paco to block the truck with the BTR. With the truck thus braced, they managed, straining, swearing, grunting and nearly losing control of the device, to power the container over the edge of the truck bed. It fell forward with a crash and the truck swayed and rocked under the weight. Seconds later, they had draped a tarpaulin over the warhead. Underneath, Kapitonov, Gallegos, Barracoa and Arrantes huddled. Paco got in the cab, and fired up the engine. It belched smoke but ran.

Ramirez had a decision to make. He detested Cubans killing Cubans; there had been too much of that already. The streets of Havana had run red with blood in the months after Fidel had paraded into the city, cries of "To the wall!" echoing down every street as the Revolution disposed of its enemies. But he had no choice. The success of Moncada was in the balance. Already, they were behind schedule. And they couldn't leave witnesses now. Too much was at stake, perhaps the Revolution itself.

All three field hands glared back at Ramirez. He reached into the cab for his assault rifle. The teenager held out his hands, imploring Ramirez, his eyes wide with terror. He started to speak but Ramirez fired a short burst and the boy fell back, a dark purple stain growing in the center of his chest. The other two turned and tried to run. Ramirez emptied the magazine. Both men pitched headfirst into cane cuttings, twitching as their lives drained away.

Ramirez told Paco to get moving as he climbed into the cab. By the time he had the door secured and his rifle stowed, Paco had found the highway. He floored the accelerator and the truck bumped onto the asphalt, shuddering as he coaxed her up to seventy kilometers per hour. "She won't go any faster, Capitan." Ramirez grunted in reply and leaned back, letting the humid night breeze wash over his face. They had two hours, maybe two and a half, to make the docks and get the boat loaded. And if there were in any delays in Quivican, if they ran into a convoy, if Pliyev's helicopters spotted them....

Half an hour later, Paco downshifted at the first road sign for the village of Quivican. A small mill town surrounded by cane and tobacco fields, Quivican was little more than a strip of dilapidated, boarded up stucco and wood frame buildings. An old Esso station whizzed by, then a restaurant with faded blue awnings and cracked stone facing...Claro de Luna, the sign said. It was dark, as was the town.

At the intersection with Batabano Highway, they found only a stray donkey, wandering aimlessly in the road. Paco swerved around it, and got the truck back up to speed as they fled the area. Simple wooden buildings flashed by, homes for the field hands, interspersed with the thatched bohios of the local Guanabo Indians.

Ramirez closed his eyes for a few moments, replaying every second of the assault on Bejucal. They had lost a lot of men, it was true. Good men, revolutionary fighters all of them. But they had their warhead and that was all that mattered.

Now little Cuba stands up to the Norteamericanos....

10-27-62

The White House

3:30 p.m.

John Kennedy rubbed his jaw, feeling stubble he had missed that morning with the razor. His back ached and his head hurt. He'd have to take a turn in the pool before lunch. Maybe he could find Dave Stewart. Otherwise, he'd never last through what was sure to a marathon second meeting with the ExComm. He doodled on a pad, next to a stack of telex paper with Khrushchev's latest message on it.

"I don't get it. Bobby. It doesn't make any sense. Who the hell's in charge over there? This message is completely different in tone and content from last night."

Bobby Kennedy ran a hand through his hair. He was tired, fatigued. He'd been up to nearly 3 a.m. Saturday morning, arguing with McNamara, with that ass Rusk, with all of them. "Jack, looks to me like we got a whole new ball game here. There are new conditions, new terms, we have to deal with. Yesterday, he said nothing about missiles in Turkey. Today...well, I don't know what's going on."

The President stood up and stretched. The tiny private hideaway off the Oval Office was barely large enough for the two of them. He propped a foot on a desk drawer and winced. His back was really acting up today. "Anybody who looks at this proposal objectively is going to say it's a reasonable thing. Their missiles in Cuba for ours in Turkey. A fair trade. But that's not the issue, dammit!"

Robert Kennedy's face lit up. "I have an idea. Dillon and Ros Gilpatric were talking this morning along the lines of just ignoring this second message."

"How do you mean?"

"Just work up a reply to the first message and send it on to Khrushchev, as if we never got the second message. And don't even mention the Jupiters in Turkey."

The President pondered the thought. "You met with Dobrynin last night?"

Robert Kennedy nodded, "At the Justice Department. Jack, I have to say Dobrynin seems as much in the dark as before. I know that's hard to believe. But Moscow may not have told him much."

"Hell of a way to run a government," said John Kennedy, then he smiled ruefully. "Of course, some Senators are saying the same thing about this Administration. You know, I just came from a meeting with the Governors. Rocky was there, Pat Brown from California. We discussed civil-defense measures, things we could do to help, what had been done so far, that sort of thing. I told them we had some messages from Khrushchev. You know what they said?"

"No, what?"

"Nelson Rockefeller stuck his jaw out—you know how he does that—"Kennedy raised his voice, imitating the New York Governor, "and said 'We should inform Mr. Khrushchev that the missiles have to come out now. Otherwise, we'll invade.'" The President shook his head. "I'm telling you, Bobby, we may have to invade. But it's got to be a last resort. People like Rocky don't seem to realize that those things are armed. We send the Marines in at dawn and it may be the last dawn any of us ever see. The Soviets could launch and we'd have millions of casualties. No, we gotta give Khrushchev an out, a way to back down without losing face." He stared out the window at a pair of gardeners pruning bushes on the South Lawn. "Bobby, you may have to go see Dobrynin again."

"I'll go find McNamara and the others. Maybe we can work up some kind of reply that gets around the Jupiters in Turkey."

The President nodded his assent. "I'm going to jot down some ideas myself. We have another ExComm meeting at 4:00. Time's running out. Khrushchev probably expects a reply before dawn their time. And the service Chiefs are pushing to get the invasion forces into position." He jammed his hands in his coat pocket. "I don't like it. Things are going too fast. We're not thinking this through. Bring your stuff to the meeting. And when we're through, call Dobrynin. I want Khrushchev to know we're not going to be pushed into a corner publicly about the Jupiters."

Robert Kennedy got up and left the office. The President pressed a buzzer to his secretary's desk. Evelyn Lincoln was in the doorway in seconds.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Evelyn, I need to dictate some thoughts for the next ExComm meeting."

The secretary planted herself in a chair in front of the desk. "I have my pad now, Mr. President."

Kennedy smiled. "So I see. Well, here goes...."

Ten minutes later, he had a draft of a message to Khrushchev, pointedly ignoring the second letter the First Secretary had sent that morning. Bobby's right, he thought, as Evelyn Lincoln went back to her office to mimeograph copies for the meeting. There may be a power struggle over there. If we don't act fast and get a response out, public pressure will force us to accept these terms. Turkey for Cuba, missile for missile. He thought back to the disaster at the Vienna summit meeting the year before. And Khrushchev wins the game again.

The President left the Oval Office and went down the hall to the Cabinet Room. It was nearly 4:00 p.m. The Executive Committee of the National Security Council, known to everybody as the ExComm, was already present. There was a chorus of "good afternoon, Mr. President" as he came in. Some started to get up; he waved them back to their seats.

Kennedy took his seat at the center of the oblong table. A portrait of George Washington glared down at him from over the mantel of a marble fireplace. Evelyn Lincoln busied herself passing out fresh mimeo copies of his proposed reply to Khrushchev.

They were all there: McNamara, Rusk, Taylor, Dillon, Ros Gilpatric from the Pentagon, George Ball from State. Weary, fatigued, faces ashen and drawn, they had been arguing just before the President arrived.

"Mr. President," said Bob McNamara, "we have no absolute confirmation yet about the U-2 in Cuba. The Cubans are saying they have the plane and the body of the pilot."

"They're claiming it was shot down?"

"Yes, sir. But we can't corroborate that. We're also getting reports back from Homestead and MacDill, from returning pilots, that Cuban anti-aircraft guns are firing on our low-flying surveillance aircraft. Some missions had to be aborted."

George Ball spoke. "What do you mean abort?"

"By abort I simply mean they turned away from their targets and returned to base."

General Maxwell Taylor was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He had just come from a table-pounding meeting with the Chiefs. His face was still red from anger. "They told me they were running into resistance. I assume they saw somebody get hit."

McNamara was scanning some notes. "So it looks like we'll have to make a statement today as to what we do about that, as far as surveillance is concerned."

The President steepled his hands in front of his chin. "We better wait until we hear more about why they aborted. We might have to stop because they are too hostile right now."

"Mr. President," said McNamara, "I wonder if it wouldn't be wise to put out the statement about night surveillance, whether we decide to carry it out or not. This is the announcement that we could propose."

Kennedy pondered that, while General Taylor cut in. "Mr. President, I just came from a meeting with the service chiefs. They've asked me to give you this memorandum, which represents their consensus on the situation." The CJCS passed a piece of paper across the table. Kennedy snatched it up, while Taylor summarized. "Basically, they're unanimous in recommending that we posture our forces to commence air strike operations at 0500 hours Washington time, either tomorrow or Monday morning. We shouldn't wait any longer."

Kennedy snorted. He folded the paper and glared at Taylor. "Max, the chiefs are beginning to sound like a broken record. Don't they realize what's at stake here?"

Taylor flushed under Kennedy's withering gaze. He's had a hard enough time getting LeMay and the rest to tone down this memo. "Mr. President, we've lost a U-2 to ground fire this morning. We may not have all the facts, but the truth is clear enough. They've fired on our aircraft. That means they'll probably fire again. And that endangers all our surveillance operations. It makes U-2 flights much more hazardous. If we allow the Russians or the Cubans to fire at will at our U-2s, we're asking our recon boys to take unacceptable risks. We have to take action, we have to at least take out the SAM site that fired on Major Anderson. We owe the boys that much, at least."

Taylor had half risen out of his seat. He realized it and sat down a bit sheepishly. McNamara said, "Max, the issue isn't one U-2 or even one pilot, serious as that is. The issue is nuclear war. If we go charging into Cuba, the Russians may just launch. You could have nuclear detonations over the Eastern Seaboard inside half an hour."

"Then, is there nothing we'll do to protect our boys?"

Kennedy had heard enough. "Hold on, hold on. General, I understand what you're saying. But we have to focus on the big picture here. Let's work on a response to Khrushchev's message for the time being. Bob, you get any more details on that U-2, you let me know right away."

McNamara said, "Of course, Mr. President."

Kennedy leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table. "I can't do anything that backs Khrushchev into a corner. It's too dangerous. I want to keep open a way for the Soviets to back out and not be humiliated. For the moment, at least, events are still under our control."

"For the moment," repeated Robert Kennedy.

10-27-62, Saturday

Homestead Air Force Base, Florida

3:30 p.m.

Major General Olin Haley, Commanding General of the U.S. 2nd Marines, wasn't happy. His desk was too small and the chair had that annoying squeak that all government requisition office chairs had, probably designed in from the start. The office didn't have enough file cabinets and his window faced a parking lot. Leave it to the Air Force to screw up a project. If LeMay had his way, the fly-guys would nuke Cuba into radioactive ruins and let the Marines guard the rubble.

He was damned if anything of the sort was going to happen.

A week before, the Ops Center had been a classroom building. Then the workers had shown up. In a blur of dust and frenzy, they had worked night and day, around the clock, building plywood offices in every classroom, installed sliding map panels in the command center, stringing cables to comm consoles lining every wall. Outside the building, mobile communications vans with enough gear to call a Marine in the middle of the Gobi Desert were lined up, parked bumper to bumper, like a football game tailgate party. A closed-circuit TV system flickered from screens everywhere, tying the Ops Center to the task group at the Pentagon, where decisions were made and conferences were held on every aspect of the quarantine and the impending invasion.

An admiral's delight, thought Haley sourly, as he got up to make the sure the door to the flimsy little office was reasonably secure. He examined the door knob and locking mechanism. Reject from a hardware store, he told himself. But it would have to do.

Homestead Air Force Base, twenty miles south out of Miami on U.S. 1 and hard by the Orchid Jungle and Peevey's Alligator Ride and Gift Shop, had mutated into something unrecognizable to older hands in the last few weeks. By last Monday, when the President had made his speech to the nation, a vast armada of vehicles and aircraft had descended on the sleepy base, along with pilots, technicians, maintenance crews, Pentagon types and other assorted staff officers. A combined services Operations Center had been set up, and every square inch of the BOQ and enlisted men's quarters worked on the hot bunk principle, three men assigned to each bunk. The mess hall next door was open twenty-four hours a day and the base commander had seen fit to order in a few meal wagons for the line personnel. But Olin Haley knew from scuttlebutt that the best chow was at the Sea Clam, half a mile down U.S. 1 from the base's West Gate.

He retreated to his desk, having ordered the small Marine staff outside to let him alone for a minimum of thirty minutes, no matter who called. The 2nd had a small staff at Homestead, mostly for liaison with the Navy and Air Force. A few operations types, a few S-2s and S-3s, and some clerical and admin guys were all he'd been given. But that was okay. If all went well, he'd be embarking for the Iwo Jima in a few hours. Then they could get down to real business.

Haley paced the small confines of the office, chewing on a cigarette, wetting his fingers as he thumbed through some papers. He was anxious, edgy, wishing to God he had a window with a flight line view. He loved watching those C-124s and the new C-130 Herks coming and going. If Kennedy would just get off his rear and give the order, there'd be C-130's all over the skies of Florida. Ready brigades of the Army's 82nd Airborne and the 101st were staged and ready. All they needed was the word to go.

Haley himself had nearly eight thousand Marines embarked on several assault ships, cruising around the Caribbean. Several battalions had already arrived at Gitmo, reinforcing the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade already there. They were poised, trained, trigger-happy and itching to fight.

But Haley was worried about one thing. He was worried they wouldn't have the chance to show what they could do. Worried that that sniveling Yankee of a President didn't have the backbone for a fight. From what he'd been hearing out of the Commandant's office, the politicos wanted to negotiate their way out of the crisis. Wasn't that a helluva thing?

Berlin and Laos and the Bay of Pigs oughta have shown us something...you don't talk with Commies. You kill 'em.

Olin Haley intended to do just that, even if he had to save the President from himself. He had long ago decided it was high time he do something to help the Commander in Chief make up his mind.

Haley scanned the fact sheet on OpPlan 316, the combined assault bible for airborne and amphibious action against Cuba. If Fidel could see this sheet, he'd shit in his revolutionary pants.

Haley read: Three augmentation battalions of Marines now at Guantanamo...Second Battalion of the Second Marines from Vieques Island, Second Battalion of the First Marines from El Toro, and First Battalion of the Eighth Marines airlifted in from Cherry Point, North Carolina. Third Battalion Second Marines, First Battalion Sixth Marines and Second Battalion Sixth Marines afloat in the waters around Cuba. Plus Marine Air Group 14 out of Cherry Point on station at Key West. And more reinforcements for the 5th MEB coming through the Canal.

Hell, Haley thought, the Marines alone could do the job. He read on:

CONAD has 183 interceptors under operational control of the Montgomery Air Defense Sector. Four on continuous airborne alert, along a line from just west of Key West to a point just southeast of Miami, supplemented daily with airborne alert aircraft on station near MacDill, east of Patrick, east of Miami, southwest of Tampa, and northwest of Key West.

Over 850 TAC aircraft under General Sweeney's command, out of MacDill.

And the following strike force chopped to CINCLANT for operational control as of 220430Z: 101st Airborne, 54th Field Artillery Group, Headquarters 18th Airborne Corps, 18th Airborne Corps Artillery, Headquarters 13th Air Defense Group, 82nd Airborne, 1st Infantry Division (consisting of 1/5 Brigade, 1/28 Brigade, and 2/8 Brigade all out of Ft Riley), plus elements of the 2nd Infantry from Ft Benning and the 1st Armored now in place, ready for embarkation at Ft Stewart.

Haley knew that all the pieces were in place. They had the hammer, ready to strike iron in Cuba, if only the National Command Authority would exercise it. OpPlan 316 had been a year or more in the making and Haley had followed the plan's progress around the Pentagon and the Joint Staff with great interest. As an O Club exercise, he'd done a little homework himself, grabbing pieces of the assigned forces and working up a scenario where a small contingent could break off from the invasion force and make a surgical strike into Cuba, with little warning. All he needed was a pretext, a little "provocation" to climb into bed with Castro. He'd even thought up ways to make it evolve naturally from a training exercise, something like the annual Phibriglex landings in the Caribbean they practiced every year.

But it was just wargaming, wasn't it? Just a folder of paper studies, scenarios, planning exercises and what-if? games.

Haley sat down in his squeaky chair and unlocked a drawer in the metal desk. He extracted a small folder, opened it and studied it for a few moments. A growing sense of satisfaction spread across his face. Operation Sierra he had called it. A simple variant on the OpPlans for war in the Caribbean. He unlatched his attache case and slipped the folder inside.

Haley chewed on his cigarette stub for another minute. Outside, he could hear the growl of another Herky Bird taking off, bearing troops or equipment somewhere. He decided it was time to call up an old friend. Jack Stone, U.S. Navy, the lovable bastard. Commanding Officer, Task Force 132, assigned to quarantine duty on the Peanut Line in the Florida Straits/Bahamas Channel.

Haley knew Stone was holed up in rather posh surroundings up in Miami Beach. The Navy had requisitioned a bevy of hotel suites around the Miami area, putting up dozens of its flag-rank officers in everything from mom and pop motels to five-star resorts. Admiral Stone had been one of the lucky ones. He had drawn a suite at the Eden Roc on Collins Avenue.

Haley dialed out and rang Stone's room. The O-7 answered on the second ring.

"Jack Stone, it's Olin Haley. Are you decent?"

Stone replied, "Only for my wife. What brings you to civilization, General? I thought you'd have shipped out by now."

"I got me a C-2 on the way and a bunk on the Iwo all warmed up. What the hell happened...did the maids finally roust you out of bed?"

Stone snorted. "Jesus, Olin, you gotta see this place. I got a gilt-edge mirror on the ceiling of all places. Marble fixtures in the bathroom. It's like a fucking palace."

"I don't doubt it. Just don't let the CNO see the bill. Say, I got a question."

"Shoot."

"I got something we need to talk about. Tomorrow morning. Kind of urgent."

Stone was instantly all business. "Operations we do here, unless you want to meet me on the Bristol. What is it?"

Haley was evasive but firm. "Operations, sort of. We need to chat, Jack. I've got a little favor I need from you. Off the record."

Stone knew how the Marine operated. Haley had a way of twisting arms. Against his better judgement, he said, "Somewhere else then."

"How about an early morning coffee, say around 6 a.m.? You know that bagel place we been to a few times?"

"Yeah, what was it...Saeger's Deli, wasn't it?"

"Collins and Arthur Godfrey, beachside, remember? They had that real thick sour cream you liked."

"I remember. About 6 then?"

"Six it is," Haley replied. "See you tomorrow morning."

10-27-62, Saturday

Washington, D.C.

2:30 p.m.

The ground floor coffee shop of the Statler Hilton was the kind of place that correspondent John Scali had seen far too much of in his journalistic career. Naugahyde seats, Formica tables with permanent stains from things he would rather not know about, watery tea and sandwiches that tasted like gloves, the shop was busiest on weekday mornings. This Saturday afternoon, the weather in the Nation's Capital was picture-postcard autumn, with bright sun, crisp breezes and a few leaves flitting along the sidewalks of 16th Street. The coffee shop crowd was light, mostly tourists and visitors popping in for a soda or snack.

Still it was near enough to the Soviet Embassy, just across the L Street intersection in fact, that Alexander Fomin found it convenient for an occasional get-together. He'd called up Scali again that morning and suggested a third meeting between them. They had already met twice on Friday, here and at the Occidental Restaurant on Pennsylvania. Fomin was nervous, Scali could deduce that much, but then the times tended to make everyone nervous. Scali knew he was supposed to let the FBI know what he was doing, each time he met with the Soviet attache. But he figured the State Department could fix that pretty quickly if they wanted to. Given what they'd been discussing in their meetings, and encouragement from Roger Hilsman and Rusk, Scali doubted the FBI would make a big deal about another meeting.

John Scali was a diplomatic correspondent for ABC News. He ran Issues and Answers every Sunday morning, and he'd been at the office when Fomin called, typing up some talking points for tomorrow's show. He was a short man, balding, pugnacious they said, with a Boston accent and a quick tongue. Fomin thought he was close to the Kennedys. Scali had told Hilsman at the State Department that he figured that was why he had attracted the attention of a man widely figured to the KGB station chief in Washington.

More importantly, perhaps, Scali suspected that Fomin was Moscow's mouthpiece, a private back-channel sought out by someone in the Presidium, perhaps Khrushchev himself, for negotiations out of the glare of public opinion. Hilsman thought so too, and had acted as go-between, shuttling ideas from Dean Rusk and the ExComm to Scali and back, picking apart Fomin's own proposals, giving Scali things to say. His editor knew perfectly well what was going on but they were sitting on the story for the moment. Both he and Scali figured when the crisis was all over, they'd have the scoop of the century. They'd blow the creeps at NBC and CBS out of the water with this one.

John Scali pushed through the swinging doors to the coffee shop and right away saw Fomin in his usual spot, five booths back, facing the door. He was a patrician man, for a Soviet agent, thought Scali. Thin lips, high forehead, wavy salt and pepper hair. Even handsome, perhaps.

Scali sat down without invitation. He leveled a steady gaze at the Russian; they were long past the point of needing any pleasantries.

A waitress ambled by. Fomin ordered his usual coffee, black, and Scali got a grilled cheese and milk. When she had left, Scali lit into the Russian.

"Alexander, we're wasting time. You said you had something. What is it?"

Fomin rubbed his lips back and forth. "I'm concerned, John. I'm concerned that we do not properly understand each other. You told me that your contacts are from the highest levels of your government. You promised me."

Scali was furious. "And they are. I didn't lie to you. But I must tell you, Alexander, that time is running out. Fast. You've got to withdraw the missiles, and withdraw them in the next day or so. That comes from the highest levels too."

Though Scali didn't know it, Fomin had received no explicit instructions from Moscow. Only the usual operational requests from the Center. Already he was working a number of contacts...N1, N2, and the others. Scali--contact code-name MIN—was only one of them. But he was scared. He'd sent dispatch after dispatch to the Center showing what the Americans were doing militarily, their deployments, their readiness, their troop call-ups, good intelligence but Moscow didn't seem to understand. There was war talk all around Washington. He'd seen it in the papers, heard it in the bars, elevators, everywhere. Didn't Moscow know what was going on? The Americans would be on the beaches of Cuba in two days.

Fomin (whose real name was Feklisov) struggled to keep his composure. Scali was his best chance, perhaps his only chance, to convince those idiots in the Presidium that Kennedy meant business this time.

"We too want to resolve this issue, John. But we have concerns. Moscow believes you will invade Cuba any day. We see your preparations, your mobilization." Fomin leaned forward, nearly knocking his coffee over. "Believe me, such an event would have the most serious consequences."

Scali was running out of patience with the Russian. "How do I know that anything you've told me is legitimate? How do I know you've got Khrushchev's ear?"

Fomin smiled wanly. "We must trust each other, John. Trust is the answer. I can assure you that Moscow receives with great interest everything you and I discuss."

"Same for me," Scali told him. Thinking of the sessions with Hilsman at State, he added, "I have a message from the Secretary himself."

Fomin said, "I see. And this has attention at the very highest levels? I must be sure, John."

Scali exploded. "Alexander, the Soviet Union has to stop needlessly delaying a resolution of this crisis! For God's sake, you keep changing the terms, almost as we speak. We get one message from Khrushchev last night, saying one thing, then another this morning, saying something else. What should we believe? Who should we believe?"

"Please," said Fomin, "we must be careful...."

Scali knew full well he didn't the authority, but he added, "Alexander, aren't you listening to me? For Christsakes, a U.S, attack is imminent, on Cuba, if efforts to dismantle and remove the missiles aren't seen in the next twenty-four hours. I have this from the highest levels of the U.S. government. I'm a reporter, Alexander. I check my sources. You undoubtedly have sources yourself. What are they telling you?"

"The same thing," Fomin conceded. He dipped a finger in his coffee. It was cold.

"One way or another," Scali continued, "the U.S. will have those missiles removed."

The waitress came by, checking on them. She saw that Scali hadn't touched the grilled cheese and Fomin's coffee cup was full. Clucking with disgust, she put her hands on her hips.

"If you two aren't gonna eat anything, why'd do you come in? You through, or you want desert?"

Scali threw up his hands. Fomin declined a refill. The waitress snatched up the sandwich plate and stalked off, muttering.

Fomin gathered up his overcoat and stood. "I have to talk with Moscow immediately. We don't have much time."

"No we don't," Scali admitted, also rising. They shook hands and Fomin hurried out of the shop.

Scali accepted the bill when the waitress returned. $3.83. He put down a five and left, wondering what Hilsman would say now, wondering if he'd even live to see Sunday morning.

10-27-62, Saturday

Washington, D.C.

7:45 p.m.

Anatoli Dobrynin had been Ambassador to the United States for only a year or so but he had never failed to be amused by Americans' sense of secrecy and security. Dobrynin had years of familiarity with the special traffic lanes reserved for Central Committee members in Moscow. That and the underground tunnels fanning out from the Kremlin, reaching like so many tentacles to 2 Dzerzhinsky Square and the Defense Ministry Building on Frunze Street. It was said that a full Presidium member might spend weeks at a time in the warm and comfortable embrace of the KGB's Guards Directorate and the Kremlin Kommendatura, well isolated from the mundane annoyances of life. Even close aides and staff might not know his whereabouts for long periods of time, so tight was the inner ring of bodyguards.

So it was that when the American Attorney General Robert Kennedy had phoned him at the Embassy at 7:15 that evening, requesting a meeting, Dobrynin had to remind himself that this was Washington, not Moscow, and the Americans were relative neophytes at the business of hiding things that should be hidden. Kennedy had requested Dobrynin come down to the Justice Department Building at 8:00. "We have to meet tonight," he had said. And when Kennedy suggested that Dobrynin's driver use the 10th street side entrance—there was a small service garage there and the Washington press corps rarely stationed any reporters nearby—the Ambassador chuckled softly and said he would be there in half an hour.

Kennedy himself was at the elevator landing when Dobrynin stepped out of the black Lincoln. He switched his attache case to the other arm and briefly shook the Attorney General's hand.

Kennedy appeared grim and fatigued. He smiled wanly. "Thanks for coming by on such short notice."

No more words were exchanged on the elevator ride up to Kennedy's eighth floor office. Inside the suite, both men took seats around a small mahogany table, on which a silver tea and coffee service had been set. Kennedy offered refreshments and Dobrynin availed himself of what the Americans insisted on calling tea. Stirring the cup with a spoon, he regarded the President's brother curiously as Kennedy poured himself a glass of iced water.

"No one saw you come in?" Kennedy asked.

Dobrynin smiled back, regarding the Attorney General as an uncle might humor a favorite nephew. "No one saw me."

"Good. It's important we meet tonight...I want to lay out the current situation the way the President sees it."

Dobrynin agreed. "We must not have misunderstandings now. We have concerns and legitimate interests. So do you. I can report to you that all of our talks have been reviewed with great interest in Moscow."

"Good, good," Kennedy pushed a lock of hair back. He flashed a tense smile, sipped some water. "The President is afraid that events will escalate out of control. You're aware, I'm sure by now, that one of our U-2s was shot down over Cuba this morning. The President is under tremendous pressure to do something, to act and respond with military force if we are fired on again. You can see the dangers involved here. If we start to fire in response—a chain reaction will quickly start that will be hard to stop."

Dobrynin nodded. He understood the Americans' term 'chain reaction.' "Mr. Attorney General surely, as a lawyer, you believe sovereign nations have the right to self defense. The plane was spying. Our Cuban comrades were dealing with a violation of their sovereign airspace. You would do the same."

Kennedy reached into his pocket and extracted a piece of paper. "See this? It's the letter President Kennedy will be sending to Chairman Khrushchev, within the hour. It's a response to the letters the Chairman has sent over the last twenty-four hours." He handed the paper to Dobrynin, who scanned it quickly:

I have read your letter of October 26th with great care and welcomed the statement of your desire to seek a prompt solution to the problem. The first thing that needs to be done, however, is for work to cease on offensive missile bases in Cuba and for all weapon systems in Cuba capable of offensive use to be rendered inoperable, under effective United Nations arrangements.

Assuming this is done promptly, I have given my representatives in New York instructions that will permit them to work out this weekend—in cooperation with the Acting Secretary General and your representative—an arrangement for a permanent solution to the Cuban problem along the lines suggested in your letter of October 26th. As I read your letter, the key elements of your proposals—which seem generally acceptable as I understand them—are as follows:

  1. You would agree to remove these weapons systems from Cuba under appropriate United Nations observation and supervision; and undertake, with suitable safeguards, to halt the further introduction of such weapon systems into Cuba.

  2. We, on our part, would agree—upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments—(a) to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect and (b) to give assurances against an invasion of Cuba. I am confident that other nations of the Western Hemisphere would be prepared to do likewise.

If you will give your representative similar instructions, there is no reason why we should not be able to complete these arrangements and announce them to the world within a couple of days. The effect of such a settlement on easing world tensions would enable us to work toward a more general arrangement regarding "other armaments", as proposed in your second letter which you made public. I would like to say again that the United States is very much interested in reducing tensions and halting the arms race and if your letter signifies that you are prepared to discuss a détente affecting NATO and the Warsaw Pact, we are quite prepared to consider with our allies any useful proposals.

But the first ingredient, let me emphasize, is the cessation of work on missile sites in Cuba and measures to render such weapons inoperable, under effective international guarantees. The continuation of this threat, or a prolonging of this discussion concerning Cuba by linking these problems to the broader questions of European and world security, would surely lead to an intensified situation on the Cuban crisis and a grave risk to the peace of the world. For this reason I hope we can quickly agree along the lines outlined in this letter and in your letter of October 26th.

(s) John F. Kennedy

Dobrynin handed the letter back to Kennedy and took off his glasses, wiping them down with a tissue. "Statesman-like words, Mr. Kennedy. For all our sakes, I trust we can find a resolution soon."

Robert Kennedy said, "Yes, well, there had better be no misunderstanding on the part of Chairman Khrushchev. The time for grandstanding is gone. The President considers the Chairman's order to withdraw the missiles in return for a U.S. commitment not to invade as a suitable basis for regulating this whole affair. But you must understand, and the Chairman must see, that it's imperative that work stop and stop now on these missiles."

"I will, of course, pass along your thoughts promptly when I return to the Embassy."

"Just so we understand each other," Kennedy went on, "in exchange for stopping work and disabling the missile sites, the U.S. proposes to end the quarantine and embargo on military shipments, and give assurances that there will be no invasion of Cuba. The President is certain that others in this Hemisphere will agree."

"And what about Turkey, Mr. Attorney General?"

"Anatoli, if that's the only obstacle to achieving what I just mentioned, then the President doesn't see any insurmountable difficulties in resolving this issue. But you have to realize there are some things the President can't say in public. He has political forces pushing him from all sides. Our military people want to invade. Our diplomats want to negotiate. The President's in a minefield, trying to keep from blowing up. The greatest difficulty for him is public discussion of the issue of Turkey." Kennedy leaned forward and leveled a steady gaze at Dobrynin. "There are only three or four people in the whole Administration who know about this. If the Chairman accepts this letter and then publicly links the terms to getting the Jupiters out of Turkey, the whole deal's off. The President will have to take action." Kennedy waited for Dobrynin's reaction. The Ambassador merely lifted an eyebrow.

Kennedy added, "We need four or five months to get the missiles out of Turkey. It's a NATO issue. If such a decision were announced now, it would seriously tear apart NATO. Obviously, that's unacceptable."

Dobrynin resisted reminding the Attorney General that tearing apart NATO would serve Soviet interests quite nicely. "When and how will the President's letter be transmitted?"

Kennedy said, "It's being telexed to our embassy in Moscow. They'll call Gromyko and get a copy to your Foreign Ministry. I'm giving you this copy now to help speed up the process."

"I appreciate your consideration. As you know, it's very early in the morning in Moscow. These things take time."

"Anatoli, we haven't got time." He stood up abruptly, startling the Ambassador, who also rose. "I have one final request...not an ultimatum, just a personal request. The President would like a businesslike, clear answer in principle, through you, if possible. He wants to bring this alarming moment, with events developing far too quickly for any of us to control, to an end as soon as possible. It would help matters if the Chairman would not send one of his long, rambling letters this time. Our interpreters need a break and these kinds of letters just drag things out." He handed a card to Dobrynin, with some numbers scribbled on it.

"These are direct phone lines to the Oval Office. They're manned twenty-four hours a day."

Dobrynin took the card and put it in his attache case. "I appreciate your candor, Mr. Kennedy. This crisis has strained relations for all of us. Forgive me, but I can't help noticing that you seem unusually tired."

Kennedy smiled ruefully. "Ethel said the same thing to me this morning, at breakfast." He finished off his water.

"Perhaps, something a little stronger than water would help."

Kennedy declined, showing Dobrynin to the door. "I have to get back to the White House. Time's running out for all of us. You must convey to Mr. Khrushchev the seriousness of the situation. If there's no response by tomorrow, events will be out of our control."

10-27-62, Saturday

Mobile, Alabama

11:30 p.m.

The Tasty Snapper Restaurant had been a fixture on the eastern side of Mobile Bay for almost fifteen years. Advertising the best Gulf snapper and marlin fillets this side of Corpus Christi, the gray board and tin roof shack sat smack in the middle of Spivey's Marina, just beyond the fence and gate to Slip Number 10, and a stone's throw from the Pure Oil station. A maroon and white metal sign out front, once shaped to resemble a three-master's mainsail, but now dented and brown with age, greeted hungry visitors with the catch of the day and the Snapper's infamous liquid specialty: The Shrimper's Salute...Two Pints for a Buck.

Inside the Snapper, Red Lynch and Jimmy Caine were plowing through a plate of shrimp and a pitcher of beer, while the Mavis Brown and the night crew were placing chairs on the table tops and mopping down the floor all around them. Red Lynch was the owner and operator of the Palm Breezes Warehouse and Storage Company, a dilapidated row of brick sheds and refrigerated lockers that just happened to be sitting on some of choicest real estate on the eastern bay. Jimmy Caine, a real estate agent, was doing his level best to buy the place right out from under him.

"Jesus H. Christ, Red, how much business do you do in a day now, anyway? A few bucks, at most, right? You got your new terminal across the bay, all modern and sleek. Hell, the city's in competition. You ain't gonna get any more business, the way I see it. PortCenter's got bigger warehousing, all the amenities, and it's subsidized by the taxpayers to boot."

Red Lynch burped beer fumes and shook his head. "You're flat wrong, Jimmy. I know what you want to do. I seen the designs for the motel and marina you want to build." He sucked down the rest of the beer. "But you're gonna have to look some place else. We've had an upturn in business lately."

"Is that so?" Jimmy Caine was skeptical. "Like what?"

"Like just last Tuesday, this foreign guy--Mexican I think—comes into my office and plunks down one thousand dollars cash money for five slots in my small building. You know...the one with the refrigerated bays. And when I told him that the whole building only had six bays, he put down two hundred more to rent the whole shebang for two nights."

"Just two nights? That's odd."

Lynch nodded. "It was odd but I'm not asking questions. Peculiar guy, this Mexican. Didn't want to sign anything at first. I finally convinced him that's how we do business up here."

Caine wasn't impressed. He knew Red Lynch. Red was a storyteller. He loved to embellish things, make stuff up. He figured he'd just keep working on the man until he finally gave in and sold.

"Red, no offense, but the times aren't what they used to be. You better sell while the gettin's good. You never know...that dingbat Russkie Khrushchev may just drop a few bombs on Mobile and you'll miss your chance."

Red scoffed at that. "Why'd anyone want to nuke Mobile, for Chrissakes? We ain't got nothing they'd want, except gnats and mosquitoes."

10-27-62, Saturday

Roanoke, Virginia

12 midnight

Sam Chesley hated it, hated every bit of it, but it was business after all and he couldn't let his feelings get in the way of business. He'd been running the Pleasant Valley Trailer Park on Roanoke's Old Mountain Trail for almost eight years now, running it just fine and business was good. Like the sign over by the Hollins exit said: "Pleasant Valley Park...The Perfect Community" and it was. People all said so. He'd been more than fair with the tenants, most of the time, and to a man, they all attested to the fact that "Mr. Sam" was the finest sort of owner-operator a trailer park could ever hope for.

So why was it he was feeling like some two-bit scoundrel? Sam Chesley trudged up the hill and took the turn onto Wildflower Court, the very last row of berths in the park. There was the Porters' place, dark and quiet. He knew the Porters were up in Harrisonburg, visiting friends and their daughter. Missy had just enrolled at James Madison. And there was the Watsons' place, Ralph and Muriel. Ralph was retired, a hardware store owner from Greensboro, and he liked to hunt in the mountains around town. Nice couple.

Sam Chesley finally came to Wendy Carroll's Transtream double. Biggest sucker in the park, Chesley thought. He'd let them in anyway, because there hadn't been any tenants for next space over, Number 8. Wendy's trailer was so long, it covered Number 6 and Number 8. But that was about to come to an end.

Chesley licked his lips nervously. It was near onto midnight and Wendy's trailer was still all lit up. She was a waitress, he knew, and she worked late hours at the Daisyland Restaurant. But still...it was midnight. And he could hear the TV all the way out here. Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners, it sounded like, or maybe not. Chesley walked up the path, neatly outlined with fake flower pots and big stones her kids had taken from the creek behind the lot.

Sam Chesley figured himself a decent businessman, if not particularly sophisticated. Two days ago, he had concluded a deal with a Mexican gentleman, a guy who called himself Rodriguez. Sam wasn't sure that was his name, but no matter. Rodriguez said he was a writer, a novelist from California. He needed some peace and quiet to finish the big novel he was working on. Rodriguez had inquired at the office and found there was a spot at the very end of Wildflower Court. Spot Number 8. Trouble was, the Mexican told him, "my trailer's kinda big. It's a Brentwood Super." Chesley had taken him up to the Court and let him have a look. Sure enough, he said, he'd probably need two spaces. But the view was nice and he'd be secluded enough to get his work done.

Chesley told him the going rate. But the problem was that Wendy Carroll and her three kids occupied Slot Number 6. When Rodriguez plunked down $5000 cash on the table, Sam swallowed hard and said he'd see if something couldn't be worked out. The cash had come out of a pouch Rodriguez carried. Maybe he's dealing drugs, or something. But he'd seen more $100 bills in the pouch besides the ones Rodriguez pulled out.

Right then and there, Chesley agreed to lease Spots Number 6 and 8 to Rodriguez. Hell, he had the money. He took the down payment and had Rodriguez sign the papers. The Mexican was reluctant at first, but Sam insisted. When he left, Chesley knew there would be one small detail that had to be taken care of: how to get Wendy out tactfully.

Wendy Carroll was a widower. Her husband Joe had been killed in a car accident just a few months ago. She was taking care of the three kids on her waitress's salary and some benefit money. And she had recently paid up her lease for the next three months.

Now Sam was going to have to tell her she had to pull out. And Pleasant Valley didn't have any more spots.

He dreaded telling her the news. But it was a business decision, pure and simple.

He knocked on Wendy's door and waited, over the din of the TV set. It was Jackie Gleason, all right, some kind of rerun or something. Sam could hear Ralph Cramden yelling at Alice through the Transtream's aluminum siding. A few seconds later, little Eric Carroll opened the door cautiously. He had about a pint of chocolate ice cream smeared on his face.

Sam Chesley didn't intend to dally around with this. When Wendy appeared from the kitchen, still in her Daisyland uniform, Sam blurted out, "Wendy, I'm sorry, but ya'll are gonna have to move out next week. Something's come up and someone else needs this spot."

10-28-62, Sunday

Moscow

4:00 a.m.

Twenty-five miles outside of Moscow, west along the rain-slick Kolchuga Highway, lies a small village that the maps called Uspenskoye. Dense with pine and birch, the area shelters dachas and country cottages of the Party elite and is well guarded by gray-uniformed troopers of the KGB's elite Seventh Guards Motor Rifle Battalion. Two miles before the village proper, a narrow paved road bends off the highway and winds its way through the thicket of trees. Beyond a low rise is a brightly lit gate and a green fence. The road is blocked with a white gate arm and a squad of marksmen armed with AK-47 Kalishnikov assault rifles. A kilometer or so beyond the gate lies a huge stone lodge, fronted with massive slate steps.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev's country dacha had once served as part of Prince Grigoriev's estate in the 19th century and the Tsar Alexander II's favorite hunting partner had left dozens of trophies hanging from the banquet room's rough cedar-hewn timber walls. The First Secretary stood beneath the head of a great black bear while a fire crackled in the fireplace behind him. He seated himself after a few minutes, with his wife Nina's help, in a leather wingback chair and let an aide freshen his cognac and water.

The Khrushchevs were entertaining tonight. Nina had brought her sister Irina over and Sergei, his son, was there was well. Just a family get-together, a few snacks and drinks and a movie. They had just finished watching an American piece: a war movie of all things. The Longest Day. John Wayne and the invasion of Europe. Khrushchev had found the film long and overly propagandistic. The Americans had ignored the sacrifices made by their heroic Red Army in defeating Hitler. Still, he appreciated the chance to get away from the Kremlin for a night; Nina wouldn't have let him sleep in his office another day.

"A miserable night," Khrushchev told them, between sips, appraising his wife and son through the pungent birchwood smoke and cigar haze of the great room. With trophy heads mounted on every wall, the First Secretary imagined his Presidium colleagues stuffed and taking the place of the moose and bear gathered around them. An appealing thought, he mused. He continued after another sip, appreciating the warmth of the liquid.

"Lesser creatures would find shelter on a night like this. But mastery of the forest doesn't come to those who hibernate. The hunter knows all the habits of his prey." Khrushchev rose, without Nina's help, and waddled across the room to a landing, framed in pine beams. In his pocket was a letter, from President Kennedy. He knew he would have to answer the letter. In his mind, the outline of his answer was clear, quite clear. It was the statesmanlike thing to do, to untie the knot that had been tied so tightly. "Friends, we shall not sleep while wolves stalk our lands and threaten our hard-won achievements."

A phone rang and Sergei answered it. His expression hardened and he held the receiver out, indicating his father. "For you, Father. It's Semichastny."

Khrushchev's reverie was gone. What in the name of Lenin would the Chairman of State Security want at this hour? He snatched up the receiver and spoke.

"Khrushchev." For a long moment, he listened carefully. Vladimir Semichastny was talking non-stop and the First Secretary squinted, trying to figure out what he saying.

There was an uneasy stirring about the banquet hall. Sergei Khrushchev poured himself more Ghorilka spertsem, a Ukrainian vodka with peppers.

Finally, the First Secretary hung up. He stood unsteadily, not knowing what to do next.

"Semichastny's coming over," he told them.

"Now?" said Nina. "Can't it wait until dawn, at least?"

Khrushchev shrugged. "Apparently not. He said he had to see me at once. He was quite excited, anxious and worried. I could hardly understand him. Something terrible has happened, Nina. That's what he said. But he wouldn't explain over the phone. I told him to come."

Semichastny was there in half an hour. Disheveled, his dark suit thrown on, the KGB chairman nodded impatiently to Nina and Sergei, as he came in. Khrushchev got the man a drink, just to settle his nerves. Sergei's puppy Strelka doesn't act like this when she's been naughty. He invited Semichastny, barely out of his overcoat, ice clinking in his glass, out to the porch in the back.

The men sat in wicker rockers on the darkened porch, overlooking the ice-flecked Moskva River. It was cold and windy, low rain clouds scudding by the treetops. Khrushchev didn't want his family disturbed; the events of the week had been hard enough on Nina as it was. Semichastny could hardly sit still.

"Comrade Chairman, it's terrible news. It's Cuba...I only got the word from Beloborodov an hour ago. I don't know why the delay."

"Volodya, calm down, calm down. What about Cuba?"

"The Cubans have stolen two of our atomic warheads. From Bejucal. They assaulted the compound early Saturday morning. In force, it says here." He extracted a piece of paper and went on. "'Renegade elements of the Cuban FAR, equipped with T-54 tanks and in platoon strength, entered the compound shortly before 2:30 in the morning. About 11:30 last night, our time. They attacked our garrison force, causing many casualties. In the combat, Cuban fighting vehicles, BTR-60s, apparently seized two R-12 missile warheads in their containers. These are 700 kiloton devices. Two of tekniki crew are missing. Their bodies can't be found and they are thought to have been also seized by the Cubans.'"

"Who are they?" asked Khrushchev.

"Engineer Dmitri Andreyevich Kapitonov, and a technician from the 135th Missile Regiment, one of Statsenko's men. Lieutenant of Artillery Andrian Vladimirovich Nikolets."

Khrushchev could not believe what he was hearing. Atomic warheads? Two of them? Stolen....

"You must verify this, Volodya. Send a message at once. Contact Pliyev or Gribko."

"I've already done that, Comrade Chairman. I've also notified Marshal Malinovsky. He's at the Ministry at this moment, coordinating actions. He's giving Pliyev orders and they're starting a search for the warheads. Pliyev is furious."

"We can't have Cubans and Russians fighting each other. Has Ambassador Alekseev been notified? Has he gone to Castro yet?"

Semichastny stood up and began pacing up and down the porch. "Not yet. I don't know how much the Cubans know. We don't even know how high this goes. Is it a renegade action or is Havana involved in the planning? I've got flash messages out to all Third Directorate and GRU operatives in the island. They are to report in at once, the status of all contacts and operations. I'm forming a special processing room at Dom Dva now, just to sort through all our intelligence."

Khrushchev was aghast. Only a day ago, he had sent messages to President Kennedy about removing missiles from Turkey in exchange for withdrawing from Cuba. A perfectly reasonable proposal, he had told the Presidium, and no one disagreed. Kennedy's response had just come in...he had the Foreign Ministry's rough translation in his pocket. Kennedy saw merit in the idea but there would have to be negotiations.

Now...this. What would the Americans do if they found out?

Khrushchev got up and slipped his head inside the door, looking for Sergei. He needed his phone, right away.

"Volodya, we have to keep the Americans from knowing about this. It's too dangerous. We're in delicate negotiations right now. If Kennedy finds out we've lost two of our warheads, they'll be no stopping the militarists in the Pentagon. There could even be an American strike against our men in Cuba."

Sergei brought the phone out to the porch. Khrushchev took it and set it on the porch railing. He entered his special access number and dialed up Suslov and several others in the Presidium. Most were asleep but the First Secretary had no apologies for the early hour. Inside of ten minutes, he had organized an emergency meeting of the Presidium at the Kremlin for 6:00 a.m. Then he called Malinovsky at the Defense Ministry.

"Rodion Yakovlich, I've just heard the news from Semichastny. What are you doing?"

Malinovsky growled. "I'm trying to get orders out to all units. Pliyev's mobilized everybody, they're drawing ammunition and forming up. I'm trying to get confirmation about the other warheads. And get the Alexandrovsk out to sea. She's got two dozen K-5 warheads in her hold. I don't want the Cubans anywhere near that ship."

"Rodion Yakovlich, listen to me. Tell Pliyev to be careful. I don't want a military incident with the Cubans just yet. We don't know how the Americans will react. They could invade if Kennedy thinks we've lost control of the situation."

Malinovsky protested but Khrushchev was firm. He hung up, nearly sending the phone off the railing into a rock garden. Semichastny was still pacing.

"Volodya, in the name of Marx and Lenin, will you stop that! I can't think straight!"

Khrushchev quickly decided he had to send a strong message, right away, to Fidel Castro. This time, he really has gone too far. He slipped back into the great room. "Fyodor? Fyodor, bring my car around." The staff aide materialized out of the kitchen, acknowledged and left to get the driver.

Khrushchev was already into his overcoat. "Come along," he told Semichastny, "we've got a lot of work to do. The Presidium meets at six." He kissed Nina on the forehead. "Sorry, nonyushka, I have to go back to the office." He didn't wait for a reply, or see her hurt face.

With his attache case and Semichastny in tow, the First Secretary climbed into the ZIL as it pulled up in front of the lodge. Its fogged windows hid a well-lit mobile office inside. As they sped off down the road, Khrushchev pulled out a small writing table from the seatback and began composing a rough draft of the letter he would send to Castro. He also had a letter to Kennedy he would have to do before the morning was gone.

He didn't know which one would be harder to do.
CHAPTER 4

10-28-62, Sunday

Moscow

6:15 a.m.

Khrushchev waved the Presidium into silence as he came into the meeting room. It was early and the lights were burning bright in the Council of Ministers Building. Khrushchev dropped his attache case on the green baize table and began.

"Comrades, by now you've heard the news. Castro's men have stolen two of our atomic warheads. R-12 warheads, about seven hundred kiloton yield."

Leonid Brezhnev growled, "We're making every effort to recover them, I trust."

Khrushchev signaled for Marshal Malinovsky to answer. The Defense Minister rubbed his chin nervously. "Yes, Leonid Illych, we've got forces out all over the island. General Pliyev has mobilized select elements of the 75th and the 134th. They're on the highways now. He's got helicopter support from Colonel Dvorsky's Mi-4 company. Concentric search, expanding on a five mile radius from Bejucal with every sweep. So far we have nothing."

"Excuse me, Comrade Minister, but we do have something now." Semichastny was quickly scanning a report a staff aide had just given him. "One of the vehicles, a BTR-60, used in the assault was found abandoned in a sugar cane field near the village of Quivican. Several cane cutters were also found, shot to death."

"No warheads?" asked Brezhnev.

Semichastny shook his head. "The warheads haven't been found yet. However, Colonel Beloborodov has a special detection apparatus he's using. Apparently, it can trace high levels of neutron flux, from short distances at least. Our Ninth Directorate office at Chelyabinsk shipped two sets over on the Alexandrovsk. We think we'll be able to track down the warheads."

Brezhnev lit a papirosi and blew a cloud of smoke in the air. "Let's hope so. Nikita Sergeyevich, if you'll pardon me for saying so, I warned against this very possibility in May, when we were voting on Operation Anadyr. We took substantial risks for this operation. Now, look what's happened. This was a risk we could have avoided."

Khrushchev scowled. Brezhnev never missed a chance to make trouble for him at the Presidium meetings. "Leonid Illych, risk is part of life. The Americans were set to invade Cuba. You know that. How can we sit back when a fraternal ally might be overrun by capitalist dogs? The Chinese would cook our ducks in a hot fire if we failed to do our part for world socialism. We had to act."

"You had to act," Brezhnev reminded him. There was a low chorus of agreement with his assessment. "You came to this Presidium and said we could have Cuba and Berlin, if we followed your plan. Now, Kennedy threatens war. The Americans may still invade. And I don't see anybody leaving Berlin except cold and hungry East Germans."

Khrushchev pounded the table with a fist, "Comrades! We don't have the luxury of bickering! Let the United Nations do that. I convened this meeting for answers, not accusations."

Marshal Malinovsky grunted, "The Cubans understand one thing...action. We should march on Fidel Castro's office and take the weasel hostage. Offer them a trade: Castro for bombs. They'll come to their senses. They know the revolution would fall apart without Castro."

Suslov looked sleepy. His tie was askew and he leaned forward on his arms. "The real question is what to tell the Americans. That's all that matters."

Khrushchev let the arguments go on. He knew this Presidium, he understood its dynamics and personalities. Brezhnev would oppose him, probably Kosygin too. He wasn't sure about Podgorny. Mikoyan and Malinovsky would follow anything he said, like puppies. Kozlov was unpredictable. Suslov was a broken record, the tiresome "conscience of the Communist Party." The rest would shift with the prevailing winds.

Two factions developed. One faction, the hard-liners like Malinovsky, wanted to tell the Americans nothing. No one knew what Castro might do. He could even try and detonate one of the devices at a Soviet base somewhere on the island. Perhaps, one of the ships, perhaps even the Alexandrovsk or the Poltava. Wouldn't that be a sight? Both ships carried nuclear warheads for the R-12s and the Luna tactical rockets.

The other faction, following Brezhnev's arguments, wanted to let the Americans know. Leonid Illych was passionate about the consequences. It's true we don't know what the Americans will do. But it's a sure bet Kennedy will blame us for anything Castro does.

Khrushchev realized he didn't have a rebuttal for that. But he was damned if he was going to concede to Brezhnev, especially now.

"Comrades, remember what I told you last May, when I proposed this project? 'Objective conditions were favorable for a bold move.' But now, matters are different. Objective conditions have changed. Lenin taught us that good revolutionaries can smell

opportunity. And when the wind shifts, we follow the scent. That's what's happening now. The wind has shifted. Operation Anadyr has to enter a new phase."

Mikoyan was troubled. "Nikita Sergeyevich, wouldn't it have been better to keep the warheads on our ships? Why were the weapons taken off the ships?"

Malinovsky answered that. "We can't very well have a credible defense of Cuba without warheads, can we? It's normal practice to keep warheads near their launchers. Military conditions often require quick response."

"Marshal, what authority does General Pliyev have to actually use his nuclear warheads?"

"This was discussed before. He must seek approval from the Defense Council to use the R-12 warheads. He has standing authority already to use the Luna tactical rockets. If the Americans invade and the situation is desperate, he can use the Lunas as he sees fit. That's normal tactical doctrine in our Army. We train that way."

Mikoyan shook his head sadly. "It's madness, Marshal. It's dangerous. Pliyev could get us into a shooting war with the Americans, if he sees fit. We have to have better controls."

Khrushchev interrupted, cutting Malinovsky off. "And so we shall, Anastas. So we shall. Comrades, I have decided. It's better to have a socialist Cuba and no warheads, then no Cuba and thermonuclear war. We must withdraw the missiles." He held up a piece of paper. "I've already written a reply to Kennedy. I'll pass it around but we must act as statesmen."

There was some murmuring and grumbling as the members each scanned Khrushchev's handwritten note and passed it on. He hadn't had time to get the thing typed up. He'd scribbled it in the limousine on the way in from Uspenskoye. To save time, assuming the Presidium agreed, he'd type up a neater version and send it on to State Radio. The Moscow Domestic Service could broadcast the reply and the Americans would have their answer.

Khrushchev swallowed hard as the note came around the table and back into his hands. This should satisfy Kennedy.

"As you can see from Kennedy's letter, the Americans have promised not to invade Cuba. Plus, as a bonus, we can expect them to get rid of their Jupiter missiles in Turkey in a few months. A great victory!" He slapped the note down on the table.

"That remains to be seen," Brezhnev said.

Khrushchev ignored him. "I have already tried to reach Fidel Castro by phone. He's not available. Perhaps, he's dealing with this warhead theft even as we speak. In any case, I have two recommendations."

"Please enlighten us," Suslov muttered.

"First, we'll direct Ambassador Alekseev to go see Castro right away." To Gromyko, he pointed a thick finger, "Make up the orders immediately. This Presidium should now focus its attention on composing the letter that our ambassador will deliver. Something like an ultimatum but not so abrupt. You know how sensitive and emotional Castro is. We tell him, in effect: 'Give back the warheads or else face the strongest possible measures, including our complete withdrawal.' Something like that."

"Castro should be spanked, like a naughty boy," Malinovsky grumbled.

"My second recommendation is for our colleague, here, dear Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan. We're going to send you on a vital mission, to meet with Fidel and bring him to heel. You've got to impress on him the seriousness of the situation. Comrades," Khrushchev held up his hand, "can we agree on these measures? Can we let Anastas Ivanovich be our stern and unyielding voice? We'll vote on specific measures, sanctions if you like, that Mikoyan can use."

The Presidium seemed agreeable to that. Good, Khrushchev thought. Good. The flock hasn't gone too far astray. "Then, that's it. Meeting adjourned." He rose, but leaned forward, knuckles on the table. "Gromyko, you and Brezhnev and Podgorny work on the terms we'll take to Castro. Anastas, could we meet privately for a few minutes, in my office? I've got some details you ought to know about."

The formal meeting was over but most of the members hung around the room, gathered in small knots, arguing and gesturing. Mikoyan met with Khrushchev for a few minutes. They discussed some specifics, then Mikoyan left to start packing. It was a fourteen hour flight from Moscow, made more difficult by the fact that they couldn't stop over in Guinea or Senegal anymore; the Americans had seen to that. But Malinovsky had worked out a solution with Chief Marshal of Aviation Viktor Kuznetzov: the Voenno Vozdushny Sily (Air Forces) had rounded up a Tu-114 and outfitted it with extra fuel tanks, shaving weight by throwing out most of the seats and interior fittings. Flying in a cold, bare cabin and darting in and out of hostile airspace over northern Europe, the Tu-114 could just make the Moscow-Havana trip. Calculations showed the four-bladed turboprop aircraft would be flying on fumes the last hundred kilometers, but it was doable. Marshal Kuznetzov was certain of it.

Mikoyan wasn't so sure.

After he had sent Mikoyan on his way, Khrushchev called in his staff secretary, Galina Biryuzova. He wanted to dictate a more complete address for State Radio, responding to Kennedy's last message. Biryuzova sat down in a chair across Khrushchev's desk, while the First Secretary paced about the office, reading and correcting out loud from his handwritten notes:

Dear Mr. President:

I have received your message of 27 October. I express my satisfaction and thank you for the sense of proportion you have displayed and for realization of the responsibility which now devolves on you for the preservation of the peace of the world.

I regard with great understanding your concern and the concern of the United States people in connection with the fact that the weapons you describe as offensive are formidable weapons indeed. Both you and we understand what kind of weapons these are....

He dictated for an hour, stopping, correcting, backtracking, apologizing to Biryuzova, then dictating again. Outside, through frosty windows, a pale sun rose over the onion domes of St. Basil's Cathedral.

Khrushchev knew perfectly well that he could not tell Kennedy the full truth, that they had somehow lost several nuclear warheads to Cuban thieves. But he was certain that Castro could be dealt with. After all, had they not showered the Cubans with billions of rubles of military equipment? Surely, that kind of largesse would count for something. No, Mikoyan would talk some sense into the man, he was sure of it. They'd get their warheads back and the Americans would be none the wiser.

In any case, had they not won a great strategic victory? Khrushchev had in his breast pocket several private communications from the American President. Promises not to invade Cuba. Promises to take Jupiter missiles out of Turkey in a few months. He paused his dictation, to let Biryuzova catch up. One of the communications had been given him by Semichastny himself, straight from the telex at Dom Dva. It was a staff officer's synopsis of the American reporter Scali's talks with Feklisov, the rezident in Washington.

For a brief moment, Khrushchev toyed with the idea of sending a message to Kennedy along this back-channel, then dropped it. There's no telling how the Presidium would react. For now, at least, things were going his way. There was every reason to believe that Alekseev or Mikoyan could bring Castro to his senses.

It's better if the Americans don't know how porous our defenses are.

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud knock.

"Come."

It was Malinovsky and Semichastny. Khrushchev waved them in. "Sit," he instructed.

Semichastny spoke. "Nikita Sergeyevich, I've got a proposal. While Mikoyan is dealing with Castro, we should do a little investigating ourselves."

"What have you got in mind?"

"A small operation, one or two officers from the rezidentura in Havana. We're already running several operations inside the Cuban FAR now. I've just checked with my staff in the Third Chief Directorate. Colonel Rukavishnikov gave me several names of high-ranking FAR officers who can be turned. Plus we have an agent in Havana's G2, as well, covering their department of State Security. I'm proposing a penetration above this level."

Khrushchev was intrigued. "We may not have enough time. How high do your contacts go?"

Semichastny glanced over at Malinovsky, then answered, "We have a contact on the Minister's staff itself. His code name is Baikal."

"The Minister? Raul Castro?" Khrushchev mulled over the possibilities. "That's very interesting. How helpful is this contact?"

"Baikal has already supplied us with general operation and deployment orders, as well as minutes from several meetings at Point One. That's Fidel's command post in Havana. We think he's ready to hunt for bigger game. And he may well know how this operation at Bejucal was planned, who's involved, and their intentions. But I need the Presidium's approval."

Khrushchev liked the idea. Mikoyan and the ambassador could work the diplomatic possibilities, and Semichastny's goons could dig out the truth from inside. We really don't have any choice.

"Leave the Presidium to me," he told the KGB chief. "You have my permission to use all available means to get what we need. Castro's stolen vital Soviet state property. Revolution or not, we have the right to get those warheads back, with or without his cooperation. And he's just emotional enough to refuse to help us."

10-28-62, Sunday

Surgidero de Batabano, Cuba

6:35 a.m.

Paco slowed the old Ford truck as they came into the fishing village of Surgidero de Batabano. He downshifted past a row of pink and yellow stucco buildings and a small open–air sorting shed. Batabano lived on the fruits of its fishermen's craft: tuna, grouper and mackerel ran thick in the waters of the Golfo de Batabano most months of the year. As Paco made a left turn onto the dock road, Ramirez could see yellow lanterns bobbing in the distance. Already, Batabano's tradesmen were stringing and setting up their seine nets, readying a small fleet of boats for the day's work.

Paco killed the Ford's headlights and inched along, looking for slip number six and the torpedo boat. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Ramirez could make out the dim shape of another truck dead ahead, blocking the road.

"Stop!" he ordered. Paco jammed on the brakes. They squealed to a halt.

Ramirez swung his legs out and jumped to the ground. "Gallegos, Arrantes...dismount!" he whispered. He crouched low and moved ahead, wondering, hoping. Behind, came the others, rifles cocked and ready.

"Capitan!" came a hoarse croak. Ramirez breathed a sigh of relief. It was Calderone. Still cautious, he challenged the voice for a password.

"The Zapata swamps are very deep," he said.

Instantly, the reply came: "And the Cordillera are very tall!" In seconds, Calderone and his men had emerged from hiding, materializing from shadows everywhere around the wharf. Ramirez hugged Felix hard. He felt the Subteniente shaking, whether from laughter or tears or relief, he didn't know. Around them the men gathered, shaking hands, hugging, slapping backs. Saguente and Oriente were already tugging on each other's sleeves, each trying to upend the other.

Ramirez was almost laughing himself. "You made it, Companeros! You made it, you made it!"

Calderone nodded. "Si, most of us are here. We lost Alcazar and Sanchez."

"And I saw Farque's vehicle get hit," said Aleman. He balled his fist, then made an explosion sound. "Direct round from the Russians...she went up like that!"

Ramirez indicated the truck behind them. "You have a warhead?"

Calderone said, "We do, Capitan. A warhead and a prisoner. Come." He walked back to the truck, an old moving van from the looks of it. Faded lettering clung to the side of the cab: Lobos y Caracel was the company name. Aleman swung open the doors and Ramirez scooted up a small stepladder.

Inside, he saw the warhead container, similar to the one they had grabbed at Bejucal. Beside the coffin, a Russian soldier, hands and feet tied with tape. He glared up at them in the beam of Ramirez' flashlight.

"Meet Andrian Nikolets," said Calderone. Aleman and Saguente pulled the officer to his feet and dragged him to the edge of the step. "Lieutenant of Infantry, the 134th Motorized Rifle Regiment. The Lieutenant killed Alcazar with a shot to the head. He's quite a marksman."

"I was going to nail him," said Aleman angrily, "but the Subteniente wanted a hostage."

"He's young, for an officer," said Ramirez. "Any knowledge of nuclear weapons?"

Nikolets glared at them. "None that I know of," said Calderone. "Maybe we don't need him after all."

Ramirez told them about their own prisoner, Kapitonov, stashed away under the tarpaulin in the Ford flatbed. He checked his watch in the glow of the flashlight beam. "We better get going. Untie him. He can help us with the warheads."

"The boat's over there, "Calderone pointed. Ramirez killed the flashlight and went to have a look.

A P-6 class torpedo boat given to the Revolutionary Navy as a batch transfer from the Soviet Morskoi Flot, Ramirez studied the sleek lines of the craft that would be their escape from the island. He had practically memorized the details given him that day at Cienfuegos naval base, the first day he had first set eyes on the boat. Length of 84 feet. Twenty feet abeam with a draft of 9 feet. She displaced 66 tons, fully loaded out. Two 21-inch torpedo tubes port and starboard, plus deck-mounted 25-mm guns fore and aft as well. For propulsion, she had four 1200-horsepower marine diesels, with four shafts and a maximum speed of 43 knots in light seas. And most importantly, he had learned after a tour of the boat courtesy of the Soviet skipper, she had plenty of deck cleats and stanchions for lashing extra gear topside.

Perfect for Operation Moncada, he had thought at the time. Now he was sure of it.

"Let's get to work," Ramirez said. "The sun will be up in an hour."

Calderone pointed out a five-ton dock crane. "Our reconnaissance of the harbor was accurate. The fishermen use the crane for big hauls. It slides along rails, up and down the wharf. I'll get our truck backed into position."

"What about those guys?" Ramirez asked, indicating the shrimpers three wharves away, fitting out for a day's work at sea.

Calderone snorted. "They were curious when we pulled up an hour ago. Sent a few brave fellows down to investigate. Then, Saguente and Oriente showed up with their rifles. I told the locals to stay away, this was a special operation of the Revolutionary Navy. I told them we were chasing pirates."

Ramirez laughed. "Very good, Felix, very good. In a way, maybe you're right."

The hardest part of the loading operation was getting the warhead containers out of the trucks. Calderone had managed to confiscate a moving van. Nikolets and Kapitonov were freed to help out, with Barracoa keeping a sharp eye on them. After half an hour of sweating and grunting in the humid early morning air, they had the warhead container on the pavement behind the van. Oriente moved the van out of the way. Arrantes, who had experience with construction equipment in Havana, got into the crane cab and massaged the ignition circuit until the engine sputtered into life. In a minute, he had the crane arm swinging over the warhead.

While the men were securing the first warhead, Ramirez hopped aboard the torpedo boat and scouted a spot to secure it to the deck. With its container, the warhead weighed slightly more than a thousand pounds. After studying the deck layout, he decided they would lower the first warhead to an open space just aft of the starboard torpedo tube. Gauging the dimensions, he calculated the container would just clear the aft 25-mm gun mount. By fastening a tarpaulin over the container and securing the eyelets of the tarpaulin to the deck cleats, the warhead should be pretty secure. It wouldn't do to have a nuclear weapon rolling around the deck if seas got rough. The second warhead was in a similar container. It could go on the other side of the deck, to port of the aft gun mount.

Carefully and cautiously, Arrantes swung the device up and over the gunwales. Inch by inch, he lowered the container down, while Gallegos, Paco, Calderone, and Aleman steadied it. Several times, the rocking of the boat caused deck structures to collide with the device. Each time, Kapitonov winced and cursed under his breath. Stupid Cubans! Didn't they know what they were handling? It's not potatoes, you imbeciles!

The deck hands got the warhead down and wedged into position. The torpedo boat listed hard to starboard under its weight, bumping the mooring gutters with a series of loud scrapes. Several cleats kept the container from lying down flat but it would have to do. They released the crane hoist ring and set to work covering the device with a heavy tarpaulin. While Calderone managed the deck crew, Ramirez worked with the shore party. One truck was moved out of the way and Paco's Ford flatbed moved into position. The tarp covering the device was thrown off and the crane hoist ring positioned. In minutes, the second warhead was hovering over the portside deck of the torpedo boat.

Propped up against Calderone's moving van, Emmanuel Barracoa was in a lot of pain. His shoulder was separated and he was sure he had some broken ribs. Ten feet away, the Russians stood uneasily, aware that Barracoa had an AK trained on them. Out of the corner of his eye, Nikolets watched as the barrel of Barracoa's rifle slowly lowered. He could see the reflection in the door of the van, dock floodlights shining bright cones of light on the ground. He peered ahead, scanning the scene for anything he could use.

Nikolets had grunted a few words to Kapitonov, in Russian, but the engineer seemed in shock. Civilian scum, he thought. All his escape and evasion training in the Carpathian Mountains had given him some ideas. But the engineer was hopeless and Nikolets soon enough gave up. I'll make this run myself, if I have to. He had no use for the Latins at all.

In the deep shadows of the wharf area, it was hard to tell but the best he could gauge it, the water's edge was about fifteen to twenty meters away. For the moment, at least, they had left his wrists untied. He didn't think that would last. Nikolets peered out the corners of his eyes again, at Barracoa. The Cuban's rifle was barrel down now, and his head was nodding.

Nikolets realized that the moment had come. He looked over at Kapitonov. The engineer was engrossed in the intricacies of the warhead loading. Nikolets dug the toe of his right boot in the gravel, seeking traction. He quietly sucked in some air and was off and running, sending rocks and loose sand everywhere.

For a long second, Barracoa didn't notice. But something in the way the reflection changed on the van door caught his eye. He looked up and saw the Russian soldier in a headlong dash for the water.

"Hey!" Madre de Dios! He fumbled with his rifle, then finally got the AK up and aimed. He squeezed off a few rounds and the ricochet off a light pole sent bullets everywhere.

Nikolets reached the edge of the water in three seconds and dove headfirst into the black waters. Barracoa came limping after him. "Hey! Hey, he's in the water...."

Paco saw what had happened and grabbed up a rifle of his own. He dashed along the timbers of the wharf edge, peppering the water with fire. Thwott! Thwott! Thwott! Thwott! Water ripped and foamed as he and Barracoa lay down a barrage at the escaping Russian.

In seconds, they were joined by Arrantes, who had jumped out of the crane cab. "There he is! By that boat!"

Nikolets had popped up for a quick breath before diving under a small two-master moored alongside the torpedo boat. The Cubans hustled to the other side and stitched the water with automatic fire. They heard thrashing, waited a few seconds, then saw the Russian again. He hadn't come out the other side of the boat. Instead, he was on the surface, pulling hard for open water.

Paco clambered aboard the two-master and scrambled to the aft railing, Arrantes right behind him. The boat rocked gently in early morning swells. Paco lay his rifle across the rail and fired again, neatly bracketing the churning froth of water twenty meters out. He fired until his clip was empty. Arrantes added more fire. The water churned for a few more seconds, then there was silence.

Both men listened for awhile, hearing only seagulls and the rattling of sail buckles against the ship's masts.

"Paco, we got him! I think we got him!"

Paco rammed another clip home and sprinted off the boat, leaping the last few meters to the dock. "I'm not so sure," he yelled. They hustled over to the torpedo boat gangway.

Ramirez was furious, his eyes blazing hard. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know, Capitan. The Russian tried to escape..."

Barracoa stumbled up. Ramirez lit into him. "You're supposed to be guarding them, soldier. Are you blind? What the hell's the matter with you?" He shoved Barracoa back and he fell heavily to the ground with a grunt. "Get up!" Paco and Arrantes helped him up. Ramirez grabbed Barracoa's collar and pulled him face to face.

"Emmanuel, if you ever do anything like that again, I'll kill you. With my hands." Barracoa winced, avoiding Ramirez' stare. His shoulders slumped, one hanging lower than the other.

"He's injured, Capitan. I gave him some aspirin on the ride here."

"I don't care," Ramirez spat. "He could get us all killed."

Calderone called down from the prow of the torpedo boat. "I see a body! Over there!" He pointed toward a red flashing light, a marker buoy bobbing in the harbor. "By that buoy! Something floating...it must be that Russian...."

Ramirez released Barracoa's collar. With a jerk of his head, he told Paco and Arrantes to get him and the other Russian on board. "Is the weapon secure yet?"

Calderone called back, "Si, both weapons are down, secured and covered. I hope we don't founder with all this extra weight."

Ramirez scanned the scene, while the rest of the crew scrambled up the gangway. Two borrowed trucks, the dock crane motor still running, and now they had fired shots. Already, he could see shadowy shapes coming down the dock road. He didn't know if they were fishermen or local militia or what.

I'm not staying here to find out, either. He called back to Calderone. "Felix, get the motor going! We're getting out of here now!" Aleman and Saguente came hustling up, each dragging a crate of gear. Ramirez helped out, grabbing one end of Aleman's load. They would need every bit of their equipment. He couldn't afford to leave anything behind. Soon enough, the militia and La Guardia Rural would be crawling all over the dock, asking questions, measuring, looking for evidence, taking reports.

With any luck, thought Ramirez, we'll be fifty kilometers out to sea by then.

He and Aleman wrestled the crate of mission gear up the gangway and slung it over the rails. Fore and aft, mooring lines were cast off. Calderone was already in the pilot house, gunning the diesels. Water churned as they bounced off the wharf landing and rotated out to port, then the wind freshened as the boat picked up speed. In seconds, they were rumbling toward the winking red lights of the first marker buoy and the inner navigation channel.

"Keep her slow!" Ramirez told Calderone as he came into the pilot house. "I want to find that Russian's body, if we can. It's evidence we can't afford to leave behind."

Calderone already had two men leaning out over the foredeck, looking for Nikolets. By hand signals, they told him where to steer. Oriente waved his hands in a circle, indicating Calderone should stop. He chopped the engines.

"There he is" Calderone said. He let the 66-ton boat drift forward.

Oriente and Gallegos dropped over the side to get Nikolets' body into position for a hoist. Aleman had already fashioned a crude sling from netting he had found belowdecks. He dropped the sling down and waited for the others to get the Russian into it.

"Up, up, up," came Oriente's voice from the water. Aleman and Arrantes pulled hard on the sling. Pushing and pulling, the men got the Russian's body up to the top of the gunwales. It thunked down onto the deck, wrapped in marine netting like a prize catch.

Ramirez came down to inspect their find. Nikolets had taken multiple wounds to the head and shoulders. Black blood still oozed from several wounds. "Cover him up with something, but leave him on deck. We'll run for an hour or so and dump him overboard at sea."

A siren wailed dockside behind them. In the hazy glare of the dock floods, Ramirez saw a pair of red flashing lights. Militia! Men were pouring out of the squad cars.

"Get going!" he yelled up to the pilothouse. Calderone acknowledged with a wave and the diesels grumbled to life. The torpedo boat wallowed heavily in the harbor swells. She was carrying over two thousand pounds of nuclear warheads and other gear and she was stern heavy. Ramirez could see that now but there was nothing he could do. He dashed up to the pilothouse.

"Top speed, Felix! We got company!"

Calderone was squinting out the grimy forward windows. "Hard to see, Capitan. I need to stay in the channel or we might run aground."

Soon enough, Calderone worked them up to a good ten knots, far above the posted harbor speed limit. The docks dwindled into the distance and a dark coral hump lay off to starboard, several hundred meters away. A yellow and white marker blinked a warning. As they approached the outer harbor channel, ocean swells slapped the bow and the boat shuddered.

"She handles like a pig," Calderone complained. "We need weight forward, to compensate for the weapons. Steering's mushy."

Ramirez ordered all hands to lay forward to the bow. With the extra weight, the boat settled in the water and seemed to stabilize. Ramirez went outside to catch the breeze. His tunic was soaked with sweat. Behind them, the dim outlines of the harbor breakwater passed to stern. Surgidero de Batabano had dwindled to a string of lights on a purple horizon.

Ahead of them lay the Golfo de Batabano and the sea. He scanned the horizon all around, listening for anything out of the ordinary: helicopters, aircraft, other ships. But there was nothing and Ramirez chuckled quietly, with relief. Madre de Dios, it's a miracle we made it this far. He scanned some more, squinting in the dark. The first tentacles of sunlight were blossoming orange and pink in the east. To the west, he could just make out the low black humps of the Cayeria las Cayamos, offshore ten or so kilometers.

Ahead, only water, fluorescing like Christmas lights as their wake stirred marine algae. A stiff twenty knot wind had picked up as well, a quartering wind off the starboard bow, bearing weather from the western Caribbean and Mexico. Ramirez checked his watch by the light of the pilothouse. It read 7:20.

He ducked into the pilothouse and drew out a map from his tunic. The plan for this phase of Moncada called for the boat to make south by southwest, on a general heading of 225 degrees until they reached a point 60 miles south of the Isle of Pines' Cayos San Felipe. Then, they were to turn further south, heading 210 degrees, and cruise at best speed for another 200 miles, about six hours Ramirez had calculated given sea conditions, and make for a point 100 miles due west of the Misteriosa Bank, shallow coral reefs just southwest of the Grand Caymans. The planned rendezvous point with the Venezuelan tanker was at latitude 18 degrees, 35 minutes West and longitude 85 degrees, 10 minutes North.

If all went well, they should make the rendezvous point by sundown.

"She's handling okay now," Calderone mentioned as Ramirez looked up from the map. "We're making about thirty knots, on course now. I'm having to hold a bit of left rudder to keep her on course."

"We seem to be on schedule, Felix. I guess it's time to make some calls on the radio."

Aft of the helmsman's station, where Felix Calderone had the wheel, was the radioman's console. Standard issue Soviet Tolmaz-55 short-wave radio gear filled out several cabinets above the table. Ramirez had gained instruction in using the set, along with other General Staff officers, when he'd visited the Morskoi Flot squadron at Cienfuegos last May. It was a simple, if crude, kind of communication set, with a maximum range of 500-600 miles, depending on weather.

He powered up the set and fiddled with the tuning, seeking 255 megacycles, the agreed upon frequency. He put on the radioman's headset and turned up the volume, wincing at squawks and squeaks of static blasted his ears. The gathering storm to their west was playing havoc with the range. When he was satisfied, he began transmitting the coded messages he had memorized in their training at Camp Columbia.

The first message was sent ship to shore, intended for the MINFAR's radio center in Havana. The operator would know from the code to forward the message on to the MINFAR himself, Raul Castro.

"Palmtree Six-Seven to Cacique Verde. Palmtree Six-Seven to Cacique Verde. El Pajaro flies north in season. Palmtree Six-Seven to Cacique Verde. El Pajaro flies north in season."

He continued broadcasting the coded message for several minutes. Once the message had been received in Havana, the MINFAR would know of their success. Raul Castro would know they had completed the first phase of Moncada and were at sea with nuclear weapons.

There was a second message Ramirez had to send, this one to the Sandino, indicating their time of departure, heading and speed. Broadcasting in the clear, he tuned to a frequency of 285 megacycles and began transmitting:

"Palmtree Six-Seven, away at 0700 Zulu, heading 225, speed 30 knots. This is Palmtree Six-Seven, away at 0700 Zulu, heading 225, speed 30 knots."

As with the first message, Ramirez transmitted for several more minutes, at 30-second intervals. Though the messages were being sent in the clear, it was unlikely the Americans would be able to get a fix on their position, if they were even listening on these frequencies. Ramirez shut down the set and wondered if the messages had been received.

Sandino was the key now. Perez had to execute the ship's takeover, render the uncooperative crew members ineffective, change course and set speed for the rendezvous point. Timing was vital. By design, the Sandino would be crossing the southern boundaries of the Yanquis' quarantine line, just before sunset. That kind of maneuver was sure to arouse attention. Ramirez knew that Perez had a planned ruse to explain why a Venezuelan tanker had suddenly veered from course and headed into the teeth of the U.S. Navy's Task Force 135. He didn't know what Perez would do; Moncada was compartmentalized and information was shared only when necessary. But it was critical that the rendezvous be made an hour or so after sunset. The P-6 torpedo boat was not especially seaworthy in the best of conditions. Loaded down and stern heavy with two thermonuclear weapons in rough seas, Ramirez didn't expect they would be able to survive long if the storm growing to their west blew in at full force.

"Felix, I'm going belowdecks for awhile. I want to have a word with our guest."

Calderone nodded as the Capitan ducked out of the pilothouse and dropped down two flights of stairs, almost losing his balance as the deck shifted under heavy pitching. The wind was blowing even harder now and seas were already cresting just below the gunwales. If it got any worse, they'd have seawater crashing down on the deck, and onto the weapons. Ramirez disappeared down a hatch to the forward berthing compartment.

He found Dmitri Kapitonov tied hand and foot in a tiny bunk, the executive officer's bunk it appeared to be. Barracoa and Aleman sat in bunks at either end of the passageway, guns ready. Both men looked queasy and ill. Ramirez told them to leave a gun behind and head topside for some air. They obeyed gratefully.

Dmitri Kapitonov was a stocky man, maybe mid-40s Ramirez figured, with a thick neck and heavy bags under his eyes. He had a huge wart over his left eyebrow and age spots on pallid cheeks. Cuban sunshine will give this man some color. Kapitonov had a bulbous nose and a shiny, nearly bald head. He regarded Ramirez with cold hatred.

"You said you were at engineer, at a nuclear plant, companero. What did you do at this plant? What do you know of these weapons?"

For a long moment, Kapitonov said nothing. He glared back at the Cuban, contempt seething in his face. Ramirez returned the glare. At last, Kapitonov relented. This Cuban's different.

"Component engineering. Chelyabinsk."

"What exactly does a component engineer do? Why are you in Cuba?"

Kapitonov groaned with fatigue. His bonds were uncomfortably tight. "I'm assigned to State Security, Third Chief Directorate, for this operation. I check out systems on each weapon as it arrives, run electrical checks on the arming and detonating circuits, inspect the tamper/initiator parts, see that the fizik package isn't damaged in shipment. I make sure the weapons will work when they're mated to the missile."

Ramirez sucked at his lips. "Our good fortune, then. I wanted a hostage. It seems I have something more."

"What do you want?"

Ramirez said, "For Cuba to be free, that's all. I want justice, for Cuba, for my brother Tomas, for all of us."

"You've stolen Soviet state property. In my country, men are shot for such a crime."

"Then, perhaps I should prepare to meet a sudden, violent death, companero. A strange thing to say to a soldier, isn't it?"

"You're no soldier."

Ramirez stiffened and got up. His fingers tightened around the barrel of the AK. "I want to know about these weapons. What yield are they? What range of blast effects?"

Kapitonov closed his eyes. "Why should I tell you anything, Cuban?"

"Because we're comrades in this operation, are we not?" Ramirez lowered the rifle and pressed it against the Russian's forehead. "Your own Nikita Khrushchev says so. Besides, I'll empty this magazine into your brain if you don't."

Kapitonov smiled. He twisted around to get some circulation going. "Un-tie me then."

Ramirez whipped out a combat knife and slit the cords around his wrist. He left the ankle cords tied. Kapitonov sighed deeply and sat up, banging his head on the stanchion over the bunk. He massaged his wrists.

"Do I have a megaton weapon onboard?" Ramirez asked.

Kapitonov shook his head. "From what I saw, you have a 200 kiloton device and a 700-kiloton device. K-5 and K-12 designs."

"What does that mean?"

"Sealed pit design, multi-stage implosion devices, timer/accelerometer armed, barometic-fuzed."

"This is a fission weapon?" Ramirez asked.

"Fission-fusion," Kapitonov corrected him. "Stage one is the plutonium sphere, in the center of the casing. Then there is a rod of uranium with a jacket of lithium deuteride and an outer ring of more uranium. Neutrons are released when stage one goes supercritical, after the high explosive lenses compress it enough. That's the fission part. The neutrons ignite the uranium rod and outer ring, and flood into the lithium-deuteride assembly. That's the fusion part."

"What about blast and radiation?"

Kapitonov shrugged. "Depends on conditions, weather, wind, and other parameters. The heat pulse is the first effect. Out to a distance of five kilometers, maybe more, the detonation creates enough heat to start the air burning in a fireball. Then you've got radiation: visible light, ultraviolet, infrared, moving out from ground zero. The pulse can ignite fires in most materials at this distance."

Ramirez was already thinking ahead. "What's next? A shock wave?"

"Blast effects. A few seconds later. At the Semipalatinsk test grounds, we measured overpressures of four pounds per square inch out to five and six kilometers with the K-5 design. On an average building, say a house, that creates about forty-five tons of additional force beyond normal atmosphere pressure. Most manmade structures in this zone are destroyed. Of course, later you have firestorms, the radioactive fallout of fission products mixed in with the thousands of tons of dirt and soil excavated and thrown twenty-thousand meters into the sky."

"Excellent," Ramirez said. "Excellent. You've designed a perfect weapon for us."

"It's not your weapon," Kapitonov reminded him. "It should be returned."

"You've come to Cuba to help defend us against the Norteamericanos, haven't you? That's what your Operation Anadyr is for. But we Cubans have some ideas of our own. We're not just slaves and whores. And we're going to stick our fingers in the Yanquis' eyes so they think twice before invading or threatening us."

"The Americans aren't fools. Their Navy already surrounds Cuba. You think you can destroy a few ships and they'll turn around and run home?"

Ramirez leveled the AK dead on at Kapitonov's eyes. He cocked the hammer with his thumb. "It isn't ships we're after, ruso. Not ships at all. We have much bigger targets in mind."

10-28-62, Sunday

Aboard the U.S.S. Oxford (AGI-18)

7:45 a.m.

Lieutenant Troy Wade rubbed his eyes and tried for the ninth or tenth time to get a fix on the burst transmission the AN-UYK-17B direction-finding set had latched on to. Slippery little squirrel, aren't you? he muttered under his breath. He turned the selector knob a tweak further, slaving the big TreeTop antenna mast further west, to suck in more signal out of the ether. He'd been wrestling with this devil for the past twenty minutes, trying to get a fix on the pair of faint bursts the equipment had snatched out of the air, bursts from well south of the Oxford's position, on the other side of the island, most likely.

It was turning into one truly strange day.

The Oxford was an elint ship, electronic and signals intelligence, cruising under deep cover, 75 miles north of the Cuban coastal town of Puerta Esperanza. Manifested as a U.S. Navy oceanographic research vessel, her real mission was intelligence collection. Chopped to CINCLANT by order of the CJCS, the Oxford had been given the mission of sniffing, ferreting out the electronic order of battle of Soviet and Cuban troops stationed in the fields and towns west of Havana, in Pinar del Rio Province.

The Oxford had once been a LST (Landing Ship, Tank) and today, in the teeth of fifty knot winds and swells cresting and foaming over the ship's bow, she handled like a stuffed pig rejected by the Gator Navy. Another tropical storm was gaining intensity in the western Gulf, pelting this part of the Gulf with sheets of rain and heavy seas. Overhead, lightning discharges played havoc with the ship's gear, washing out much of the morning's work in grabbing radar emissions from the coastal ZSU-25 anti-aircraft batteries.

Frustrated, Wade and his sigint buddies down in the "bird's nest" had requested the skipper to work in a little closer. Maybe they could catch a few stray leaks from the SA-2 sites at San Cristobal and Artemisa. It was worth a try. About half an hour after they had taken up their new station, Wade had seen the first scratchy "peaks" on the AN-UYK's detection plot.

That was when the fun had begun.

To Signals Officer Wade, the two bursts the AN-UYK had seen were damnably curious. Both transmissions had come from a mobile source, he was sure of that. Triangulating and plotting vectors with the DF, he'd determined the most likely source was a small ship cruising along Cuba's south coast.

The first transmission went inland, bearing 040 degrees from the emanation point. The second transmission was more puzzling. Wade had checked and rechecked his figures. The AN-UYK-17B was fairly reliable but atmospheric discharges could screw up a good plot in no time. The best plot he could make from the source was bearing 165 degrees, just east of due south, the transmission beaming somewhere into the Caribbean Sea.

He was sure it was military in origin, as both were coded bursts. He'd only caught a brief snatch of each, but the verbals were gibberish, and in Spanish. Wade drew in his best guess as to the bearings on a plastic chart overlay. The lines intersected off Cuba's southern shores, in or around the Golfo de Batabano.

More importantly, a brief scan through the ship's "Blue Book", a catalog of signal sources and characteristics, convinced him that the signal properties matched standard issue Soviet naval radio communications gear, very likely a low-power Tolmaz or similar unit. He knew from the Book that this kind of gear was usually normal shipboard equipment for Komar or equivalent class patrol or torpedo boats. And Wade knew from the last ONI circular that the Russians had provided a number of coastal defense assets in recent months.

All in all, it seemed to Lieutenant Troy Wade that they were dealing with some kind of Cuban Navy message traffic. The question was why? What was the mission?

Wade knew these bursts were the first evidence of Cuban Navy activity in many days. From the time of the President's quarantine speech last Monday, all Cuban Navy maneuvers and most of the message traffic had essentially ceased. The Cubans didn't want to challenge the U.S. Navy on the high seas. Even the sort of routine harassment the Oxford had encountered on earlier elint missions—Cuban MiGs buzzing low, a few perfunctory rounds from coastal artillery—had stopped.

Now, for no detectable reason, a small Cuban Navy boat was heading at high speed into the Gulf of Mexico, sending coded burst transmissions in several directions. It didn't add up.

Wade got on the ship's 1MC and called his section chief. Lieutenant Commander Mike Preston answered.

"Commander, I've been plotting two coded burst transmissions from what looks like a Cuban Navy boat off the south coast. First we've seen in a week."

Preston's voice crackled through the headset. "Be right there."

Five minutes later, Wade had shown the plots and the tapes several times to Preston. The LC took off thick glasses and wiped the lenses with a handkerchief. "What's your read, Lieutenant?"

Wade shrugged. "I don't know what to make of it, sir. If it's a patrol boat, or a torpedo boat, he could be heading for the quarantine line. Doesn't look like an attack run to me, though. And you wouldn't broadcast your presence anyway."

"Agreed. Looks like the first transmission was to shore, probably headquarters or something like that. But who the hell's he talking to down south? Have you checked recent manifests for traffic in the Gulf and Caribbean?"

"Not yet, sir." Wade fetched a loose-leaf ring binder. It was filled with telex pages of shipping departures, routes, presumed cargoes, ship names and proposed courses. The two of them scanned page after page, Wade marking "possibles" with a highlighter pen. The tip sheets were updated every 24 hours by maritime traffic teams at Fleet. They came across several possibles: two freighters bound for Kingston, Jamaica, an oil tanker headed for Maracaibo, another tanker outbound from Caracas, several freighters on the Santo Domingo run. A few minutes study produced no obvious candidates for a Cuban Navy boat to be in contact with.

"I got a sitrep from Fleet about an hour ago," Preston said. "There's something in the air with the missiles. It was just an advisory, but it came from the embassy in Moscow. The Navy attache said Radio Moscow Domestic was broadcasting a message from Khrushchev. He said the Russians were offering to pull the missiles."

Wade was surprised. "Is that so? About damn time. Any confirmations?"

"None so far. I don't have anything from CINCLANT either. Nobody's talking at the moment."

"Except this Cuban boat. What the hell's he up to? Why does the Cuban Navy dispatch a torpedo boat when the Russians announce they're removing the missiles?"

"Beats me," Preston said. "I'll tell the skipper. He'll probably want to work us a little further westward so we can get a good track on this joker, if he transmits again. What was his last heading?"

Wade checked. "Best guess is south by southwest, around 225 degrees. I plotted the interval between the two transmissions and factored in bearings from the DF. Unless he squawks again, that's all I can do."

"Good work, Lieutenant. Get your report together. We'd better call this one in to ONI."

10-28-62, Sunday

Aboard the V.S. Sandino

8:15 a.m.

First Mate Jaime Oliveira kept a close watch on the ship's radioman. Rodolfo de Cunho wasn't particularly big and he fought like a cantina girl, but he was cunning and quick and Oliveira didn't want any more funny business from the Brazilian scum. When Perez and Guayacano had pitched the Captain's body overboard an hour ago, de Cunho went after the First Officer with a galley knife. It had taken several of them to pin the radioman to the deck.

After another hour of "convincing" in the back of the auxiliary stores room, de Cunho was a bit more pliable. Now he was back at his station, under Oliveira's watchful eye, plotting the bearing and speed of the snap transmission from the Cuban smugglers. Perez had told him they had a rendezvous to make, a mid-ocean meeting with a band of Cuban smugglers. They were going to take some contraband aboard, right under the noses of the Norteamericanos, and take it on to the States. Perez had promised a five percent cut on proceeds to everybody.

While de Cunho plotted the bearing of the transmission, Perez came into the radio room with the ship's navigator Lieutenant Hayama. Hayama pulled out a chart from the cabinet and laid it on the chart table. He set work calculating a new course and speed for the Sandino, based on de Cunho's work. Perez told him to check the radioman's work closely.

Oliveira could see that Perez was nervous. The First Officer always chain-smoked Lucky Strikes with both hands when he was on edge. He paced back and forth across the radio room deck.

"Commander, what kind of contraband we pickin' up?"

Perez sucked at his cigarette. His head was shrouded in smoke. "I was told to list it as 'machine parts for repair', Jaime. My guess is cigars, rum, antique stuff. They can't sell it with the American embargo."

"Stuff the Yanquis pay big dinero for, I hope."

"Don't worry. You'll get your share." Perez finally stopped pacing, settling in behind Hayama as he plotted a new course line on the chart.

"Lieutenant, we need to create some kind of 'navigation error', something the Americans will believe. In case we get boarded. It's got to look realistic."

Hayama turned from his table. "Senior Perez, I always keep accurate records. I've never had to—"

"Shut up!" Perez ordered. "Look, we don't have time to argue. Do what I tell you. Make up some charts, different courses, something. I don't care what. I need a plausible reason for being off the course we filed in Caracas."

Hayama looked like he was about to cry. He screwed up his distaste for the whole affair and bent back to work.

Perez started pacing again. "We have to avoid being boarded at all costs. De la Vega was clear about that. Either inbound to the rendezvous or outbound." The First Officer didn't mention the $25,000 cash the Cuban attache had slipped in his jacket to ensure he understood the situation. "I had to take additional measures. To make sure."

The door to the radio room opened. It was Guayacano, the machinist mate. He was a big, muscular, sweating man, with an oily black beard. He came in and gave Perez a small vial of pills.

"That's all I got left, Senior Perez. We made the rest of the crew swallow two, just like you said." Guayacano rubbed his hands with satisfaction. "They're all on the deck, vomiting like drunk marinos. Looks like a rough night at the cantina, back there in the wardroom. I locked the door."

Perez took the pills and pocketed the vial. He had discussed some possibilities with the Cuban attache. How to create a situation where the Americans would keep their distance, where they wouldn't even think of attempting a boarding? It was de la Vega who had suggested the crew contract a "contagious disease." The more they discussed it, the more the ruse looked feasible. It was even possible, with some judicious forethought, that the Americans would allow the Sandino past the quarantine, all the way to Cuba, if the situation were 'desperate' enough. Already, the Navy had let numerous ships past the blockade.

At their final meeting, the Cuban had produced something he called Perinedin B. Small yellow pills in a couple of vials. "Severe emetic stimulant," de la Vega explained. "It induces vomiting and hyper-peristalsis. Give them to the uncooperative members of your crew. They'll be quite sick, for a day or so."

And so he had. Now most of the rest of the Sandino's crew had been incapacitated. Perez hoped the ship suffered no mechanical or other anomalies. A bad fire or flooding casualty would find them seriously undermanned. They had left just enough crew to run the ship, always under the watchful eyes of Perez's own men. The biggest question was the weather. Maritime advisories showed they were heading toward rough seas, skirting the edge of yet another tropical storm in the Gulf. Sandino was big enough to ride out most storms but she sometimes took on water in the engine spaces when seas were rough. Damned Petrocal-Alliant management. He'd told them about the corroded hull plating a hundred times. But they were too cheap to do anything about it.

There was one final element to complete to make their 'story' convincing. Perez scribbled out a brief note for the radioman to send out. He passed it to Oliveira.

"At 0900 hours, send this back to the PAL dispatcher in Caracas. Broadcast it on the half hour, until 1100 hours. I want the Americans to hear it."

Oliveira read over the note. Many members of crew ill. Violent, contagious disease. Request heading and safe passage nearest available port.

Perez sucked hard on the Lucky Strike, realized it was down to a butt and extracted another one. He lit the new cigarette from the old one.

"Carlos," he said to Guayacano, "follow me. We'll check free space in the cargo holds. If the Cubans have a lot of stuff, we'll need every available compartment. And I don't want American Customs ruining our trip."

10-28-62, Sunday

Over the Gulf of Mexico

11:15 a.m.

Foxtrot Dancer banked hard right and swung around to a new heading of 090 degrees, plowing through heavy clouds boiling up from the south. The U.S. Navy P-3A Orion ASW patrol aircraft was cruising at 20,000 feet, two hundred miles out of NAS Corpus Christi, running a 'sawtooth' search pattern, as she probed the ocean with her Magnetic Anomaly Detector boom for signature disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field. If any Soviet Kilo or Foxtrot subs ventured into the Gulf of Mexico today, the pilot and crew of the Dancer, hard out of VP-45's 'Pugnacious Pelicans', would pounce from the sky like a hungry bird of prey. The Russkies wouldn't stand a chance.

Radar/elint tech Joe Fernandez had first caught a whiff of the broadcast on their last upwind leg and tried tuning the DF conformal antenna to get a stronger signal. He lost it after a few minutes and radioed up to the pilot, Lieutenant Commander Metrone, that he'd started a track on a strange message coming through on 295 megacycles. Metrone cut off the upwind leg and turned them east, to give the antenna a better aspect on the possible that Fernandez was tracking. The tech listened on the main band, tried tuning the thing a little, but no dice. All he got was static, plus chirps and whistles from the storm front.

"Honest to God, Commander, 295 is a legitimate maritime channel. I heard Spanish, I'm sure of it. But now I can't get it back."

Metrone's wiseguy voice crackled through his headset. "I'm not denying it, Joe. It's just damned improbable. But I'll keep us on this heading for a few minutes. Call me up if you get another signal."

Fernandez acknowledged and set to work. Thirteen minutes later, his quick work paid off.

"Bingo, Commander. I just picked up another burst. And this time, I got him. Bearing 145 degrees. And it was definitely Spanish. What little I got seemed to say something about a sick crew."

Metrone sucked at his lips. He had been looking forward to a quiet, uneventful last two hours, anticipating the cold Pabst waiting on him at the O Club at Corpus Christi. But it was not to be.

"Any idea on the range, Joe?"

Fernandez said, "Got to be long distance. The signal's at the outer limits of detection. I'd say we got a transmitter in the southern Gulf or western Caribbean. It's a standard maritime channel, probably commercial traffic. They may need some help."

"Check with Enterprise Air Ops. They may have someone in the air a lot closer. Maybe they picked it up too. If it's that far away, we're hours from helping them."

Fernandez checked with the Task Force 135 air ops people, aboard Enterprise and Independence. A quick discussion confirmed that none of their ASW or Airborne Early Warning assets in the air had picked up the transmission.

"Commander, this is Fernandez. Air ops has nothing on this one. Looks like we're the only ones who have any kind of bearing. The Task Force guys are all listening in on military traffic around Cuba. Independence Dispatch says they may have something on tape, but it'll take awhile to run it."

Metrone sighed. "Figures. I guess that means we're elected." Now he'd have to kill a couple more Pabsts at the O Club, just to make up for the delay. "Get me your best bearing and range. And see if you can raise 'em. Maybe we got a distress situation. I'll advise the Coast Guard weenies at Corpus."

"Aye, aye, skipper."

Metrone checked the fuel gauges on the panel: they had eight thousand pounds, probably enough for a quick dash down south of Cuba before they'd have to turn around and head home. He chopped power on the big Allisons to forty-five per cent, and trimmed the plane for best distance. While he was waiting on Fernandez to give him a vector, he raised Dispatch at NAS Corpus Christi and advised them Foxtrot Dancer was trying to contact and locate a probable ship in distress. When Fernandez called up with the bearing, Metrone passed it along to Dispatch, adding, "I'll get word to the Task Force Commander myself. They'll have to cover our sector while we look for this guy."

Lieutenant Commander Metrone cinched up his lap harness and sat up straighter in the seat. Eyeing the purplish-black clouds off to starboard, he turned Foxtrot Dancer right to match Fernandez's best bearing to the contact. They'd be in that stuff in less than half an hour. The weather radar didn't look too promising either.

Metrone figured his log book could use a little polishing up on severe weather flying.

10-28-62, Sunday

Over the Gulf of Mexico

11:45 a.m.

Several hundred miles south of Foxtrot Dancer, an S-2D Tracker from the U.S.S. Enterprise was prosecuting a different kind of contact. Captain George Allgood prided himself on running a tight ship. Twenty-eight November was a good plane and Allgood loved showing off the Squadron "Eagle Eye" trophy that he and his crew had just snatched away in VS-31's annual Operation Quick Gulf Exercise last month. The pride of the "Top Cats" had been flying south by southwest, a few hundred miles off Cuba's

westernmost Cabo de San Antonio, at an altitude of 21,000 feet, when Aviation AW Operator Mickey Leland had called him up with a surface contact bingo, bearing 105 degrees.

Allgood turned the big Grumman bird around and set up for a run down the bearing line Leland had given him. The tropical front they were fighting made Twenty-eight November shudder a bit and Allgood cut back on the power. The twin 1525-horsepower Wright radial engines grumbled and died off to a deep whine, while Allgood cranked in some left rudder to keep the storm from driving them off course.

Ten minutes later, they had the contact that Leland has designated Oscar One-Five on the APS-38 surface search radar.

Leland's voice was firm. "Got him, skipper. Single contact, bearing 105 degrees, running on the surface. It's gotta be Oscar One-Five. Radar indicates surface craft, maybe a patrol boat of some kind."

Allgood acknowledged. "I got him on the Ground Track Plotter. What the hell's he doing out in weather like this?"

Twenty-eight November's co-pilot, Lieutenant Bill Fryer, shook his head, studying the skies. "Beats me, skipper. You gonna drop down for a look?"

"I guess we'll have to. Fleet line's only a few hundred miles away. Let's see if we can get out of this murk and use our eyeballs."

Allgood pushed the wheel forward and brought the S-2D around for a visual run on Oscar One-Five. They bottomed out of the rain clouds at two-thousand feet, running almost due west, paralleling the south coast of Cuba, a hundred miles to the north. Allgood was keenly aware not to drift any closer in; the Cuban coastal AA batteries had notoriously itchy trigger fingers lately. He didn't relish the prospect of ditching the Grumman in sea conditions like this.

He dropped them down a few hundred feet more and checked heading: still on course at 265 degrees. The black maw of the tropical storm gaped wide on the horizon ahead of them. We got one chance to get this right, Allgood told himself, then I'm getting the hell out of Dodge.

"Weps, ready the Mk 101 and a torpedo. Safeties on."

The ordnanceman replied, "Aye, aye, skipper. Ready the Mk 101 and the Mk 30. Safeties are armed."

Through a stiff driving rain, Twenty-eight November plowed ahead. Allgood and Fryer squinted out the forward and side windscreens, scanning the foaming whitecaps with their binoculars.

"There he is, skipper," Fryer called out. "Two o'clock."

Allgood banked right and dropped a few hundred feet lower. They both saw the small craft at the same time, riding up the crest of a wave, before crashing back into the sea. She was nearly swamped by the seven foot waves.

"Looks like a torpedo boat, Bill. Or a patrol boat. Maybe P-6 class. Check out the markings."

Twenty-eight November roared in low and fast and immediately wheeled about for another run. Allgood held onto the wheel as the wind skidded them sideways.

"Cuban Navy," said Fryer, his eyes glued to binoculars. "What the hell's he up to? We're in a Category One storm."

"How far to the Enterprise?" Allgood asked Leland. "Give me bearing too."

"Two hundred twenty nautical miles," answered the AW operator. "Enterprise at 165 degrees."

"Is this guy on an attack run? Bill, check for torpedoes when we blow by him this time."

The Grumman S-2D lined up on the torpedo boat and thundered overhead a second time. Allgood made a right bank for one more pass.

"Can't say for sure, skipper," Fryer told him. "But it doesn't look like it." A quick check confirmed that the torpedo boat was not on an intercept heading for the Enterprise. "He'll make it to the quarantine line in about four hours at his current speed and heading."

"If he doesn't founder first," Allgood said. He checked the mapboard strapped to his right knee. "I make our position about here." He pointed to a spot southwest of the Cuban coast. "Who's on quarantine duty near here?"

Fryer checked a list. "Looks like the MacInnes. Should I try and raise her?"

Allgood replied, "Affirmative. Tell 'em we got a torpedo boat heading at high speed in their general direction. No evidence of weapons yet but we're following up. Send it."

Fryer was on the radio, calling the details in to the nearby destroyer. When he was done, Allgood decided to he'd better notify Air Ops as well. Enterprise would have to cycle somebody else on station pretty soon. Twenty-eight November was running out of gas.

"Bill, we're down to a few thousand pounds. I'm going to stay on this cat's tail awhile longer, then we gotta tallyho back to the ship. Advise Air Ops we need some help out here."

"Aye, aye, skipper. By the way, MacInnes says she's maneuvering to intercept. I gave 'em the heading and range. But it'll be iffy in this weather." A pocket of rough air jolted them forward against their straps.

"No shit, Bill. This is like playing bumper cars at the state fair." He trained his binoculars on the torpedo boat again. "Whoever this cat is, he's either a nutcase or got a real hot date. Look at that wake...at that speed, he may just drive himself underwater."

10-28-62, Sunday

Over Northwest Cuba

1:15 p.m.

Major Richard Heyser felt his throat tighten as the Cuban coastline passed 70,000 feet below the U-2 aircraft. He hadn't really expected a milk run from McCoy after Rudy's bird had been shot down yesterday. But trigger-happy Cuban SAM crews weren't the only worry drying up his throat this Sunday afternoon. SAC's Global Weather Central had just issued an alert advisory on what some people were already calling Tropical Storm Ella and the facts didn't look good.

Heyser scanned the southwestern horizon and decided the weather boys at Offut didn't know the half of it.

Heyser's U-2, call sign Orange Grove One, had a vital mission and Heyser knew it. There were rumors all over the flight line at McCoy that Khrushchev had agreed to pull the missiles out of Cuba. Nothing official but Colonel Kingsley, the SAC liaison at McCoy, had done the briefing himself. Orange Grove One's flight plan was a route Heyser had taken several times before and Kingsley had let slip that the cameras were hunting for evidence on the status of missile site construction work. As in dismantling, Kingsley mentioned to him quietly as he had gathered up his log book and flight gear in the briefing room. Heyser's eyebrows had shot up at that.

Heyser soon heard the satisfying clunk of the camera system setting up for its first pan of the fields around San Cristobal. Voltage was good, holding steady at 24 volts DC. He checked his target list, annotated with approach and exit headings, altitudes and airspeeds: San Cristobal, Artemisa, Guanajay. Old favorites, Heyser thought. But Bejucal was new. What the hell was going on at Bejucal? He hadn't done a run over that one before.

Heyser took a peek out the window. Below, the green haze of the coastline flashed by, Pinar del Rio Province. According to the map, somewhere down there was the town of Bahia Honda and miles of sugar cane fields, now drenched in tropical rains. Ahead was San Cristobal and the first target. Heyser noted the time of coastline crossing in his logbook, along with the heading—165 degrees—and altitude and airspeed. So far so good. He kept his eyes peeled at the horizon, squinting in the afternoon sunlight for the telltale streak of an SA-2 popping out of the clouds. But there was nothing.

Siesta time, he told himself, hoping to make it so. Below his feet, the belly-mounted "B" camera clunked its way across the aircraft's flight path, its 36-inch focal length lens laying down two strips of pictures that would total 5000 feet long and 9 inches across when he finally exited the target zone and headed north for friendlier skies.

Hope the guys at NAVPIC like what they see, Heyser muttered to himself.

10-28-62, Sunday

Point One, Havana, Cuba

7:30 p.m.

The national military headquarters of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias was a two-story villa in the Havana's Nueva Vedado quarter, situated at 47th Street among the manicured lawns and hibiscus hedges of what once had been known as a forest reserve but had long since fallen victim to the bulldozers of Batista and his Mafia buddies Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.

The white stone villa, replete with blue awnings and shutters had once been owned by a paper importer but the Revolution had swept away all vestiges of Point One's capitalist past. Only a kilometer south of the Plaza de la Revolucion and the unyielding gaze of the Jose Marti Memorial, the villa was well hidden from curious streetwalkers by a tall vine-covered, wrought-iron fence and the stern gaze of the Guardia de la Presidente, whose troopers patrolled the grounds and the sidewalks night and day.

Inside, the second floor of the villa had been renovated into a working command post. Cabling and electrical conduit had been strung from room to room, along the main hallway, taped down. The master bedroom still retained pieces of sculpture and Queen Anne furniture well prized by the previous owner but the oil paintings had long since been removed and the walls were covered with topographic maps of the entire island, with push pins and colored scraps of paper depicting troop deployments.

A small sitting room off the master bedroom had been set aside for the Presidente himself, and outfitted by construction troops with a desk and several chairs. Two black telephones sat on the desk. One connected the Commandante en Jefe with his brother, the Minister of the Interior (MINFAR), who also had a small office at the other end of the hall. The second telephone was a direct line to an aircraft hangar at the Campo Libertad airfield outside Havana. Inside this hangar, fully fueled and kept ready for departure on one hour's notice, sat a Soviet Tu-104 turbojet aircraft that had been a gift of the Soviet people. The Presidente rarely used this aircraft and seldom thought about it except it times of the gravest peril. At times like that, times like today he reminded himself, Fidel Castro Ruz knew that the gift of the fraternal Soviet people might be all that separated him from a firing squad.

Fidel Castro had been finishing a small chicken dinner at his desk, scribbling notes for a scathing letter he was about to send to that horse's ass Khrushchev when his brother Raul popped his head into the office.

"Your visitor, Fidel. The Ambassador's here."

Castro wiped his mouth and beard and folded up the paper plate with its chicken scraps. He rose to greet Alexandr Alekseev, still wiping the grease from his hands on his fatigues.

"Alexandr, companero, come in, come in. Sit." Castro indicated a chair. "Sit and have a bite with me. We've got the kitchen going tonight. Garcia's here, you know. That means we eat like pigs. I'm sure there's more pollo. I'll ring the kitchen...."

Alexandr Alekseev smiled faintly. "Please, Senior Presidente, please, I'm full enough. I couldn't eat a thing. Really."

Castro put the phone back on the hook, disappointed. He studied his old friend's face. Alekseev looked like a schoolteacher: black glasses, wavy hair, slightly crooked smile. He had come to Cuba in 1959, rezident at the KGB station. He spoke Spanish fluently and Castro adored him, often hugging Alekseev like a son. Now, Khrushchev had made him full Ambassador, only a few months before.

He was upset, Castro sensed, upset about something. "What is it, comrade? Is it the Americans? Their planes buzzing low, keeping you up at night? I've given orders for our anti-aircraft batteries to do something about that."

Alekseev shook his head and looked at the floor. Castro was restless and got up, pacing about the small office, bumping into the desk and the wastebasket, rattling the blinds. "I've got a message for you, then. See that paper on my desk? It's a letter to comrade Nikita. I was writing a letter, eating Garcia's pollo especial, and I was getting indigestion, when you came in. Not from the chicken. From what I had to say."

"What do you mean, Presidente?" Alekseev knew well how quickly Castro's moods could change.

Castro slammed a fist on the desk. "It's a spineless act, the act of a coward, that's what I mean. Look what he's done. He's given in to the Norteamericanos, just given in! Offering to take the missiles out, after all the work we've done, all the hard work, the planning." He reached into his fatigues jacket and extracted a black Garcia y Vega, which he clamped between his teeth. "Tell me, Alexandr, what is the man thinking? That we Cubans are just puppy dogs? That we have no rights at all?"

"Comrade Presidente—"

Castro wasn't listening. He orbited the desk, jabbing at the air, first with a fist, then the cigar. "I'll tell you the truth, Alexandr. Here's the truth: Cuba will never allow the United Nations or any foreign inspectors on our soil. Never! Nikita Khrushchev can bring missiles and he can take them away. But he can never force us to submit to rape, by the Yanquis or anyone. That's what I was writing when you came in, comrade. That's what's giving me this indigestion."

"I'm sorry you're not feeling well, Presidente. I came at the request of my government. The Presidium has an urgent request I'm instructed to pass along."

"Well, what is it?"

Alekseev pulled out an envelope and opened it. He read stiffly from the paper inside. "The Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has instructed me to respectfully request that the Government of Cuba assist us in returning to Soviet control two nuclear warheads stolen from us at the Bejucal compound, yesterday morning your time." Alekseev quietly folded the letter and re-inserted it in the envelope. He left the envelope on the desk.

Castro coughed and bit off the end of the cigar. "Is this some kind of joke, Alexandr? Is this a threat?"

"No, Presidente, it's not a joke or a threat. The letter is quite serious, and the situation's getting more dangerous by the hour."

"I suppose now we can expect our fraternal Soviet allies to join with the Americans and invade little Cuba?"

"Not at all, Presidente. I'm merely—"

Castro waved off any further discussion. He sipped some water at his desk and hitched his trousers over a full belly. Mindlessly, he snapped and unsnapped his holster flap. "Absurd. It is a joke. I have no knowledge of any such thing. Nuclear weapons, did you say? Nuclear weapons stolen?"

"That's correct. From Bejucal. Two RS-12 devices were taken in a commando-style raid at 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning. There was an assault on the base, a planned assault, it seemed. Uniformed regulars of the FAR. Plus tanks and assault vehicles. Presidente, this was not a small operation. And there were many casualties, on both sides. Check with your staff"

Castro snorted. "I will. But I doubt the whole story. And why should I trust you, after what you've done today? You give us the weapons to hold off the Yanquis, then strip us naked at gunpoint. No," Castro opened the blinds, peering outside at the lights of the Havana Libre Hotel, a half kilometer away, "it's not likely Cubans would be involved in such an incident, not against our fraternal allies. I'm insulted, Alexandr. I'm insulted your Government would even think up such a preposterous accusation. They must be mad, or drunk, in the Kremlin. More likely, you've simply misplaced a few weapons in your haste to get them out of Cuba. When you really frighten a dog, he leaves his favorite bone behind...did you know that?"

"I'm sorry, Presidente, but I was ins—"

"Never mind. Cuba will not take the blame for your own ineptitude." Castro sat down heavily and leveled an unblinking gaze at Alekseev. "And we are capable of defending ourselves. You know this, don't you? Have we not known each other for years? When my barbudos marched into this city in 1959, were you not at my side? Alexandr, what has become of you...I don't recognize you."

Alekseev removed his glasses and wiped them on his jacket. This was not going at all like he wanted. "Of course, Presidente. You're right. The very day Batista fled, I came to you and made an offer"

Castro leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head, shutting his eyes. "Ah, I remember...it was New Year's Day and the streets were packed, there were millions...."

As the hapless Ambassador listened, Castro fell into a reverie, reminiscing about his childhood days in the Sierra Maestra, bombing Batista's bases. He knew the Lider well; there was no point in interrupting now. But the Presidium's message was clear and time was running out. Alekseev checked his watch and tried to make occasional eye contact with the Presidente.

Outside the small office, MINFAR Raul Castro had heard his brother's tirade. He left the President's quarters and went back to his own. Fidel will be at it for hours. He's tired, exhausted, he needs rest. He knew perfectly well that in two or three hours, sleep would finally overcome the Commandante and Alekseev would be able to escape.

Then, Raul Castro reckoned, the Ambassador and I will have a very serious conversation.

The MINFAR checked his own watch. There was a phone call he had to make. The coded signal from Ramirez that morning indicated that the first phase of Operation Moncada was done. Now, he had to put in motion the initial steps for the next phase. He pressed a small button on his phone pad and moments later, a staff aide appeared in the doorway. Capitan Hector Munoz was both prompt and professional and Raul Castro appreciated that.

"Yes, Minister?"

"Hector, your nephew in Miami, Miguel. He would be at home now? At this hour?"

Munoz said, "Si, Minister. Miguel leaves his shop at six every day, even today. He would probably be eating dinner, or tending to his garden in the back yard. He loves his roses."

Raul Castro thought about that. "Hector, there's a secure phone in the centro. It's white. I'll introduce you to the duty officer. I want you to call your nephew."

Hector was a bit surprised. "Call Miguel? From here?"

Raul Castro got up and escorted him down the hall. "It's okay, Hector. We have several direct lines into Miami. For operations. One of them goes to Miguel Munoz's home."

The staff capitan was amazed. "I had no idea...."

"I want you to give Miguel a message. It's a message he's waiting for."

"Certainly, Minister. What will I say?"

They reached the centro and Raul Castro personally unlocked the door to the radio room. "Tell him some business friends will be contacting him in a day or so. They're going to be in Miami to start up a new business venture. Miguel has offered to finance the venture and he wanted a briefing. The friends who are coming have much to offer."

Hector Munoz was trying to memorize the MINFAR's instructions. Castro sat him down at a console lined with radios and phones. "I haven't talked with Miguel in...years." He hesitated, knowing his nephew had fled Cuba in the mid-50s, one step ahead of Batista's police. He wasn't sure how Miguel felt about the Revolution.

"I know," the MINFAR said. "We've worked with Miguel for years. He's an operative for G-2. He helps us deal with the traitors infesting south Florida, like the ones who attacked the Bahia Cochinos last year."

"A business venture," Hector repeated.

"Exactly," Raul Castro told him. "Tell Miguel our friends just need a place to store some of their goods for awhile. They have important business in the States."
CHAPTER 5

10-29-62, Monday

Washington, D.C.

10:45 a.m.

McGeorge Bundy poured some more coffee while Art Lundahl re-arranged the briefing boards they would soon be showing to the President. Bundy, Lundahl and NPIC photo-analyst Wayne Marshall were in Bundy's office in the basement of the White House's West Wing, scanning the latest batch of aerial photos taken only yesterday by U-2. Lundahl had brought along an analyst's magnifying lens to help with the pictures. Bundy was squinting at some scratchy images of an open field near San Cristobal.

"Damned if I can see anything different, Art," Bundy said. "These are the launchers, right?" He indicated a row of trailers parked in revetments near the edge of some woods.

"Correct," said Art Lundahl. Lundahl was the director of the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC). "And you're right about the images. There is very little that's different."

John McCone, the Director of Central Intelligence, chewed on the ends of his wire-frame glasses. "Mac, we've been over these pictures with everything we got. I know it's only been a day since Khrushchev's announcement, but if anything, there's evidence of increased construction."

"That's right," Lundahl agreed. "Look here—"he extended his metal pointer—"see the open pit beside those launchers? See these blocks and this truck here? They're getting ready to mix and pour cement in large quantities. That means another foundation, a big one. Probably another bunker, for warheads or missile checkout. This wasn't seen on our last pass by San Cristobal."

Mac Bundy nodded, though he really couldn't see what Lundahl was talking about. "You guys are the experts. What about the rest of the pictures?"

"Same things," said Lundahl. His men had been up all night at the NPIC building, a converted automobile showroom at 5th and K Streets, processing the film from Orange Grove One. "Guanajay showed new trenching activity, probably for cable or conduit, from their main operations bunker. Remedios showed new camouflage netting...here—" he pulled another briefing board from his attache case and laid it on Bundy's desk—"and some trucks we haven't seen before. Maybe fueling trucks."

"Show him the one from Bejucal," McCone suggested.

"Ah, yes, Bejucal, very intriguing." Lundahl extracted yet another briefing board. "This one's a real mystery. Look closely, Mac."

Bundy bent over the board, then held it up. The photograph showed the main Soviet warhead bunker fifty miles south of Havana. "Looks like a forest fire or something."

"Exactly," said Lundahl. "Very peculiar. We know Bejucal is some kind of big weapons site, maybe the Soviets' main warhead storage depot. We've made a few passes by it; usually very little changes. Until yesterday."

"How do you interpret this picture?" Bundy asked.

Lundahl nodded to Marshall, who came forward from a seat by the door. "Sir, if I may?" He re-oriented the briefing board. "These are scorch marks, with collateral blast damage in the structures nearby—here, and here. Plus, the trees here. See how the trees along the forest line are down, here are the shadows of two that are hung up on something."

Bundy was puzzled. "So what are you saying?"

"Photo evidence supports several conclusions. The most probable is a series of fires and explosions in this area. Also, see the heavy tread marks? Data from other U2 photos, plus our own mensuration equipment indicate that these are tank tracks. From the depth, we're estimating T-54 or later model. Several sets of tracks, in fact. Sir, the more you examine this and related pictures, the more you see evidence of widespread and violent destructive fire and explosion. Destruction indicative of multiple weapons detonations"

Bundy was stunned. "Weapons detonation? At a nuclear warhead bunker?"

McCone added, "That's not all, Mac. Overnight, the Situation Desk at Langley received an advisory from the National Security Agency, up at Fort Meade. They've got intercepts of radio traffic between Soviet forces on Cuba and command centers in the Soviet Union. Apparently, there's been some kind of general mobilization on the island. We're not sure why."

Mac Bundy suddenly felt very faint. He sat down heavily and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. "You're sure?"

"Positive, Mac. We also have radio intercepts from the Oxford to deal with. That's our elint ship off the coast of Cuba. At 0730 hours yesterday, and several times on Saturday, the ship monitored transmissions into and out of Havana, specifically involving Soviet forces headquarters at Torrens. We're still analyzing the data but there's an implication of some kind of combat action in and around Bejucal. The photos now corroborate that."

Bundy was appalled. "Do you realize what you're saying, John? Khrushchev just agreed to pull the missiles. But we see continuing evidence of missile site construction. Now this...'combat action,' around a nuclear warhead bunker. Its...incredible. What the hell's going on?"

McCone said, "We don't know, Mac. But the pictures don't lie. And other intel sources back them up."

Bundy sank back in his seat. Suddenly, his corner office seemed more like a tomb. "We've got another ExComm meeting in a few minutes. I want you to lay this out for the President, just like you did for me."

"Of course," said Lundahl. He patted his attache case. "We worked all night to build these briefing boards."

By order of the President, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, known around the West Wing as the ExComm, convened every morning at 10:00 am. Today's meeting had been set for 11:00 in the Cabinet Room; the President had some early morning meetings in the Oval Office. Lundahl was helping Marshall set up the easel and arrange the briefing boards and the 3 X 5 cards of speaking notes when John Kennedy came into the room, waving everybody back into their seats.

"Good morning, Mr. President," came the chorus of voices.

Kennedy sat down and stacked his daily intel summary into a neat pile. He turned to McCone. "John, feels like a few more pages than usual. You guys been up late again?"

"We have, Mr. President," said the DCI. "We have the results from the U2 flight yesterday."

Kennedy sat back and folded his arms. "Go ahead."

McCone went to the easel set up in the corner of the Cabinet Room, next to the fireplace, and summarized the developments he had just presented to Bundy. As the briefing developed, Bundy watched the President's face pale. He was soon rubbing his chin uneasily.

"Observable facts, Mr. President," said McCone. "Multiple sources over several days. Elint and sigint data, corroborating evidence from several ELITE channels, plus the visual evidence you see here. While it may be too early to expect the Soviets to begin any dismantling work on the missiles, conclusions regarding the Bejucal site are plain and unmistakable. There's been large-scale fighting in the area over the last two days."

Kennedy's frown deepened. "Gentlemen, the newspapers are saying we've just won a great victory. What are we dealing with here....a mutiny?"

Bob McNamara, the SecDef, said, "Impossible to say, for sure, Mr. President. John, does any sigint data from NSA indicate who's fighting who?"

McCone replied, "It's not clear at the moment. The Soviet garrison force at Bejucal was obviously involved. By the way, they're not regular Army at all, but KGB Troops, Ninth Directorate we believe. Who they were fighting isn't clear at the moment."

"It's clear to me," said General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. "They're fighting the Cubans. Somebody's having second thoughts about the missiles being withdrawn. Remember that dispatch from Castro to Khrushchev we intercepted? He practically invited Moscow to launch the missiles."

Dean Rusk wasn't buying it. "Max, you're fishing. You don't know that. It could just be a small mutiny. Hell, maybe some Russians are sick and tired of Cuba and just want to go home."

"Pardon me, Mr. Secretary," Taylor said, "but the evidence adds up. Look at the camouflage efforts. They're not taking down any missiles. They're working their butts off to hide them better. I know I sound like a broken record but we ought to make a pre-emptive air strike, today, this afternoon."

Kennedy said, "Obviously, Max, you must have slept with Curtis LeMay last night." Several laughs erupted. The President smiled, thinking of the Air Force Chief of Staff. "May I remind you all that the Soviets have officially agreed to withdraw. Khrushchev sent me a letter yesterday saying exactly that. Plus it was broadcast on Radio Moscow. I can't give them any reason not to keep up their end of the bargain."

McNamara interjected, "We need more data before we can decide. I can't make an assessment on what I see here."

"Bob, we've analyzed this thing to death already," said Taylor.

"This is not the time to make hasty decisions," said Rusk. "We're at a delicate stage in negotiations. We already know U Thant's flying down to Havana tomorrow."

Bobby Kennedy pushed his chair back and went up to McCone's easel, studying the photos. "Maybe we need more U2 pictures. Any more flights planned for today?"

The SecDef said, "That depends. It's not decided. Remember, we talked about whether to suspend surveillance for U Thant's visit."

"We should suspend U2 flights for the Secretary-General's visit," said Rusk. "How would that look if we had a plane shot down while the U Thant was visiting Castro?"

"It'd be a damn sight harder to get good intel on what the Russians are up to, that's how it'd look," said General Taylor.

The President interjected, "We'll stop flying the U2s for Tuesday. Keep the low-level reconnaissance planes on the ground too. Like I said, we can't give the Russians any excuse to renege on their agreement. But after U Thant leaves," he leveled a hard look at the CJCS, "the planes fly again. And they keep flying until all the missiles are gone. The Russians are sending this fellow Kuznetzov to New York to work out the details. I want somebody up there to keep his feet to the fire. Adlai's no good."

General Taylor said, "Mr. President, we need some way of inspecting those Soviet ships, as they transfer missiles out. So we can count 'em, match up the numbers."

Kennedy agreed. "Dean, make a point of adding that to our list."

McNamara had an idea. "If we need good intel, and we have to keep the planes on the ground, what about inserting a small ground reconnaissance team covertly? Army Rangers train for this kind of mission all the time."

General Taylor added, "We could have them on the ground in less than twenty-four hours. Airdrop a few teams near the known missile sites. We'd have some idea of what the Russians are doing. Plus we'd get great intel on force deployment, order of battle, equipment capabilities."

Dean Rusk was adamant. "Too risky, gentlemen. Far too risky. You're talking about ground troops, combat soldiers for heaven's sake, running around the Cuban countryside. It's not so easy to keep something like that concealed. I ran special ops in Burma against the Japanese, so I've got some idea of what's involved."

Bobby Kennedy said, "It is provocative. Would we get better intelligence than our U2s?"

Taylor conceded the point. "Our intel would be more detailed, but slower in coming."

The President had heard enough. "No ground reconnaissance. I'm going to be firm on that. Dean's right: we're at a delicate point right now." He got up to ease his sore back and began pacing along one side of the table, "It's this damn Bejucal thing that's got me worried. What does it mean? What the hell's going on down there?"

Bobby Kennedy was always sensitive to his brother's moods. "Mr. President, I've got an idea. Suppose I make a discreet inquiry of Dobrynin. Or one of our other back-channel sources, say this Fomin guy at the Embassy. He seems to have Khrushchev's ear. Maybe one of them knows something. Maybe they can shed some light on this incident."

"All right, Bobby, I think that's a good idea. We need information, fast. Any disagreements?"

There were murmurs of consensus around the table. Dean Rusk spoke up. "Mr. President, I can help with that. I'll call Roger Hilsman right away. He can set up a meeting with Fomin through John Scali. Probably this afternoon."

The President nodded. He stopped pacing, standing before McCone's briefing board at the easel, hands in his pockets. The magnified image of the Bejucal compound stared back at him.

"Yesterday, I thought I had an agreement with Khrushchev," he said, to no one in particular. "I thought we had taken a big step away from nuclear catastrophe. Now I'm not so sure."

Letter Received 10-29-62

Central State Telegraph Office

Moscow

Dear Comrade Khrushchev:

From an analysis of the situation and the reports in our possession, I consider that the aggression is almost imminent within the next 24 or 72 hours.

There are two possible variants: the first and likeliest one is an air attack against certain targets with the limited objective of destroying them; the second, less probable, although possible, is invasion. I understand that this variant would call for a large number of forces and it is, in addition, the most repulsive form of aggression, which might inhibit them.

You can rest assured that we will firmly and resolutely resist attack, whatever it may be.

The morale of the Cuban people is extremely high and the aggressor will be confronted heroically.

At this time, I want to convey to you briefly my personal opinion.

If the second variant is implemented and the imperialists invade Cuba with the goal of occupying it, the danger that that aggressive policy poses for humanity is so great that following that event the Soviet Union must never allow the circumstances in which the imperialists could launch the first nuclear strike against it.

I tell you this because I believe that the imperialists' aggressiveness is extremely dangerous and if they actually carry out the brutal act of invading Cuba in violation of international law and morality, that would be the moment to eliminate such danger forever through an act of clear legitimate defense, however harsh and terrible the solution would be, for there is no other.

It has influenced my opinion to see how this aggressive policy is developing, how the imperialists, disregarding world public opinion and ignoring principles and the law, are blockading the seas, violating our airspace, and preparing an invasion, while at the same time frustrating every possibility for talks, even though they are aware of the seriousness of the problem.

You have been and continue to be a tireless defender of peace and I realize how bitter these hours must be, when the outcome of your superhuman efforts is so seriously threatened. However, up to the last moment, we will maintain the hope that peace will be safeguarded and we are willing to contribute to this as much as we can. But at the same time, we are ready to calmly confront a situation which we view as quite real and quite close.

Once more, I convey to you the infinite gratitude and recognition of our people to the Soviet people who have been so generous and fraternal with us, as well as our profound gratitude and admiration for you and wish you success in the huge task and serious responsibilities ahead of you.

Fraternally,

Fidel Castro

10-29-62, Monday

Moscow

5:15 p.m.

"Of course, it's preposterous, the whole thing," Khrushchev said. He removed his glasses and laid Castro's letter down on the desk. "Profound gratitude, he says, then behind our backs, steals Soviet nuclear warheads. And this—"Khrushchev picked up another piece of paper, a new cable from the Foreign Ministry, "this is what comrade Fidel really thinks. It's from Alekseev. He met with Castro last night."

Khrushchev's office on the third floor of the Council of Ministers Building was small but well appointed. Red leather chairs were arranged in a semi-circle around a dark cherrywood desk. A bank of black and white phones lined a credenza behind his black leather chair. Across the desk sat Mikhail Suslov, Leonid Brezhnev and Andrei Gromyko. Defense Minister Marshal Rodion Malinovsky stood with his map of the Western Hemisphere mounted on an easel by the window, pointer in hand.

"I'm sure Castro had some choice words for Alexandr Alexandrovich," said Gromyko sourly.

Khrushchev was livid. His face flushed red with anger. "He denied everything. Denied everything, do you believe that? This cable says Castro ranted for three hours, then threw the Ambassador out of his office."

Brezhnev puffed thoughtfully on an American Marlboro. "The man is a hypocrite. We've given him billions of rubles of aid, the most modern military equipment—tanks, MiGs, rockets—and this is what we get. You shouldn't give him another bullet, Nikita Sergeyevich. Not another bullet."

Khrushchev threw up his hands in despair. "I can't deal with the man. I guess Mikoyan's our best hope now. One way or another, we're going to get those warheads back."

Marshal Malinovsky said, "Comrades, yesterday our GRU section in Havana monitored short-wave communications coming into the FAR command post. Much of it was in code, but we believe the warheads have already been taken off the island. By torpedo boat. A torpedo boat we gave Castro, by the way."

Khrushchev thumped the desk with a fist. "Hasn't Pliyev got anywhere yet? You told me he had detailed several squads to locate the warheads."

"No, comrade First Secretary, I've had no word from General Pliyev. His staff said he's preoccupied with getting the missiles ready for withdrawal. There are many details—"

"I don't care!" Khrushchev shouted, half rising from his seat. "The warheads have priority, Rodion Yakovlich! Find out what Pliyev is doing about it!"

Malinovsky paled and dropped his pointer. His right hand shook. "Yes, comrade First Secretary. At once. I'll see to it." He left the room quickly.

Khrushchev wanted a brandy. His head ached and the Narzan mineral water the Kremlin chefs had given him burned in the pit of his stomach. A brandy and some of the gribi v smetane he loved so much, that's what he needed. He could taste the mushrooms already.

"Comrades," he said hoarsely, trying to cool down, "we face the same quandary we faced yesterday. What to tell the Americans."

"We should admit nothing," Suslov argued. "Why should they know the disposition of our weapons? They know too much from their U2 flights, as it is."

"It's a dangerous course," Brezhnev said. "You've already agreed to remove the missiles, Nikita Sergeyevich. If they find out the Cubans have stolen two warheads—" he shrugged—"they may decide to attack. I would. And then, Castro will have his little war."

"Only it won't be so little," said Khrushchev. "No, comrades, I'm convinced. We tell the Americans nothing. Let's wait for Mikoyan. He'll talk some sense into Castro."

"And we'll continue to remove the missiles?" asked Suslov.

"We have no choice now," Khrushchev said. "As the esteemed Marshal just told us, we're outmanned and outgunned in the Atlantic. We can deploy more submarines, to be sure, but the Americans can match us ship for ship and bomb for bomb. No, we can't

risk thermonuclear war over Cuba, despite what Fidel wants. The correlation of forces is against us."

Suslov said, "But not in Berlin, comrades. Not in Europe. There, we have superiority in forces. We should use it."

Khrushchev had heard enough. He rose and gathered up his papers. "No, no, no. Now is not the time, comrades. We'll meet the Americans halfway on Cuba. We're statesmen, not suicidal anarchists."

"Once, we were revolutionaries," Suslov said.

"Enough, comrades. Enough. I'm going to my apartment. Nina Andreyevna's cooking something special tonight and I'm hungry. We'll meet again tomorrow, after Mikoyan's had a chance to deal with Castro."

The men left Khrushchev's office and went their separate ways. One floor down, at the end of the east wing of the building, Leonid Brezhnev closed the door to his own office. He drew the blinds shut. Outside, the red star of the Nicholas Tower shone brightly through light snow. Brezhnev sat heavily in the chair and lit another Marlboro.

Leonid Brezhnev was absolutely certain that blame for the failure of Operation Anadyr would fall on Khrushchev's shoulders. He intended to make certain of that. Now, the damn Cubans were adding fuel to the fire, a fire "which could get us all killed," he had told Alexei Kosygin that very morning. Something would have to be done. Khrushchev's reckless schemes had to stop.

Brezhnev well knew how inflated and sensitive were the egos of all Presidium members. You had to have the morals of a wolf to even be noticed on the Central Committee. For the past five years, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev had had his own way with the Presidium. He'd axed the popular war hero Zhukov and fired half the General Staff. He'd spent billions on long-range missiles and alienated the Party's friends in the Red Army by creating a new service, the Strategic Rocket Forces, now one of the First Secretary's favorite playthings. He'd spent more billions giving aid to the Egyptians and the Indonesians, stoked revolutionary fires in Laos and the Congo and generally squandered most of their hard-earned treasure on worthless foreign adventures. Hell, he'd even tried to plant wheat and barley in the middle of the desert.

No, Brezhnev thought, this time, he's gone too far.

He rang up Kosygin, and they talked for a few minutes. "We have to meet. Tonight, if possible. Find Podgorny too." Brezhnev hung up. Kosygin was in a meeting at the Central Committee Building, an ugly pseudo-Gothic monstrosity just off the Kirov Ulitsa.

There was little sense in meeting with Kosygin in the Kremlin. The First Secretary had full control of the Kommendatura, and General Antonov's "Regiment of Special Purpose" would have eyes and ears everywhere. No, better to get out of central Moscow altogether. Brezhnev thought for a moment. He paid 500 rubles a month to one of Semichastny's men to have his ZIL limousine swept for bugs. So far, the car had turned up clean. And Semyagin had been his driver since he'd left the Dnepropetrovsk city party machine in the Ukraine.

Brezhnev called down to the motor pool and told Semyagin to get the limousine ready.

"Sir, what will your destination be?" Semyagin had asked.

Brezhnev thought for a moment. "Anatoli Illych, I just need to go for a drive around Moscow. No particular destination. I need time to think. You select the route. I'll need at least an hour."

"As you wish, sir."

Brezhnev waited ten minutes, then checked the halls. Clear. He gathered his topcoat and fedora and made the elevator without seeing any of the Presidium. Khrushchev probably has them in a closet somewhere. Four floors down and the elevator doors opened into a small lounge and security zone. Semyagin was there, umbrella at the ready. Brezhnev nodded curtly to the bored Guards Directorate major, who sleepily noted his departure in a logbook and buzzed them out into the motor pool lot.

Semyagin had the huge black ZIL parked just past the gate arm, its V-8 engine running.

"We're picking up Kosygin, Anatoli Illych. He's at the Central Committee Building. The service entrance, Biryuzov Allee side."

"Very well, sir."

Ten minutes later, Alexei Nikolaevich Kosygin was in the back seat with Brezhnev, dusting snowflakes off his coat. Semyagin pulled out of the side street, turning north onto Dzerzhinsky Ulitsa. Straight ahead, bathed in yellow light, was the massive, mustard-yellow All-Russian Insurance Company Building, address Dom Dva. Home to the State Security apparatus and the dreaded Lubyanka Prison, the KGB Headquarters sat like a gingerbread apparition in swirling snow. Semyagin accelerated through the intersection, taking them out of the special security zone of central Moscow.

"I couldn't find Podgorny," Kosygin said. He was slightly out of breath, as if he had run down to the service entrance.

Brezhnev said, "No matter. We can fill him in later. What did you think of Khrushchev's performance tonight?"

Kosygin coughed. "The Bolshoi is safe for another season. Leonid Illych, are you sure we should proceed with this? Is the time right?"

"Is the time ever right, Alexei Nikolaevich? I'm not getting much sleep lately. I guess none of us are. The First Secretary spends the night on a cot in his office. My own Galya won't even speak to me."

Kosygin understood. "My daughters think I'm a burglar when I come home so late."

"I'm concerned about the Americans," Brezhnev told him. He lit a cigarette and the ZIL was filled with smoke. "Khrushchev thinks they won't find out we've lost two nuclear warheads to Cuban bandits. But the Americans aren't stupid. I think they will know, if they don't already."

"And if they do," Kosygin finished the thought, "we'll have an invasion on our hands for sure. Soviet and American troops fighting each other directly."

"Exactly. We have to make sure the Americans know what has happened, the whole story, so they don't analyze the situation incorrectly. I know what Kennedy is facing. He's got the same military hotheads around him that we do. Every government on earth has its Malinovskys and Gribkovs. That's what worries me. We make the wrong decision, and boom!" Brezhnev slammed a fist into his hand, "the militarists press the button."

Kosygin scowled at the snow-slick Moscow streets flashing by. He wondered briefly where Brezhnev was taking them. The driver had made a left onto the Sadovoye Ring Road, and was heading back south. Soon enough, he made another turn, this one right onto Kalinin Prospect. The wide boulevard was a showcase of the capital, with its towering Stalinesque apartment houses and skyscrapers. Heading out of the city, Kosygin mused. They crossed the Moskva River and the ornate wedding cake of the Hotel Ukraina materialized out of the gloom.

"How do you propose to contact the Americans, Leonid Illych?"

Brezhnev cigarette tip glowed red as he sucked hard. His head was wreathed in smoke. "It has to be done quietly, but quickly. Tonight or tomorrow. No sense dropping by the Embassy. Khrushchev would have his KGB dogs after me in minutes. No, I've got a better idea. There's an American businessman in Moscow, for the International Exhibition of Consumer Product Manufacturers. At the Fairgrounds. His name is Dennis McDermott. He's the President of the American company General Appliance."

"You know this capitalist?"

Brezhnev smiled. "Quite well, Alexei Nikolaevich. He's been in Moscow before. And he likes sports cars."

Kosygin nodded and chuckled. Brezhnev's love of fancy cars was a standing joke around the Kremlin. "Now I understand. He gave you that Cadillac last year?"

"A magnificent machine, and one of my favorites. McDermott is staying at the Rossiya Hotel, in town. We could meet tonight, in fact."

"Who does this McDermott know that could help us?"

"Semichastny's report says he's a friend of the Kennedy family. They have connections from Harvard University. If I spell out our concerns and explain calmly what has happened, McDermott should be able to get my message to President Kennedy."

"It's risky, Leonid Illych. Nikita Sergeyevich has eyes everywhere. This is treason."

Brezhnev said, "I'm a patriot and a revolutionary, just like you. Khrushchev is the one who's stolen the Revolution. Our comrades are afraid of him. But I'm not. And it isn't treason if we keep the militarists away from the button."

Brezhnev told the driver to take them back into town. Semyagin had driven them twenty miles out of central Moscow, cruising down the Kosovo Highway. He found an opening in the dense stands of birch and fir trees and made a U-turn. Half an hour later, the ZIL had pulled up at the corner of the Central Committee Building. Kosygin started to get out.

"Alexei Nikolaevich, don't go back to the Kremlin tonight. Go home and stay by your telephone. I may need you."

Kosygin nodded and shut the door, disappearing into the building. Brezhnev checked his watch: nearly 8:00 p.m. He told Semyagin to drive again, this time to the Rossiya Hotel.

10-29-62, Monday

Moscow

8:30 p.m.

Dennis McDermott barely heard the knock on the door as he wrestled with the gold cuff links his wife Sandy had given him for the trip to Russia. I need three hands for these damn things. He slung them onto the bed in exasperation and went to the door.

"Who is it?" he asked. He was already late for a dinner date with some banker types. After that, they had an evening at the Bolshoi planned. McDermott hated ballet but it was a good way to get in some business before he flew out tomorrow.

"Hotel staff," came a muffled voice.

Puzzled, McDermott opened the door a crack. He saw several shadows, then an arm, and before he could react, the door was forced open. McDermott shoved back but there were several men, in black leather jackets, and he fell heavily to the floor. Before he could get up, five men swarmed into the room and pulled him to his feet.

Fucking gangsters, he thought. To his surprise, the face in the doorway, a mustachioed man with a pocked complexion, brushed off McDermott's white shirt and straightened his tie. "What the--"

"Dennis McDermott?" he asked. He pulled a small folder from his jacket and opened it, studying a picture, glancing up at McDermott.

"That's right. Who the hell are--"

"Quiet! " he hissed. "I'm sorry for your shirt. We must go. Quick." He grabbed McDermott by the wrist but the American pulled free.

"I'm not going anywhere with you, pal." McDermott pushed off the hands of another man, trying to tuck his shirt in. Jesus Christ! "I got a dinner date and you're out of here now or I'm calling security."

The mustachioed man smiled, revealing a gap in his gold-capped teeth. "We are security, Mr. McDermott. State Security. You must come with me. You have a very important visitor who wishes to see you."

"Is that so? The Tsar, I suppose?"

The mustachioed smile vanished. "I am not a humorless man, Mr. McDermott, but I have little patience. Either you come with me on your own, like an adult, or we simply take you with us. Your visitor hasn't much time."

McDermott looked the situation over. Each man was broader, no doubt stronger, than he. He didn't know if they were armed and he didn't intend to find out. If it was a holdup, he figured he'd left enough diary entries for Sandy to know he loved her. And he didn't particularly relish the prospect of bleeding to death in a snowbank behind this rotten firetrap of a hotel. Dennis McDermott found the decision to accompany his uninvited guests wasn't such a hard decision after all.

"Mind if I get my coat?"

Mustache and his friends hustled McDermott down a dingy flight of stairs off the hall. Out into light snow, illuminated by dirty streetlamps. McDermott saw a large black car parked by a landing. They were taking him out the service entrance.

Mustache pointed to the rear door. "In," he said. He pulled the door open and McDermott slid inside.

There, backlit by shadow and the reflections off the frosty window, sat none other than Leonid Illych Brezhnev.

"Good evening, Mr. McDermott," Brezhnev said. He was smoking and the air was thick. "We met once, a few years ago, at a trade fair. You offered me a ride in your Thunderbird if I came to America."

McDermott was thinking furiously. Trade fair? Thunderbird? He recognized Brezhnev. The Presidium member often showed up at gatherings of Western consumer goods. Rumor had it that Brezhnev wasn't the only Party apparatchik with a taste for the finer things.

"Excuse me, sir," McDermott said, a bit uncomfortably, "this is a rather unusual way of making a request."

Brezhnev told his driver to drive. The car pulled out of the side alley and onto the Embankment Road. The green and gold onion domes of St Basil's cast long shadows as they sped down to the Moskva River, accelerating across the bridge. Toward the Tretyakov Gallery, McDermott thought, wondering if he should try to figure out where they were going. In minutes, they were beyond the Sadovoye Ring Road and he was hopelessly lost.

For quite awhile, Brezhnev said little, preferring to focus on the midnight shadows of Moscow sliding by. They turned several times, always sharply, suddenly and without warning, as if the driver were trying to shake off a tail. In minutes, they were speeding past a long row of identical concrete apartment blocks and out into the countryside.

"We must talk," Brezhnev said at last.

McDermott knew there wasn't much he could do to object. By now, he hoped, his dinner partners would have notified the U.S. Embassy. With any luck, embarrassing inquiries would start to be made. McDermott didn't know how he would explain being kidnapped by a ranking Presidium member.

"Mr. Secretary, a phone call would have done just as well."

Brezhnev sighed wearily. "Mr. McDermott, in my country, all phones are state property. What I have to say is too sensitive to be said on a phone."

"I assume this is about Cuba," McDermott said.

Brezhnev's huge head nodded slowly. McDermott could just make out a few facial features in the cold moonlight streaming in through the windows. His massive eyebrows furrowed. "That's right. By now, you know that the First Secretary has agreed to withdraw our missiles from the island. Your President Kennedy has won a great victory."

"I'm sure that'll be useful in the elections," McDermott said.

"Unfortunately," Brezhnev went on, "President Kennedy has more problems, problems he is not yet aware of."

"I'm not sure I understand."

Brezhnev briefly explained what had happened at the Soviet weapons compound at Bejucal, Cuba on Saturday. When he was done, McDermott uttered a low whistle.

"Mr. Secretary, you're sure of this?"

That provoked a short laugh. Brezhnev grinned. "We have excellent intelligence, Mr. McDermott. Surely I don't have to explain that to you."

"Why are you telling me, then?"

Silence for a moment. "Because I want President Kennedy to know the truth about what is going on. Within the Presidium, some of my colleagues are unsure what to do, how to deal with this new threat to world peace. But we must be cautious these days. This is not the time for posturing or reckless threats. There's too much at stake. A single miscalculation could be disastrous, for all of us. I've been reading some of your newspapers this past week."

"Americans are scared," McDermott admitted.

"Our Soviet people are frightened as well," Brezhnev said. "Those who know the truth. In the interest of reducing tensions, some of my colleagues and I felt it was vital that President Kennedy know what has happened. As I said, we've mobilized all Soviet forces on Cuba, we're putting great pressure on Castro, and our security apparatus is

hunting for the weapons even as we speak. I'm confident that they'll be found and disarmed."

"You want me to get word to Kennedy, is that it? Pass this along?"

"Exactly," said Brezhnev. "Obviously, we can't make such an event public. Quiet and careful diplomacy is needed. As the First Secretary indicated in his statement yesterday, we intend to withdraw our offensive missiles as soon as possible. For your part, you must agree not to invade Cuba. That is most important."

McDermott was a little overwhelmed by it all. "I'm not really that close to the President, you know. I did make a few contributions to the campaign in 1960. A few speeches in the Midwest. But there's lots of Democrats who--"

"I have confidence in you," Brezhnev said. "You're a businessman, aren't you? You can assess a situation quickly and make a decision. You're used to dealing with risk. What does your capitalist nature tell you about this situation?"

McDermott said, "When I make a deal, I like to know the downside as well as the upside, Mr. Secretary. Good businessmen know how to weigh risks. All I can offer you is my best effort to get a message to the President. And I do know the Ambassador pretty well. But then Llewellyn Thompson's still in Washington, I hear. I've got some other contacts in the State Department. If they'll listen."

"It's vital that they listen," Brezhnev said. "Castro is a very proud and emotional man. He's like an animal at times, especially when threatened or cornered. I wish we'd never had to deal with him but some in the Presidium think otherwise. I don't know what he'll do."

"I'll make a few phone calls when I get back," McDermott said.

"Good," said Brezhnev. He ordered the driver to turn the car around and head back to the city. "We must bring a little sanity to the situation. Before it consumes us completely."

10-29-62, Monday

Miami

9:30 p.m.

Miguel Munoz loved strolling about the shop late at night, after hours, just to smell the musty odor of old volumes and feel the Santeria figurines and the worn-slick polish of the tables and chairs. Munoz and Sons Gifts, located at 49505 Southwest 8th Street, was merely an extension of the importer's own personality, a cluttered packrat's paradise of curios and gifts from around the Caribbean, and a lifetime's worth of dreams crammed into the tiny corner shop just off Granada Boulevard. Wedged in between Reynaldo Lopez's Carniceria Centro and a coin-op laundry, Munoz and Sons was nonetheless a world unto itself for the antiques hunter and the flea-market aficionado. As Munoz himself liked to say: You can't miss us. Just follow the jets. Indeed, the shop lay only a mile or so south of Miami International's Runway 15.

Miguel Munoz was a slight man, small-boned and wiry. His black moustache and beard was flecked with gray and the moustache drooped slightly, giving the importer a slightly bemused look. Even in the subtropical heat of south Florida, he always wore his favorite, slightly faded tweed jacket around the shop, for my customers, he liked to say. This Monday night in late October, a stiff twenty-knot breeze off the Atlantic blunted the worst of the day's heat, and Munoz was alone in the shop, patiently dusting his merchandise and muttering to himself as he puttered around the shop. It was after nine and Rosita would have a chicken cooking when he got home, but he was really in no hurry to leave.

Miguel Munoz was sorely troubled.

That morning, just before he had opened the shop, his nephew from Havana had called. Madre de Dios, he hadn't talked with Hector in years and the surprise of hearing the boy's voice, scratchy and fading though it was, nearly brought tears to his eyes. Hector had asked about Rosita and the children but before Miguel could explain, his nephew had interrupted and gone on to something else. That was what had bothered Miguel. That and the "new business venture" his nephew had described.

Miguel Munoz knew all about Operation Moncada. Or at least as much as his DGI contact, code-named Sparrow, had told him. With the missile crisis overriding all other concerns in south Florida--nobody in Little Havana had wanted to talk about anything else and even his customers weren't buying--Miguel openly questioned Hector about the advisability of activating the business venture now. The Americans had flooded Miami and south Florida with fighters and troops and bombs. The place was an armed camp. He'd even seen Marines storming the beaches at Hollywood Beach on television, though not without some comedy, as the soldiers had preferred posing for photographs with the sunbathers to bivouacking at a jai-alai court inland. But Hector was insistent, saying the "businessmen are already on the way.' It was important, he assured his uncle.

Miguel Munoz knew perfectly well what the 'business venture' involved. Sparrow had briefed him on that much. Now Hector had presented him with a shopping list of tasks to accomplish, to make ready for the businessmen. Miguel had listened carefully to Hector, writing down what he had to do. They talked for a few more minutes, then the line went dead. That was normal. Both men were certain the Americans were listening in on all phone calls to and from the island. It was good to hear his nephew again but it was best not to stay on the phone too long and tempt fate.

Smuggling had long been a part of the importer's toolkit. The fact that President Eisenhower had slapped an embargo on all things Cuban a few years ago had only raised prices for authentic Cuban imports and allowed Miguel to charge seemingly outrageous prices for his merchandise. But the embargo made supply more difficult and that was the incentive Sparrow had offered him. "Work with us," he had promised him, "and you'll find a good supply of merchandise coming your way."

Miguel had seen no reason not to do his patriotic duty for the fatherland. As Fidel himself had often said, patria o muerte.

Munoz sat down at an old dented rolltop desk he kept for his own use, stashed in the back corner of the shop. He examined the list he had written down this morning for the hundredth time. The first item was most curious: Hector had insisted that Miguel contact their friend in Atlanta, Manuel Obriega, the one with the huge house and garage and make sure he'd be available to host a meeting. "Tell him couriers are coming with valuable merchandise," Hector had said. A truckload of goods (mostly contraband, Miguel had assumed) would arrive in a few days and the businessmen needed a place to store and display their goods. Miguel resolved to place a call to Obriega when he got home.

The next item was going to be more difficult. Hector had mentioned that his business partners would like to expand their business into the Midwest as well, perhaps to Ohio. Could he please look into locating a small warehouse space somewhere in the Cincinnati/Dayton area for storing imported goods. A warehouse in an out-of-the-way location would be ideal. And it needed to be near a good highway.

Miguel Munoz could only shake his head at this request. This wasn't part of the original plan for Operation Moncada as he understood it. He had several contacts in the Chicago area, actually antiques dealers with whom he occasionally did business. Possibly they could help. He extracted a small leather case from the desk drawer and flipped through it, looking for numbers.

Hector had no idea how the business world really worked. But then, Hector's "business" was different from most. Miguel found himself pacing the shop again, uneasily stroking his beard and moustache.

He would do what Hector wanted. The payoff Sparrow had promised him wasn't the reason, although the prospect of more merchandise was tempting enough. But Miguel figured he was no fool. Even Hector's elliptical references to 'businessmen' were transparent. Miguel knew a gunrunning operation when he saw one. He'd been in the import business long enough to smell one. And there were plenty of anti-Castro patriots like the Alpha 66 group strutting around south Florida to make such a 'business' quite lucrative, if you were on the right side of the fence.

Trouble was it was risky. The Americans were sensitive and alert for mischief coming out of Cuba right now. Better to wait for a few months. Then all the fuss would die down and the real businessmen could get to work. Miguel figured he knew just where the fence was.

And he planned to be the gatekeeper when Hector's businessmen arrived in America.
CHAPTER 6

10-30-62, Tuesday

Miami

6:30 a.m.

Josh Saeger was surprised when he raised the blinds on the front entrance to Saeger's Deli. He already had two customers waiting outside, a pair of crew-cutted older men having an animated discussion as he unlocked the door. Military types, Saeger told himself, as he ushered them inside. The hotels along Collins Avenue were full of them. Besides, none of his regular customers got up so early.

One thing was for sure: the missile crisis in Cuba had been good for business.

Saeger got the men seated and attended to the coffee. "Be a few minutes," he told them. "My perk's a little old but it's worth waiting for." They had chosen a table by the front window; it had an ocean view between two pink stucco buildings that belonged to the Chamber of Commerce. He took their orders and hustled back to the kitchen. Where the hell was Louise? His day shift waitress was always late.

Olin Haley was glad to see his breakfast partner. If anybody could bring the Navy around to understanding what had to be done in the Caribbean, it was Jack Stone. Haley had long admired the tall admiral for his patrician bearing and his comfort with command leadership. No doubt about it, thought Haley, Stone's a poster-boy admiral, a real recruiter's dream. He'd done some good things in the Med when Ike had sent the Marines into Lebanon back in '58. Haley recognized Stone's value right away: sharp intellect, even if he was Academy, efficient planner, good strategist and student of naval history, the kind of thinker any man's navy needed when the shells were flying. Plus he was a helluva hotshot at gin lately. Haley waited until Josh Saeger had set their table, depositing a steaming pot of coffee and a tray of bagels and doughnuts, before speaking.

"Kennedy sure lived up to my expectations," Haley told the admiral. "Or down, I should say. Jesus, Jack, we'd had the Russians by the balls in the Caribbean. Now, we're going to let 'em go. He did just what I expected he'd do. Just like the Bay of Pigs. You can't keep giving a hound the scent and expect him not to hunt."

Stone slathered cream cheese on a bagel and chewed thoughtfully. "The President's got a lot on his plate. You know that. It's not just Cuba he has to deal with. He's got Berlin, NATO, Turkey, all those places."

Haley snorted. "Spare me the violins. The man's a coward, that's all. Sheer spinelessness. How the hell did he ever get a medal for wrecking his PT boat? Look what he's done: caved in to the Commies at the Bay of Pigs, caved in at Berlin. Khrushchev runs over him at Vienna like a freight train. Now he gets the biggest armada since D-Day all stoked and ready and what does he do? Backs down. For Chrissakes, Jack, we ought to get rid of Castro once and for all, while we got the forces here to do it."

"I know, I know, Olin, you've made this point before. But he is the Commander in Chief. We're all soldiers. We have to follow orders."

Haley was digging in his attache case. "Maybe," he said. He handed a small folder across the table. "Read. Remember what I told you last year, during the Phibriglex exercise? The wargaming scenario? I did a little more work on it."

Stone opened up the folder and studied the synopsis of Operation Sierra. He flipped pages, scanning assumptions and deployments, projected TOEs, command and control structures, target lists. After a few moments, he uttered a low whistle.

"Christ, Olin, you've got the whole damn Navy and Marines invading Cuba. Who's left to mind the store?"

Haley smiled. "I thought you'd like it. We use elements of the 2nd Marines and the Navy for support. I've added ready brigades from the 101st Air Assault, if I can get Bill Cox onboard. Read the purpose, back on page one."

Stone flipped back and read: to destroy Cuban military and political command infrastructure and to severely degrade or eliminate the capability of the Communist Party leadership to control national power centers or export revolution.

"One thing's for sure, Olin. You're not a timid commander."

"Hell, that's exactly my point, Admiral. That's what this situation calls for: someone with the backbone to go in and kill enough Communists to clean up the island. Operation Sierra's a surgical operation. We're going to decapitate the leadership. Look at the air strike target packages on page three and four."

Stone scanned the list: Havana: Central Committee Building, Headquarters Ministry of the Interior, FAR Headquarters, Jose Marti Airport, Bolivar Barracks. Army bases for the Western, Central and Eastern Army commands. Tank depots. Infantry bases. Navy port facilities at Mariel and Cienfuegos.

Haley summarized. "We got three phases to Sierra, the way I see it. The first phase is Force Recon. That's where the Marines come in. I got units already designated for insertion to scout and do fire control for three target packages for air strikes. Target Package One is La Esperanza, Mariel, and Havana. TP-2 is the Cienfuegos area...the port and some airfields in the area. TP-3 is the Santiago/Guantanamo area. This phase should take about a day."

Stone was scanning along with Haley's narrative. "I'm following you."

Haley went on. "The next phase is Strategic Bombardment and Tactical Neutralization. We do the coordinated campaign, just like OpPlan 312. Take out the SA-2 and SA-7 batteries around all the TP's. Soviet and Cuban military airfields like Campo Libertad and San Antonio de los Banos. All the military targets the Force Recon guys scouted. That's about another 2-3 days, at most. Last, we have Phase Three: Air Assault. That's my variation of OpPlan 316. I'm using more Marines, and fewer Army. I still need Bill Cox's 101st, though. They have to do the air drops south of Mariel, build up a lodgment, and break out east and north. Second Marines will make an amphibious landing near Tarata, west of Mariel. We'll link up at Guanajay and head east, isolating the capital." Haley sat back satisfied, waving a bagel at the admiral. "Inside of a week, Castro'll be dead or on the run."

Jack Stone closed the folder and gave it gingerly back to Haley. "Last year, this was just a wild scenario. Seems like you've gone a bit farther."

"Shit, Jack, the beauty of the thing is that it's designed to look like a training exercise right up until we go. With all our forces in such close proximity, the slightest provocation will get some trigger-happy Cuban shooting. That's all I need to move in."

"There is just one minor detail," Stone reminded the Marine general. "National Command Authority will never authorize this. Olin, you've got a great scenario here. For next year's exercises."

Haley's face darkened. "By the time the NCA gets wind of what's happened, Castro'll be smoke and we'll be in Havana. The Navy and the Marines can do this. And the NCA will thank us for the effort."

Stone decided to humor Haley. He knew how bitter the man had been over the Bay of Pigs. "Aside from treason and insubordination and disobeying a direct order, what makes you think the Army and the Air Force will go along? You talked with Bill Cox and Ham Howse yet?"

"General Cox knows the plan," Haley replied. "He doesn't have to know where the orders are coming from. And I know Ham Howse would approve of what we're doing. Eighteenth Airborne Corps won't want to be left behind."

Admiral Jack Stone wasn't sure if Haley was serious. Forging orders and circumventing authority were one thing. Implicating other commanders was another. He could see that Haley had shopped Operation Sierra around for the better part of a year. Probably most senior Army, Navy and Marine commanders had seen the scenario. To a man, Stone was sure they all found it an interesting, even intriguing theoretical exercise. General Hamilton Howse, CO of 18th Airborne Corps and Admiral Ward, Task Force 136 commander, had probably not seen the study. Haley would have kept them out of the loop.

Stone knew Haley to be a complex man, at times driven to extremes. He liked the man personally. Haley was everything Stone wasn't: decisive, a risk-taker, a natural leader, bold, inspirational, aggressive and passionate about a mission. Sometimes, he didn't know when to back off.

They debated the operation for a few minutes, Stone trying to find holes in the general's thinking.

"This provocation could be your undoing, Olin. The timing's so critical."

Haley agreed. "That's why we have to act now. Any day now, hell any hour, we could get word from Washington to standdown from DEFCON 2. We have to act while we're in proximity with the enemy. The way I see it, we use our aerial reconnaissance to start this thing off. The AA batteries have already been shooting at us for several days now. And we know the Cubans don't like the low-level stuff worth a damn. If we can goad them into firing on our aircraft, we'll have all the provocation we need. OpPlan 312 and 316 gives us all the authority and capability we need. Sierra just takes it a little further."

Stone tried another tack. "What about the Air Force? You talked with Sweeney yet?"

Haley slurped some coffee and wiped bagel crumbs off his face. He'd scattered his bagels all over the table. "General Sweeney and the TAC guys won't give me the time of day. I know he has a full plate but Jeez. I know LeMay will back us but he's a blabbermouth. I haven't contacted General Power over at SAC yet. We may have to do this without the Air Force."

Stone said, "You've thought of everything, as usual."

Haley said, "Jack, there aren't any real showstoppers. I picked this plan apart for a year and a half. Plus dozens of others have had a go at it and nobody's come up with any reason why it wouldn't work."

"That's because they figured Sierra was an exercise. Jesus, Olin, now you're talking about actually doing it. You know we could be court-martialed for what we're talking about here."

"Spare me the lectures, Admiral. You know I'm right. We have the forces ready. All we have to do is use 'em. Better now than later, when the Cubans and the Soviets have really dug in. And we really need the Navy's planes if the Air Force won't come onboard."

Jack Stone had never been known as a decisive man. His Academy nickname--"Slip", which he hated--tormented him at times like this. What Haley was proposing was a court-martial offense, anyway you looked at it. Hell, it was probably a capital crime. It was a stupendous gamble, but Haley was the kind of man who could make it work. He'd done it before, in Lebanon, in Korea, in Okinawa. Maybe he was right. Stone wanted to crawl into a hole.

"Jack, I need to know--"

Stone took off his glasses and wiped them down nervously. "I'll talk with the skippers of the Enterprise and the Independence today. See if I can get you some air cover. I need a day or so to think about this."

"We don't have a lot of time. Operation Sierra has designed in some legitimate Cuban 'provocations.' If we get orders to pull back, Sierra will be a lot harder. We have to act while we're in proximity and have the forces. We've got to act now."

"I understand," Stone told him. He found his forehead damp with sweat; maybe it was the coffee. He signaled the waiter over and asked for the tab. "Let's meet again tomorrow morning. Here."

Haley agreed. "Fair enough, Admiral. But I got to know by then." The waiter came by with the bill and Haley intercepted it. "I'll get this. When the operation starts, I'll be calling in a lot of chips from the Navy."

10-29-62, Monday

The Gulf of Mexico

5:00 a.m.

Ramirez didn't see the Sandino until the huge tanker was almost on top of them. They'd fought high winds and six foot seas for seven hours before finally making it to the agreed-upon coordinates. Now, Calderone had dropped anchor and cut the engines back to idle, to give them some maneuvering control in the rough seas. They were two hours to sunup, maybe more, in the middle of a windswept Gulf of Mexico 60 miles west of the Misteriosa Bank, with waves foaming and crashing over the deck. Ramirez had hailed the tanker on 295 megacycles and spoken with Jorge Perez as soon as the tanker materialized out of the fog and spray. She had heaved to a quarter mile off the torpedo boat's port bow.

Now, the crew was wrestling with the warhead containers. Kapitonov was worried about the seawater. Although the containers were designed to protect the warhead casing and its arming and fuzing electronics, they weren't perfectly waterproof. The coffins had been knocked around pretty good during the ride out from Batabano. They had been fortunate the torpedo boat hadn't capsized completely.

Ramirez had discussed the warhead loading with Perez for ten minutes. Finally, they had settled on a plan. Sandino had two five-ton deck winches on either side of the bridge, just forward of the aft pipeline housing. If Ramirez could get his cargo over to the side of the tanker, Perez told him, the Sandino's crew could attach grapples and hoist the containers aboard. The problem was getting the torpedo boat close enough to Sandino's hull, then maneuvering the warhead containers until they could be grappled.

While Calderone weighed anchor and maneuvered carefully closer and closer to the tanker, Ramirez had four men on each warhead, untying the tarpaulin lines and wrestling the 1000-pound containers into position. The pitching of the deck, along with periodic crashing waves of seawater made footing treacherous. More than once, a man was thrown off the boat, cartwheeling headfirst into the ocean. Each time, Ramirez shouted up to the pilothouse and Calderone chopped the engines, to keep from entangling the overboard man in the boat's props. A terrifying few minutes followed, as the crew struggled to reach out and haul the hapless man back onboard.

In time, Calderone managed to bump the torpedo boat against Sandino's hull, and inched the throttles forward enough to drive the boat against the tanker and hold her there. The tanker towered over the P6 like a huge iron building. Metal on metal shrieked over the wind as the seas rubbed the boat against Sandino. For a few minutes, the violent pitching of the deck seemed to subside.

"Vamos!" Ramirez yelled. "Get going!"

By alternately pushing and pulling, Ramirez worked with Gallegos, Paco and Arrantes to heave one warhead container back aft, sliding the metal casing along the deck a few feet. Then she hung on a deck fitting and wouldn't slide any further. It was Oriente who pointed out the interference. There was nowhere else to go with the container. And they were still yards from being able to attach Sandino's grapple.

Ramirez was thinking fast. This isn't going to work. Have to do something else. He spied Kapitonov and waved him over.

"The warheads...inside...how much do they weigh?"

Kapitonov glared at the Cuban as if he were mad. "The warheads? Each warhead weighs at least seven hundred fifty to eight hundred kilos! Why?"

Ramirez called the men around. He shouted over the wind. "We take the warheads out! Out of the containers! We'll never get the containers aboard in this weather!"

Kapitonov was shaking his head vigorously. "You're crazy! The K-5's are very delicate! They can't take this kind of abuse!"

Ramirez had already decided. He grabbed the Russian by the arm and shoved him to the heaving deck. Kapitonov landed heavily against a stanchion. He got up, wincing in pain, eyes blazing.

"Open it up!" Ramirez commanded. Kapitonov glared back at him, then made a hand motion, indicating he needed a wrench. Paco understood and motioned him to follow behind, through a hatch belowdecks. They located the crate of mission gear and the two of them pawed through the equipment until they found a tool that might work. Kapitonov went topside and began unfastening the container housing bolts, methodically wrenching loose a series of hex-head fasteners around the perimeter of the coffin. In five minutes, he was done.

With help from Paco and Gallegos, Kapitonov shoved the container cover off. It slung down and clanged onto the deck. Inside, a black tapering half-conical device lay nestled snugly against the sides of the coffin, secured with more pins and bolts. Kapitonov leaned into the container and began unlatching the device from the inside.

Ramirez leaned in behind the Russian. A gust of rain pelted down on the men and Kapitonov swore a steady stream of invective as he released the K-5 warhead from the containment.

"Anywhere to grapple?" Ramirez shouted in his ear from behind.

Kapitonov nodded, patting the midline of the warhead body. Ramirez squinted in the rain and dark. He could just make out the shape of a padeye welded against the warhead's machined housing. Kapitonov squirmed his way back out, done with the procedure. His eyes stung from sweat and blinding rain. "Let's get it up and out!" he yelled back.

Ramirez motioned for Gallegos and Paco to position themselves on the other side. On command, the four of them gently, then more vigorously, rocked the warhead back and forth. Ramirez ordered the tarpaulin to be pulled alongside the containment. "We'll swing her out and onto that!" he yelled. "Then slide her down to that capstan! Then we'll attach the winch!"

The men rocked and tugged, working the warhead up the sides of the containment. In a few minutes, they had the device up and out, resting crossways on the edge of the coffin container. Sheets of rain blinded them and Ramirez ducked his head as a strong gust drove sea spray across the deck. They waited a minute, trying to time their next move with the undulation of the boat.

The K-5 was a squat half-cone, nearly 800 pounds in total weight. Machined from an iron-alloy, the nose of the cone was bluntly rounded and the entire upper half of the warhead casing covered with gray ablative layers of fiberglass, plastic and asbestos, to protect it from the heat of the earth's atmosphere during re-entry. At the wider base, four electrical connectors fed into a metal wireway wrapped around warhead's circumference. Below the wireway, a bearing surface and attachment cradle mated the device to its missile housing. The connectors were signal paths for the arming and fuzing circuits, driven by batteries and capacitors in the missile head itself. As Ramirez leaned closer to the device, he could sense the heat coming from its plutonium core.

"NOW!" he screamed over the wind.

The men wrestled the K-5 over the edge of the containment. It thudded onto the tarpaulin and rolled as the deck pitched violently over, slamming into the skirt of the aft 25-mm gun mount. Gallegos slipped on the deck too and fell back hard, scrambling for something to grab onto. He staggered up, a deep gash in his shirt, now stained with blood.

The men pulled hard and slid the K-5 on its tarpaulin bed down to the edge of the capstan. Sandino's winch head swung overhead like a pendulum. Calderone radioed the tanker bridge to pay out some more winch and seconds later, Ramirez, Kapitonov and Paco were fastening the hook to the warhead's padeye. Ramirez waved at Calderone. The Subteniente radioed the all clear and Sandino's winch tightened with a clanking snap.

The warhead lifted up and immediately corkscrewed wildly in the air, as Paco dove to keep from being knocked off the boat. It banged against Sandino's hull, then scraped upward and over the edge out of view. The tanker had lowered a rope ladder over the side as well. Ramirez told Paco and Gallegos to climb aboard. "Get it down and secured fast!" he yelled after them. They hustled up the rope.

One more to go, Ramirez thought. And none too soon. Already, he could see the eastern sky lightening up to a deep purple on the horizon.

While Paco and Gallegos worked with Sandino's crew, Ramirez ordered Kapitonov to unlatch the other warhead. In minutes, Saguente, Aleman and Arrantes were helping rock the second device, the K-12, up the sides of its containment. While they wrestled with the warhead, Ramirez ducked belowdecks and dragged the crates of mission gear topside. He deposited them on the aft deck, out of the way of the warhead. Once the last bomb was aboard Sandino, they'd use the tanker's winch to lift the rest of their gear away.

Securing the crates, Ramirez froze for a second, listening over the whine of the wind. Had he heard it?--yes, there it was again...a plane. An aircraft engine in the distance. He stood up, suddenly aware of how exposed they were in the glare of Sandino's deck floods. He shielded his eyes, hearing the aircraft more clearly. It was near, too near.

There...he saw it. Low and slow, a four engine plane, sliding across black clouds. Damn low, Ramirez thought. What the hell's he up to? In the glare of Sandino's deck lights, he caught the insignia and cursed again.

Shit! U.S. Navy. A P-3 Orion buzzing overhead like a gray and white vulture. It disappeared into low cloud, but he was already circling. Ramirez was sure of it. In seconds, the plane re-appeared off the opposite bow, lower still. A bright cone of spotlight stabbed the dark.

Ramirez swore, thinking fast. Jorge Perez had already radioed a phony distress call back to Venezuela. He'd set up a cover story for them...violently sick crew, need to make nearest port.... He waved at Saguente and Aleman, pointing up to the plane.

Ramirez hustled over and explained the ruse. "Get on the deck! You're all very sick, vomiting, puking your guts out! Ruso," he said to Kapitonov, "lie down on that tarpaulin! You're a victim too!"

By the time the P-3 had thundered overhead again, no more than two hundred feet above them, Ramirez and Paco were 'tending' to the rest of the crew. Aleman, Arrantes and Saguente were prone on the deck, writhing in simulated pain, while Oriente and Ramirez bundled the Russian up in the loose edge of tarpaulin. Ramirez looked up into the P-3's searchlight, waving frantically.

He was furious, but they had to play along. It was damned bad luck that the Yanquis had discovered them. And the second warhead was lying right out in the open, plain to see. He unbuttoned his tunic and shrugged it off, laying it on top of Kapitonov. Get lost, he muttered to himself. Go crash and burn. He glanced up as the ASW plane slid by and wheeled about for another pass.

The Americans made several more passes, each time lower, each time sweeping the deck of the Sandino with powerful searchlights. At Ramirez's order, several of the tanker's drugged crewmen were brought on deck, just to add to the show. After five minutes, the P-3 disappeared into the fog. In minutes, the drone of its big Allison engines faded into the wind.

After making sure their gear and the warheads were secure, Ramirez hustled aboard the tanker and ran down the deck to the bridgehouse. He took the stairs three at a time, bursting into the bridge angrily. First Officer Jorge Perez was poring over a nautical chart with the navigator.

"What the hell's going on?" Ramirez demanded. "Didn't you send out warnings? You were supposed to broadcast an emergency alert...sick men on board!"

Perez straightened up. He took an immediate dislike to this Cuban. "I sent a signal in the clear this morning. As we agreed. It's not my fault the Americans have so many ships and planes in the area."

Ramirez was furious. "The whole goddamned operation's been compromised! That was a Navy ASW aircraft. P-3 Orion. There's no telling what they observed. We had both warheads out in the open. All our gear. Now, I have to assume they've seen us."

"You were tending to sick crewmen, were you not? I saw it with my own eyes. The Americans saw the same thing, no?"

Ramirez shook his head. "Perhaps. Perhaps they even believed our little play-acting. But we can't count on that. The Americans aren't stupid, Perez." Ramirez spied the nautical chart on the plotting table and came to it. "We have to get off this ship. As soon as we can."

Felix Calderone stuck his head in the bridge door. Sheets of rain blew in behind him. "Capitan, our gear's stowed. The warheads are covered. We damaged the casing of one of them but Kapitonov's thinks it's okay. He's checking it now. The Americans have gone."

"For now, Felix," Ramirez said. "But we can't take any chances. We need another ship. The Yanquis watched us loading equipment onboard. They probably saw us trying to hide things."

"They can't know for sure what we were doing."

Ramirez was already thinking. "They don't have to be sure. They just have to be suspicious. We've got to get word back to Havana. We can't keep the warheads here. We have to have another boat, another way into the States."

Perez was growing increasingly uneasy with the conversation. That Cuban diplomat hadn't said anything about warheads. "What kind of weapons have you brought onto my ship?"

"Don't worry, companero. We won't be on your ship much longer. You were paid well in Caracas, were you not? Leave the details to us." To Calderone: "Get Paco up here. I have a mission for him."

Calderone ducked out of the bridge into the driving rain. Ramirez studied the chart of the Gulf of Mexico on the table.

"I'm a smuggler, companero. What I smuggle isn't your business. You're paid to get me to the States. But now I've been caught. I need another way to get in. The Yanquis know your routing and manifest. Trust me, they'll be suspicious. And they'll have a small army of customs officers on the docks in Houston. You see the problem now?"

Perez felt his headache starting again. It would have been better if he had never met the Cuban in the cantina, never gotten involved in any of this. Too much trouble.

"What do you want?" Perez asked warily.

"Same as any salesman: to sell my goods at a fair price." Ramirez rubbed salt and sweat out of his eyes. He was tired, damned tired. "I need another way to get my gear into the States without being discovered."

The navigator, Lieutenant Hayama, spoke up. "Here's one possibility." His finger rested on a small symbol in the Gulf of Mexico, several hundred miles due south of Mobile, Alabama.

"What's that?"

"An oil drilling rig. Gulf Zodiac Four. I happen to know she was abandoned five years ago, but the oil company hasn't removed her yet." Hayama shrugged. "I've done some fishing in those waters. Good for tuna and grouper."

"How does that get me and my gear into the States?"

Hayama said, "It doesn't. But it's out of the way, off most shipping routes. Maybe you could hire a boat?"

Ramirez mulled the suggestion over. Moncada was supposed to have a safe house in the Mobile area. If the Miami agent code named "Florio" had done his job.

The plan had been to stopover at the safe house after clearing the Houston area. Rules of operation for the Moncada team said they should only travel at night. Ramirez had calculated all their timing and routes on that assumption. It would make transporting the warheads to their destinations easier.

Maybe it would work. Ramirez was skeptical but he knew he didn't have much choice. They had to do something to throw the Americans off their trail.

"It's worth a try," he decided. To Perez and Hayama: "How quickly can you get me there?"

Hayama plotted several course segments with his compass and did some quick calculations. "If the weather doesn't get any worse, about eight hours. Maybe seven."

"Assuming the Americans don't stop us," Perez added. He'd run the engines at full power day and night if it would help rid the Sandino of this pest.

The bridge door swung open again. It was Calderone, with Paco Quinones. They hustled inside.

"Yes, Capitan?" Paco asked.

Ramirez took Paco by the arm. "Take the boat back to Batabano. Fast as you can. Felix'll check you out on the controls and instruments. When you get back, get to a secure landline phone. There should be one in the Guardia Rural office. Remember we saw that building on the way in? Tell Raul Castro we need another boat. The Americans spotted us bringing our equipment aboard. Come..." He showed Paco the nautical chart.

"The Sandino's taking us here, to this abandoned drilling rig. The Lieutenant will provide the coordinates. Raul can contact 'Florio'. Tell him we need a boat, big enough for our gear, to meet us at the Gulf Zodiac Four rig. Preferably at night. We'll transfer equipment to this boat and go in to Mobile."

Paco listened carefully, his frown deepening, as he tried to absorb all the instructions. "A change of plan, Capitan? Not in by Houston?"

"Si, a change. But we trained to be flexible. Now we put that training to use."

Paco was a tall, gangly youngster, a dedicated pickpocket Calderone had swept off the streets of Havana a year ago. He'd almost faced a firing squad but for the Subteniente's intervention. Throughout their training at Camp Columbia and the Santa Rosa airfield, the boy had distinguished himself as a resourceful and courageous fighter.

This would be his greatest test.

Paco smiled a tight-lipped smile. "I can make it, Capitan. I'll get the message to Senior Ministro."

"I know you will, Paco," Ramirez said. They embraced. "Vamos ahora!"

Paco saluted, backing out of the bridge. "Si, patria o muerte, companeros!" Calderone went with him.

Ramirez checked the ship's chronometer on the bulkhead behind them. Nearly 7:00 am. The sun would be up in moments. He didn't know what the Americans had seen but they couldn't stay here. Sandino was a hundred miles inside the quarantine line and surrounded by the ships and aircraft of Task Force 135. They had gotten this far with Perez's little charade and some luck. Mostly luck, Ramirez figured. But he knew that Operation Moncada would never succeed on luck alone. He and Calderone had spent months planning every step in minute detail. They expected setbacks and the unforeseen. A good strategist always made room for the unexpected. But their margin had narrowed when the Americans had appeared just as they were loading the warheads.

Now, they had to regain the initiative. Do the unexpected. Most of all, they had to disappear again. If Moncada depended on anything at all, it was surprise. It was already Tuesday morning. The Americans would hold their general election a week from today, Tuesday, November 6. He had promised Fidel that they would have the devices in place by that day.

"Senior Perez, shall we get underway? You made a promise to me. Gulf Zodiac Four in seven hours."

Perez swallowed hard and looked at Lieutenant Hayama. This better work. "Your boat is away?"

Ramirez peered through the bridge side windows. The rain had slackened a bit and he saw figures scurrying up and down the deck abreast of the portside crane. In the distance, a shadowy form pitched up and down in heavy seas, nearly foundering. It was Paco, turning the torpedo boat around.

The boy was resourceful, it was true, but Ramirez knew perfectly well that he was no experienced seaman. Still, they had to risk it. Calderone was needed with the team. Ramirez squinted in the growing fog as the gray shape of the torpedo boat bobbed in and out of view, then dwindled and disappeared. He went outside, and heard the boat's diesels straining against the seas. Slowly, the sound grew muffled and minutes later, the wind alone was all he could hear.

Ramirez tasted salt spray and hoisted his tunic around his neck and shoulders. The storm seemed to be abating. That was bad. They had a seven hour crossing to make, directly across the eastern Gulf of Mexico, now in broad daylight. And the Americans knew something. How much he didn't know. But it was safe to be suspicious.

Tomas, mi hermano...we'll need God's fortune today.

Ramirez was not an especially religious man. Still, as he felt the Sandino's engines rumble to life under his feet, he thought of the old Santero that lived in a mud hut on the outskirts of Santo Domingo, where he had grown up. The priest always had a potion or a charm for any occasion. His single-room hut was cluttered with snakes and stones and pieces of herb and root. Osvaldo Santa Maria was his name. Just thinking of him brought a wry smile to Ramirez' face.

Anciano, he told himself, we could use one of your magic spells today.

10-29-62, Monday

Over the Misteriosa Bank

7:00 a.m.

"Well," said Lieutenant Commander Metrone to his co-pilot, "what do you think? We got an emergency situation here or what?"

Foxtrot Dancer's co-pilot, Lieutenant Mike Handy, shrugged and shook his head. "Beats the hell out of me, skipper. I couldn't see too well but I guess we better call it in. Joe's sure this is our boy?"

Metrone replied, "As sure as any AW can be. Plotted bearings match up. The call said it was a tanker out of Caracas. That sure looked like a tanker to me."

"Yeah, with a Cuban Navy torpedo boat tied up alongside."

Metrone was already dialing up the ops center as NAS Corpus Christi. "I'll raise Pelican One and give 'em a report." He scribbled a few notes on the margin of a kneepad, compared notes with Handy and keyed the mike.

"Pelican One, Foxtrot Dancer. Pelican One, Foxtrot Dancer. We got a visual on that tanker that made the emergency call."

Metrone waited until Pelican One acknowledged, then gave them the facts. He was sure that he and Handy had seen what looked like several sick crewmen on the deck. Plus some odd cargo and crates. Maybe provisions, he surmised. And that Cuban Navy torpedo boat, the contact Twenty-Eight November from the Enterprise had called in...that was real curious. It sure looked like they were getting ready to transfer some sick crewmembers to the Cuban boat.

Damn neighborly of them, Metrone thought sourly. They show us their nuclear teeth and then treat an oil tanker like they're nurses.

Metrone ended the transmission with a recommendation. "Pelican One, Foxtrot Dancer. We ought to get a ship out here to shadow this guy. He seems to be getting underway. Current heading about 315 degrees. He seems to be heading back out to sea, away from the island."

Metrone checked his fuel gauges. Three thousand pounds, give or take a few. That'll about wrap it up for us. "Pelican One, Foxtrot Dancer. We're outta here, guys. Gas is low and we're getting bounced around pretty good by this storm. See you in a few."

He got a vector for best time back to Corpus and gained altitude, trying to ride over the worst of the tropical storm rolling in from the western Gulf. Foxtrot Dancer leveled out at 27,000, on heading 297 degrees and Metrone chopped the big Allisons back to cruise power. Six more hours, he told himself, as he took off his headset and wiped sweat from his eyes. Six more hours and then he'd knock back a few cold ones at the O Club. He hoped Mickey the bartender had laid in a goodly supply of Pabst this morning. He was planning on being real thirsty when Foxtrot Dancer rolled to a stop in front of Hangar 2-Delta.

Two hundred and twenty miles northwest of Foxtrot Dancer, the U.S.S. Delancey (DD-45) steamed in its racetrack course on station, the western-most position of Task Force 135's Chestnut Line. In the dim red lighting of the CIC, Officer of the Watch Lieutenant Commander Jim Long scanned the report Fleet had just relayed about the tanker sighting. He did some quick calculations and realized the Delancey was easily the closet ship on the Chestnut Line to the Sandino's last reported position.

The OOTW called a yeoman over with some orders. "Mitch, go below and awaken the Captain. We're about seventy-five miles from this tanker Foxtrot Dancer just located. We could probably catch her in a few hours. But the Captain'll have to make the call on this one."

10-29-62, Monday

Havana

3:00 p.m.

Fidel Castro was ravenously hungry. He was all set to devour a hot lunch of moors y cristos when Raul came into the tiny dining room, waving a telex flimsy. The room was hot and stuffy and, against the wishes of Point One's garrison commander, Major Duranza, Fidel had opened all the windows. A stiff salty breeze was blowing across Havana's Vedado quarter, and the fresh air felt good inside. Curtains rippled and flapped as the wind picked up a stack of napkins and scattered them to every corner.

"Fidel, Fidel, look at this!" Raul was out of breath, sitting down heavily next to the Commandante en Jefe. He thrust the telex sheet onto the table. "Valdemon just took it off the wire in the radio centro. It's from Batabano."

"Batabano," Fidel grunted. Reluctantly, he put down his fork and spoon, adjusted his glasses and read. His face blanched and his beard twitched as he scanned the page. When he was done, he looked up. "You know this Paco Quinones? This is legitimate?"

"It is, Fidel. Valdemon just received the message a few minutes ago. Capitan Ramirez is asking for another boat. The warheads were spotted on the deck of the Sandino by the Americans. An ASW plane. He's worried they'll be followed, maybe boarded."

Fidel Castro got up and threw back the curtains. It was a cool blustery day and rain-swollen clouds raced by. He sucked in some air in a deep breath . Always there were problems. Maybe he should call up Batista and give him the job back. More rain was coming and the fields were already soaked. The cane harvest was behind schedule. And Khrushchev was sending some imbecil named Mikoyan tomorrow, full of lies about why the rusos were taking the missiles away.

"You think Ramirez has a good plan?"

Raul said, "If we can get a boat chartered. A boat large enough to carry two warheads. We have a safe house already leased in Mobile. I've already got Del Valle contacting Sparrow and other agents in Miami. If we can charter a boat and get to this oil rig before the Americans move in, Ramirez' plan will work. If not...."

Fidel understood. "The question is what do the damn Yanquis know already? Ramirez doesn't say. But I would expect the worst. If the Americans are suspicious, their Navy will intercept and board the tanker and to hell with international law. So..." he turned from the window, "we have no choice, do we? Moncada fails if we can't get our warheads into the States."

"Del Valle says we have a lot of assets in south Florida."

"And I have Hector Munoz here at Point One. The DGI recruited his uncle, Miguel, not long after he emigrated to Miami. He's been working for us for several years. Code name 'Florio.'"

"I know him. But can we trust him with something like this?"

"He knows Moncada well. He's already set up a string of safe houses for us. And Sparrow speaks well of him, from what I've read. Let Munoz do the job. He already has contacts in Mobile."

Raul had an idea. "There are plenty of shrimpers in Mobile. 'Florio' could easily lease one of them. I'm sure it has the capacity to carry the warheads. Plus, shrimpers often have powerful winches onboard."

"I'll have Hector come to Point One and explain what needs doing." Fidel pressed a button on the wall. Seconds later, a staff teniente appeared, one of Del Valle's men from the MINFAR S-2.

"Si, Commandante?"

"Have Hector Munoz come to my office at once."

The teniente saluted smartly and left. Fidel sat down again at the table. He intended to demolish his black beans and rice while they were still warm.

Raul read over the telex once more. "Have you decided where you want the warheads placed? What the targets will be?"

Fidel nodded as he shoveled more lunch into his mouth. "The Yanquis' two most important cities," he mumbled, dribbling rice onto his lap. "Washington and New York." .

10-30-62, Tuesday

Washington, D.C.

9:15 a.m.

John Kennedy had never liked the water in the White House pool but this morning, the stewards had taken extra pains to get the temperature up to at least 85 degrees. It felt good, soothing a tired and strained back made worse from too many meetings the last few days. He kicked and floated a little further, wondering if he ought to be thinking about getting out and toweling off. Dave Powers hadn't been able to make it this morning.

Really should take a walk around the grounds, he told himself. It was a beautiful sunny day outside, a crystalline blue sky with autumn leaves blowing on mild breezes. Maybe he and Jackie and the kids could chopper out to Middleburg this weekend and see their new property. He'd just put some money down on several hundred acres in western Virginia. They were already calling it Glen Ora. John Jr. and Caroline could do a little horseback riding...

His thoughts were interrupted when the door to the pool room opened. It was Bobby, disheveled as usual, with Roger Hilsman, from State. John Kennedy stopped paddling and came over to the ladder. Hilsman was Dean's intel chief, the President reminded himself. He grabbed a warm towel on the railing and wiped chlorine from his eyes.

"You look like hell, Bobby," the President said. He hung the towel around his shoulders, but stayed in the water. "Ethel yell at you all night?"

Robert Kennedy was agitated. He waved some papers at his brother. "State got this overnight. Roger called Dean, and Dean called me this morning."

"It's a message from the embassy in Moscow, Mr. President," Hilsman told him. Hilsman was tall, had moppy hair, with glasses that slid down his nose. He looked like an Ivy League professor. "It's a report."

"What does it say?" the President asked.

"Came from an American businessman in Moscow. Fellow named Dennis McDermott."

"CEO of General Appliance," Robert Kennedy interjected. He fidgeted and paced by the pool.

"Right. He's in Moscow for a trade fair. McDermott claims to have had a clandestine meeting with Leonid Brezhnev last night. Late yesterday afternoon, our time. Brezhnev's a member of the Presidium. He's not a big pal of Khrushchev but he's got friends in the military."

"Brezhnev's saying the Cubans have stolen two of their nuclear warheads," Robert Kennedy added. "Some kind of ambush, or military operation. Last Saturday. According to McDermott, the Soviets have no idea where these things are."

John Kennedy was stunned. "Are you certain? Is this verified? Can we authenticate this McDermott guy?"

Hilsman helped the President up the pool ladder. He said, "We working on verification now. I've got my office on the line back to the Embassy as we speak, trying to get McDermott. Communications aren't real good. But we're working on it."

The President finished drying himself off and slipped into a blue robe. He shook his head. "This is crazy. You're telling me the Cubans just swiped a couple of nuclear warheads?"

"No, sir. Leonid Brezhnev is telling us."

"And the Russians can't find the damn things? What the hell are they doing? What the hell's going on here? Does Khrushchev know this?"

"Unknown, Mr. President. McDermott doesn't say in his report."

"Mr. President, the fact that this came from Brezhnev may be significant," said Robert Kennedy. "Khrushchev may not know. Or he may know and not want to say."

"Or he may not even be in control of things anymore," the President added. "Remember we thought that Saturday morning. Bobby, go see Evelyn Lincoln. Get a memo out. You'll have to make some calls. Move up the ExComm meeting to right now, within the hour. And make sure McCone is there. I need CIA's input on this. We have to know if this intelligence is good."

"Right away, Mr. President."

John Kennedy was already headed out of the pool room. There was a ground floor elevator at the end of the hall outside. A Secret Service agent pressed the button to open the door as the President approached. He held the door open by hand as Kennedy entered, then turned and added, "Jesus, Bobby, if this is true, the Soviet decision to withdraw the missiles may be meaningless."

"Remember we saw those U-2 photos of the combat around Bejucal yesterday. This corroborates the pictures."

"Mr. President," said Hilsman, "it's possible this theft was assisted, in some way. Cubans and Russians cooperating, at some level."

The President's face darkened. "And what about the missiles? Are there any missiles missing? We need to find that out, and fast." He nodded to the agent, who released the door. It hissed shut and the elevator rose three floors to the family residence. When it opened, John Kennedy stepped out and headed for the shower off the Lincoln Bedroom.

Underneath the hot stinging needles of the shower, he was already forming the contents of an urgent message to Chairman Khrushchev.

10-30-62, Tuesday

Washington, D.C.

10:30 a.m.

The Cabinet Room was in an uproar when the President appeared and took his usual seat midway along the oblong table. He motioned for John McCone to begin with the intel briefing, as was usual for all ExComm meetings. As McCone set up his easel stands and briefing boards, the President reached underneath the table, feeling for the switch which would activate the tape recording system he had ordered installed last year. His fingers found the switch, but he stopped. Not this time, he told himself. The historians have enough.

McCone explained to the ExComm members what had been learned that morning: that two Soviet warheads, yield and design details unknown, had apparently been stolen from the weapons compound at Bejucal sometime Saturday morning. The perpetrators were thought to be Cuban military dissidents. The disposition of the warheads and the intentions of the dissidents were not known. McCone added that a humint source in Moscow had received verbal explanations from a high-ranking Presidium member about the loss of the warheads. And Sunday's U-2 mission, Orange Grove One, had provided unequivocal proof of serious combat action and damage in and around the Bejucal complex.

"Gentlemen," McCone concluded, folding up his metal pointer, "we're not sure what exactly we're dealing with here. It could be just a renegade Cuban military commander taking matters into his own hand. The warhead theft could have been planned and authorized at the highest levels of the Cuban Government, not unlikely given the intercepted transmissions from Castro to Khrushchev we've gotten the last few days. Or we could have a joint operation, between Cuban dissidents and disgruntled Soviet military forces on the island. Any of these is a possibility. With the intelligence we have in hand, we can't discount any of them."

"I might add," said the President, "that the Secretary-General U Thant is visiting Havana today, to negotiate for inspections of the missile withdrawal. Yesterday, this group agreed not to conduct any aerial surveillance over the island while U Thant was on the scene."

The SecDef, Bob McNamara interjected. "I do have some additional intelligence to add, John. Overnight, the Situation Desk in the Pentagon received a report from a Navy plane flying ASW with Task Force 135, south and west of Cuba. This plane, a P-3 out of NAS Corpus Christi, was responding to what they thought was an emergency distress radio message from a Venezuelan tanker. The tanker, known as the Sandino, was eventually spotted, in severe weather attendant to tropical storm Ella, about two hundred and fifty miles southwest of Cuba, well inside the quarantine line. The crew reports and I quote: 'the apparent transfer of some sick crewmembers from the tanker to a torpedo boat, P-6 class, of the Cuban Revolutionary Navy.' The report goes on to state that the Navy pilot observed a number of crates stashed on the deck of the tanker, contents and origin unknown. We've since checked the registry and recorded manifest of the tanker. She's a Petrocal-Alliant ship, out of Caracas, bound for Houston, with light crude oil and some additional oil field equipment needing repair."

Robert Kennedy was fidgeting with a pencil. "Those crates could be important. Hell, they might even be the warheads."

Dean Rusk shrugged. "We don't know that, Bobby. Do we know from our intelligence where the warheads might be now?"

McCone had sat down. "Not at this time, Mr. Secretary. We have no data on their whereabouts, on or off the island. Obviously, we're polling all our assets, elint, humint, and others, to find out."

Douglas Dillon, the Treasury Secretary, spoke up. "It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see the connection, Bob. Why stash warheads on a tanker steaming in full view into an American port?"

McNamara responded, "There may not be a connection at all, Doug. But our pilots on the scene indicated that this Cuban Navy boat was the first naval activity they'd seen since the missiles were discovered. That may be significant."

Dean Rusk said, "Since we don't know intentions, what can we do?"

President Kennedy said, "Be prudent. That's what we do. Throughout this whole affair, we've relied as much as we could on hard facts, our own photos and intelligence. There are two facts at issue here: the Soviets have lost two of their warheads, apparently to some Cuban malcontents. And the Cuban Navy sent a torpedo boat to rendezvous with an oil tanker right under the noses of our quarantine line."

"If the Russians are concerned enough to warn us, even through a back-channel," said Robert Kennedy, "then we have to take the threat seriously. Those warheads are targeted against us. That's always been the case. Whether the trigger finger is Russian or Cuban doesn't really matter, does it?"

Dean Rusk wasn't convinced. "What about the missiles? Did the Soviets lose any of those?"

McCone consulted his notes. "Unknown, Mr. Secretary, but we don't think so. Our intel sources are saying nothing about missiles."

"Then what can the Cubans do with a couple of warheads and no missiles?"

McNamara said, "Dean, don't forget the Cubans have Il-28 bombers and other aircraft capable of carrying warheads. I rate a threat like that as far more serious than missiles."

Robert Kennedy was growing impatient. "We have to assume the worst, here." He thumped the table with his palm. "Those warheads are targeted for us. What do we do about it?"

The President listened to the arguments fly about the room for several more minutes. No consensus seemed to develop. But Bobby was right. He had to do something. The press was already hailing Khrushchev's withdrawal statement Sunday as a great victory. If word got out that the Russians had lost two atomic warheads to the Cubans, there'd be hell to pay. And the Democrats would pay dearly in next Tuesday's general elections.

"Bob," the President said to the SecDef, "I want the Navy to shadow that tanker. She's inbound for Houston, so the routing says. And, Doug," he turned to the Treasury Secretary, "the Coast Guard should cooperate as she gets closer to the U.S. I want that tanker intercepted well outside of territorial waters. Far enough out so that, if she's carrying a warhead and it goes off, we don't have fallout dusting south Texas."

"Legally--" Dean Rusk was starting to say--

"Legally," McNamara interrupted, "we already have the authority, under the President's interdiction order. We may want to notify the shipping line when we stop her."

George Ball, the Undersecretary of State said, "Has any thought been given to sending a letter to the Soviets, asking what the hell's going on?"

"I was working on some ideas in the shower," the President told them. "A letter to Khrushchev. I've also asked Bobby here to have another meeting with Dobrynin, just to feel him out, see what he knows."

"Maybe Dobrynin should get the letter first," Robert Kennedy suggested. "It would probably be faster than telexing it to our embassy in Moscow."

"Good idea. In my letter, I want to cover several thoughts." The President shuffled some paper, and fixed his glasses. "As I see it, the situation is dangerously unstable. I let Khrushchev know that we know the Cubans have two warheads, without saying how we know. We also know Castro seems bent on threatening the U.S. anyway he can, possibly even with these warheads. We have to take the threat seriously and prepare for any eventuality."

"The warheads may be on that tanker," McNamara said. "But we're going to stop her and search her before she comes near any port."

"What if the warheads aren't on the tanker?" asked Rusk.

"That's my next idea," said the President. "I need the ExComm's opinion on this: assuming we can't find warheads on that tanker, we propose cooperating with the Soviets to locate the warheads, neutralize them, and apprehend the dissidents. Some kind of meeting of intelligence, law enforcement and military specialists at a neutral site, say in a few days..."

"Geneva, maybe," said Ball. "Or Vienna."

"Not Vienna," said the President firmly. "Khrushchev savaged me once in Vienna already. I was even thinking of Lisbon, Portugal, or some place like that."

Rusk chewed that over and pronounced satisfaction. Kennedy went on.

"We get a meeting going, hammer out the details of who does what, and set up some kind of joint investigative body, with experts from both sides. Obviously, this has to be worked out in a hurry. Then, this body proceeds just like a police investigation, using resources from both sides. Those warheads are somewhere in this part of the world. They have to be. Either they're on Cuba or they're near Cuba. And Castro means to threaten us with them...I'm sure of that. We have to act on that assumption."

The ExComm debated the President's ideas for a few minutes. There were no real objections. Nobody had a better idea.

"Mr. President," said Robert Kennedy, "we need to hold Khrushchev's feet to the fire again."

"I agree. I want to set tomorrow night, Wednesday, say midnight Washington time, as the deadline for a response. And, Bob, keep the armed forces as DEFCON Two for now. Is there anything we can do, maneuvers or something, to make the Russians think we're tightening the screws?"

The SecDef replied, "We can move some units around, re-deploy slightly, broadcast orders in the clear, that sort of thing."

"Good. Do that. My letter will tell Khrushchev that if he doesn't agree to work with us, U.S. military actions to protect against accidental nuclear release will proceed. Your maneuvers can back that up."

"It's ironic, isn't it?" Dean Rusk said, to no one in particular.

"What do you mean?"

"Look how far this crisis has come. We were eyeball to eyeball with the Russians on the high seas just last week. Now, we may get in bed together."
CHAPTER 7

10-30-62, Tuesday

Mobile, Alabama

9:30 p.m.

Jerome Hollins had been the sole owner and operator of Enterprise Seafood Company for something like eleven years now, ever since he'd bought the boat and the warehouse at a bankruptcy auction at the courthouse down on Government Street from that scumbag derelict Jimmy Keyes. He was proud, real proud, of what he had done since that muggy fall day in 1951. The warehouse was all renovated and re-bricked on the outside--that had cost a damn fortune but it was good for business--and the boat was the talk of the port.

Yes sir, Jerome Hollins was extremely proud of the work he'd had done on the boat. The Jenny Ann was a sturdy fifty-footer with a beam of sixteen feet, twin diesels recently overhauled at the Mercury dealer, and enough crane capacity to haul ten tons of delectable crustaceans from the Gulf to the refrigerated warehouse on Chickasaw Street. There, every afternoon, he'd dump the precious catch into the wash basins, clean 'em off, and throw in bags of ice to keep the shrimp fresh. By 5:00 pm, the buyers and chefs from Mobile's finest restaurants would be combing through the day's haul, loading up their trucks with the finest Gulf delights this side of Brownsville, Texas.

And when they were gone, Jerome would spend a pleasant two hours over beer and shrimp counting out the money the day's work had brought in.

That, at least, was how things were supposed to go. Of course, Jerome Hollins hadn't seen a tropical storm season like this one in years and years. The waters were rough, barely navigable, and too damn cold for good shrimping. The catches were down, fifty percent or more most days. And the buyers and chefs...Jesus Christ, I ain't seen the half of 'em in weeks. If this kind of deal kept up much longer, he'd be right back at the county courthouse on Government Street, this time as the seller.

Jerome Hollins was worried, no doubt about it, and he didn't initially hear his first mate Pete Borders yelling at him. It was only when Pete scrambled over the gunwales and practically shoved Hollins into the water that Jerome looked up startled.

"What the hell's the matter with you, son? Can't you see I'm working with this motor?"

"I said three times...you got a telephone call. Man wants to speak to you."

Hollins sighed and put away a few tools. He jumped to the wharf and went into the harbormaster's shack, snatching up the phone.

"Hollins."

The caller claimed to be a man named Rodriguez, from Mexico. Jerome wasn't so sure about that but he didn't question it. Rodriguez had gotten his number from one Red Lynch over on the east bay, the one who ran the Palm Breezes Warehouse. After exchanging pleasantries, the Mexican finally came to the point.

"Mr. Hollins, I have a business proposition you may be interested in. Mr. Lynch told me you occasionally do a little...shall we say, importing? Various goods like certain drugs, certain illegal items...."

Hollins' face hardened. "I'm afraid you got the wrong man, mister. I'm a tax-paying, law-abidin' citizen. I'm just trying to make an honest buck here."

"Exactly my point, Mr. Hollins. Would you be interested in making a lot of bucks? Something like ten thousand of them?"

Now Jerome Hollins sat down. He had grease smeared all over his forearms and he wiped it off on the harbormaster's chair. "I'm a shrimper and a boatman, Mr. Rodriguez. I do occasionally haul stuff around for people. Mostly shrimping, though. You got something you want to haul?"

Rodriguez was smooth, his English barely accented. "In a manner of speaking. I'm an importer, myself. I have a small shop in Miami. I need to import goods to make a living. But lately, what with the Missile Crisis and all, I can't get what my customers want. I have to be resourceful. That's where you would come in."

Hollins knew exactly what he was talking about. "You want me to do a little smuggling for you, ain't that it?"

"In Spanish, we would say pasar de contrabando. That sounds better. I believe you understand me, do you not?"

Hollins wished to hell he had a beer. He asked Rodriguez to hold for a moment, then stuck his head out of the shack and yelled at Pete to bring him a Schlitz. The fact that this Mexican wanted him to do a little smuggling was of no real concern to him. He'd been doing small-time stuff for years. But he was curious.

"What's involved? What am I transporting?"

"Ah, well, perhaps the best way to describe it is to say that the Islands have many treasures. Items of interest that Americans will pay a lot of money for. But it's hard to import now. It's really better if you don't know all the details. Basically, I deal in gifts and trinkets, items of religious or cultural significance."

"So what do you want from me?"

"I want to rent your boat. Mr. Lynch said you had a very fine boat, high-capacity winches, lots of cargo space."

"Jenny Ann's got the eye of a lot of people around this town," Hollins admitted.

"Mr. Hollins, I will pay you ten thousand dollars if you'll take the Jenny Ann out tomorrow morning and make a rendezvous with some business colleagues of mine. There is an abandoned oil drilling rig about two hundred miles south of Mobile. It's called Gulf Zodiac Four. I have the exact coordinates. A ship will meet you there. This ship carries certain contraband items that my customers will pay a lot of money for. Transfer the ship's cargo to your boat and bring the items back to Mobile. I've already arranged for storage of the goods with Mr. Lynch's warehouse. You can check this out for yourself. He is supposed to have a truck ready to move the merchandise to his warehouse. Would you be interested?"

Hollins mulled the proposition over. He wasn't prone to a lot of second thoughts about things when that much money was being waved around.

"I'll do it, Mr. Rodriguez. But there's one thing. You yourself know the risks involved. You got your Navy running all over the place. You got your Coast Guard. Then there's Customs and the local cops. I'm gonna need more money."

Rodriguez didn't say anything for a few seconds. Hollins wondered if he'd fainted. Finally: "How much more?"

Hollins thought. Shit, this is probably a drug run. The guy's filthy rich, if he's even half legit. "About fifteen thousand ought to do it. Up front. Wired to me direct."

"You are a shrewd businessman, Mr. Hollins. Ordinarily, I would say no. But there is some urgency involved with these goods. I believe I can meet your price. But I cannot send all of it without my merchandise. I'll wire half now, half on successful pickup and transfer of the goods to Mr. Lynch's warehouse."

Hollins figured that was fair. The money would sure come in handy. Jenny Ann needed some re-wiring and whole paint job, for sure. And Darlene had been after him about building a screened porch for years.

"You got yourself a deal, Mr. Rodriguez. You wire me half the money now, tonight if you can. I'll meet your buddies tomorrow. What time?"

"You should plan to make the rendezvous before dawn, if possible."

Hollins was calculating speeds and distances. "Well, hell, I'll have to leave practically at midnight to do that. My boat does maybe thirty five knots. I'll have to go all night to make that."

"Where would you like me to wire the first half of your payment?"

Hollins swallowed hard. "Western Union, I guess. I've used the one on Government Street before. But you ain't giving me much time. I got to gas up, get my gear stowed...."

"Mr. Hollins, time is urgent. I can wire the money in two hours. Is that acceptable?"

There wasn't much point in arguing. Jerome Hollins could see that. He figured he'd take a ride downtown and see if anything showed up at the Western Union first, then get Pete and start getting the Jenny Ann ready. He'd have to make up some kind of explanation for Darlene.

"You send the money tonight, like we agreed. I'll meet your buddies on time."

"Very well, Mr. Hollins. A pleasure to do business with you. I'll send the rest of the money, when my goods are stored."

He hung up and Hollins wandered out of the shack. Pete was back on the Jenny Ann, setting up the nets for tomorrow's run to the shrimping grounds. Hollins jumped onboard and explained what had just happened.

Pete was a tall, emaciated fellow, with a greasy black crewcut and a Lucky Strike in the corner of his mouth. He walked like a tree being whipped sideways in a thunderstorm. As he listened, the cigarette twirled tiny circles as he chewed on the butt.

"Well, shit, Jerome, sounds like a good deal to me. How much's he paying you?"

"None of your damn business. But I tell you what. You come along and I'll cut you in for a thousand bucks."

Pete's face cracked into a big grin. A thousand bucks would get a lot of Jim Beam for his liquor cabinet. And maybe he could finally get the old Chevy a new engine.

"Count me in, boss. When do we leave?"

"Tonight. Midnight. We got to get the Jenny squared away, get all these nets fixed and stowed, get gassed up, clean out the lockers below. Get started. I got another phone call to make."

Hollins went back to the harbormaster's shack and dialed up Red Lynch. He was at home. He described the call from Rodriguez.

"The man said he was working with you."

Lynch laughed. "That he is, Jerome. That he is. Peculiar bird, isn't he? But he's legitimate, far as I can tell. I got my down payment no sweat."

"What's he up to?"

Lynch said, "Beats the hell out of me. Probably drugs. Or rum or something. The bugger's got a ton of money, that's all I got to say. Hey, I guess this means we're kind of business partners, doesn't it?"

"I guess." Hollins said good-bye. He left the wharf, and went looking for Darcy Cuthbert. Darcy was the Jenny's other crewman. He had decided while he was talking with Pete that they'd be a lot better off if they cut Darcy out of this little operation. Darcy was a little too straight-laced to trust with important business like importing contraband goods. He found the boy up at the Pure Oil pump, reading a Superman comic.

"Darcy, son, you been working pretty hard lately," Hollins told him. He squeezed the boy's shoulders affectionately. "Me and Pete are going to do some extra work on the Jenny tomorrow. You sleep late and stay home. Don't come in till Thursday morning, okay?"

Darcy looked quizzically at Hollins. "You sure, boss? I hate to miss a day's pay."

"Don't you worry. I'll pay you for a day off. We're going to take the boat over to east bay and see about getting' some new winch motors. You go on now. Go on over to Minnie's and have a pint or two." He knew perfectly well the boy didn't drink anything stronger than ginger ale.

Darcy shuffled off, comic still in hand, looking back oddly at Hollins. He finally shook his head and disappeared beyond the fence. Hollins wondered what the boy thought, but didn't have time to worry about it. He went back to the Jenny.

Pete had pretty well gotten the nets squared away. Hollins shook his head at his uncompleted winch motor job. Hex head bolts and brackets littered the deck. Have to wait for the weekend now, he told himself. He went looking in a deck locker behind the helm for a mop and pail.

"Pete, help me get this damn fish oil off the deck. We want to have the Jenny looking nice for her date tomorrow morning."

10-30-62, Tuesday

Havana

10:45 p.m.

Six miles west of the Plaza de la Revolucion and Point One, the Rio Almendares snakes its way through heavy stands of banyan trees into the small outlying community of Playa. A left turn at Calle 60, just before the whitewashed rococo former Olivares Hotel, now the Russian Embassy, takes the casual visitor southeast into Buena Vista and an area once home to diplomatic residences and wealthy Havanistas. After a few blocks, the stone and stucco mansions, with lawns once impeccably manicured but now falling into disrepair, give way to the more utilitarian landscape of Marianao. A huge airfield slides by--the Cuartel Colombia base--followed by block after block of warehouses and dilapidated yellow and pink tabby buildings. In time, another left turn places the traveler onto Calle 100, heading south out of the city. Huge stands of royal palm and wiry pine trees choke the road, all the way to the Centro railroad tracks and the Autopista Havana-Pinar del Rio. Just past the railroad, the highway straightens out and begins a slow climb up into the Cordillera de Guaniguanico hills. Near the top of the incline, a vast gray limestone and stucco fortress sits, commanding a view west and north toward the beaches of Miramar. This fortress, the Torrens Boys Reformatory, is closed to all but the most important visitors.

The Reformatory, housing a population of several hundred wayward youths in the last days of Batista, had been turned over to the Russians at the onset of Operation Anadyr and now housed the general staff headquarters of the Group of Soviet Forces in Cuba. On the first floor of the structure, at one corner of the rectangular fortress compound, the Reformatory Commandant's office had been converted into a military command post, replete with maps and terrain models, and wall-length charts detailing the disposition of the more than 40,000 Soviet troops and advisors on the island. Off this command post was another small post with a view that overlooked the interior courtyard of the Reformatory. Originally one of four guardhouses with a clear field of fire into the central court and the ball fields, the post had long since been converted into the private office of the Commanding General of the Group of Soviet Forces.

General of the Army Issa Vladimirovich Pliyev was not an officer to suffer fools gladly. He winced again as the hot tea scalded his lips. He didn't know why Raul Castro had requested a meeting so late in the evening; it was Pliyev's custom to retire early to his quarters, with a few close associates, and play cards. He could only surmise that the MINFAR had decided to come and berate the Soviet commanders once again for their cowardly agreement to withdraw their atomic missiles. Not that Pliyev would have disagreed with him. That ass Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was an embarrassment to the Party and none of the senior officers at Torrens would have lifted a finger if the First Secretary had tripped on his lies and broken his fat neck. Still in all, the order had come from Marshal Malinovsky to take the missiles out and Pliyev, like any good soldier, intended to obey orders.

Pliyev regretted the day the First Secretary had tapped him to go to Cuba and command the revolutionary vanguard of the Army's newest front against the capitalists. He had been a cavalry officer in the Great Patriotic War against Hitler, a much decorated veteran who had risen steadily in the ranks of the Red Army. The First Secretary had plucked him last June from a comfortable job in the North Caucasus Military District in Tblisi to come to this humid hell and command an entire Group of Forces. Pliyev sighed, his face wreathed in steam from the tea, as he scanned the courtyard below. Stiff breezes scattered leaves and branches across the open field. The worst part was giving a cavalry officer a staff made up of strategic rocket officers. Like his deputy, Lieutenant General Dankevich.

Pliyev despised Dankevich and no amount of revolutionary camaraderie could conceal it. Nor had he been able to establish much of a relationship with Fidel or Raul Castro. The damnable Cubans were like children...volatile, emotional, if his daughter Lyudmila threw tantrums like that, he'd have her over his knee with a quick spanking in seconds.

He had come to Cuba in July and right away, he realized that the staff Malinovsky had assembled wasn't going to work. First, there was Dankevich, a rocket officer who had nothing but contempt for regular Army. Then there was Petrenko, the Political Directorate. Khrushchev's spy, seethed Pliyev. The others weren't much better: Akindinov, the chief of staff; Grechko, the air defense commander. At least, he had some stomach for combat. It was Grechko who had given the order to bring down the American U-2 on Saturday. And then there was Abashvili, the navy man; and Pilipenko, head of support units.

Pliyev found himself muttering out loud when the door to the office opened. The duty sergeant had brought his guest.

"Comrade Raul Castro," Pliyev said, shaking the MINFAR's hands, "come in, come in. Some tea, or would you rather have coffee?"

Raul Castro declined both. Pliyev sat down heavily behind his deck and Castro situated himself in a chair. The MINFAR had obviously not bathed in days. His fatigues were rumpled. Pliyev buried his face in another cup of tea to cover the stench.

"Your deployments seem to be going well, General," Castro said. His eyes took in the wall chart, showing the disposition of missiles and other forces. "I've seen the trucks on the highways around Havana."

"We're consolidating the 10th and the 11th antiaircraft divisions in the west," Pliyev admitted. "With the R-4's and 5's leaving, there's no need for strong anti-air around San Cristobal or Guanajay."

"And the Lunas? The Lunas are staying?"

Pliyev nodded, then got up to explain from the chart. He used a wooden pointer to indicate three sites: Artemisa, Havana and Santa Clara. "Three detachments, the 74th, the 134th and the 146th, all from the Kiev Military District, as you know, will stay in place. Each has two launchers, with four missiles each. Marshal Malinovsky specifically ordered the Lunas and the FKR cruise missiles not to be removed."

"And their warheads?"

Pliyev saw where the MINFAR was going. "The warheads are well secured, in Mariel and aboard the Alexandrovsk. All are accounted for." Pliyev rested his pointer on the desk. "Of course, we expect that our fraternal Cuban allies will eventually return the warheads they have stolen from Bejucal."

Castro smiled faintly. "I've heard this rumor, General. An interesting story, isn't it? Perhaps, a Russian fairy tale? Cubans should not be blamed for such a crime when your own people have mislaid important equipment."

Pliyev would have none of it. "Comrade, let me inform you of the truth in this matter. Two Soviet warheads, K-5 and K-12, are missing. Stolen in a planned assault from the Bejucal compound. We both know who's responsible. I've got over fifty casualties in the regimental hospital who'll swear we didn't just misplace a few warheads."

Raul Castro thoughtfully massaged his moustache, then got up and studied the wall chart of Cuba, showing the Soviet order of battle. He took the wooden pointer and turned it absent-mindedly over in his hands. "How sensitive are your warheads to all this handling, General? You've unloaded them in Mariel, trucked them all over Cuba, now you're consolidating them again for shipment out. Is there any danger of accidents? Is Mariel in any danger?"

Pliyev considered that he hadn't fought the Nazis and the Japanese for four years by being stupid. He knew perfectly well where the MINFAR was heading with this line of questioning. Still, it was best to humor the Cubans. He had already gotten in trouble with the Ambassador over ill-advised comments.

"All Soviet warheads are handled with the utmost care, Minister, as I'm sure you know by now. We have special container crates for them. Sealed and temperature controlled, isolated from electromagnetic energy, so as not to damage the arming and fuzing circuits. You've seen the GAZ trucks we use for transport. They're equipped with special winches and fittings in the holds to support the containers against shock. The trucks were designed so that a seventy-kilometer per hour crash won't damage the warheads. The trucks have special shock absorbers and suspensions. And the transport crews are specially trained by KGB Ninth Directorate, Special Materials Department."

"And aboard your ships? What happens if one of the warheads is dropped?"

Pliyev scoffed. "Some unfortunate crewman will be face the firing squad, that's what will happen. The Alexandrovsk is equipped with berths and fittings belowdecks, in a controlled compartment, for warhead storage, checkout and inspection. Salt air and salt water can't enter the compartment and the ventilation shafts are filtered against radioactive contaminants. All crewman wear dosimeters and have training in containing hazardous materials. All of the warheads are implosion devices, and the arming and fuzing circuits have to be properly safed and isolated. It's not the warhead core itself that's the danger so much as the high-explosive lenses around it. We make sure there's no way a stray electrical signal can get to the firing circuits. Inspectors wear non-static clothes and shoes. The walls and the decking of the compartment are padded and grounded."

Castro seemed impressed. "Such technology takes a great deal of money, doesn't it? You were fortunate the Alexandrovsk wasn't stopped by the Americans' quarantine."

"Very fortunate," Pliyev admitted. And it was true that the ship had just made it into the port of Mariel before the quarantine went into effect. Pliyev had lost several nights' sleep worrying over the fate of the ship's 20 warheads. "The fact is, Comrade Minister, the warheads must be handled with great care. Proper safing and handling techniques are essential."

"As with any great weapon, precautions have to be taken. I trust our humid salty air won't cause any problems."

"Not at all. As long as the warheads are kept in their containers, which have special seals and gaskets to keep the warheads within a certain temperature, humidity and

pressure range."

"And if a warhead were removed and exposed to salt air or water..."

Pliyev shrugged. "The arming and fuzing system might short out. Assuming the batteries still could charge the capacitors, then it's doubtful a proper signal would flow to the timing circuit. It's possible the capacitors wouldn't have enough charge to fire the high explosive lenses. The warhead would be a dud." Pliyev gently removed the wooden pointer from Castro's hands and placed it back on the tray. "But not to worry. We know how to handle these devices. Unlike your people. Which is another reason for them to return that which doesn't belong to them. They may injure themselves. Or others."

Castro was thoughtful. Pliyev had given him a great deal of information. He would have to get this back to Fidel, and to Ramirez.

"Risk is part of life," Castro said. "Your own Chairman Khrushchev was willing to take a large risk, was he not?"

It was Pliyev's turn to be thoughtful. "Perhaps he gives the Americans too much credit."

10-30-62, Tuesday

Washington, D.C.

11:00 p.m.

Anatoli Dobrynin had gotten the Attorney General's request for a late night meeting while still sipping cognac at the British Embassy reception. Still in tuxedo and tails, he had slipped out, and made the twenty minute ride down to the Justice Department in the backseat of the Embassy's Lincoln. As instructed, he had the driver turn into the 16th Street service entrance. Minutes later, he had made the elevator trip to Robert Kennedy's eighth floor office.

He found the Attorney General pacing nervously in front of a darkened window. Outside, the bright spear of the Washington Monument hovered over the trees on the Mall like a rocket poised for takeoff.

"I came as quickly as I could, Mr. Attorney General." Dobrynin stood awkwardly in the darkened office. Kennedy kept pacing.

"Anatoli, I'll get right to the point. I can't name names here but I've got good intelligence that's worrying me a lot. In the last twenty-four hours, we've gotten indications that some of your Cuban friends have helped themselves to a couple of Soviet nuclear warheads. We've seen intelligence showing combat action around one of your storage centers. And we know there's a general mobilization of Soviet forces on Cuba." Kennedy stopped pacing and came over to the desk. He leaned forward and leveled a glare at the Soviet Ambassador.

"Anatoli, what the hell is going on?"

Dobrynin suddenly felt very faint. He sat down heavily in the chair, looking down at the carpet, shaking his head. "I don't know anything about this, Robert. You must believe that."

Kennedy began pacing again, hands jammed in his coat pockets. "I don't know what to believe anymore. But pictures don't lie. And neither do our other sources. Something has happened. Something very grave. I...and the President... want to know what the Soviet Union is doing to regain control of the situation."

Dobrynin extracted a handkerchief and dabbed sweat from his forehead. "I must communicate with my government. I have no knowledge of any of this."

Kennedy went on. "The President wants to know if these latest events will complicate the withdrawal. Chairman Khrushchev has given his word publicly that the missiles will be removed. Make no mistake, Anatoli, there will be the gravest and most severe consequences if this agreement is reneged on. If the missile withdrawal agreed to is, in any way, delayed or stopped because of this."

Dobrynin stared sullenly at the floor. "It's madness," he mumbled to himself. "Madness. Robert, I have always tried to be honest with you. You know that."

Kennedy stopped at the window and turned, silhouetted against the lights of the Mall. He stood with arms folded. "I don't know whether I should believe anything you say. My God, we're dealing with thermonuclear war here! The Soviet Union has deceived this Government before. That's a matter of record and you know that as well as I do."

Dobrynin looked up, stung by Kennedy's accusation. What the hell did they think they were doing? "Moscow sometimes compromises me by not telling me everything, Robert. You must believe that."

"Then you better find out, and fast." Kennedy retrieved a sealed envelope from his desk and handed it to the Ambassador. "Here's an urgent message from the President. Go back to your Embassy. Send this to Moscow immediately."

"You've sent this to your own Embassy in Moscow?"

"Not yet. The President thinks this way may be faster. It's taking ten to twelve hours to get messages back and forth. But time is extremely short. The President expects an answer in twenty-four hours. And he expects the dismantling of the missiles to continue. We're monitoring this and we'll know right away if the Soviet Government attempts to use this incident to delay the withdrawal. There are four things we want to know: if your people know where these stolen warheads are, what you're doing to regain control over the warheads, what do you think the Cubans plan to do, and what pressure are you putting on Castro."

"Robert, you're giving me a lot of questions to be answered in a day. First, we have to translate--"

"I don't care," Kennedy snapped. "Just remember this: any kind of nuclear threat or blackmail, by either the Soviet Union or Cuba, will be met with the severest consequences, including invasion, perhaps even retaliation in kind. The President has convened an important meeting for tomorrow night. Unless Chairman Khrushchev has answers to these questions, defensive actions and deployments could be approved and ordered as early as then."

Dobrynin rose and stuffed the envelope inside his tuxedo pocket. He started to say something but Kennedy grasped his arm and directed him to the door.

"Anatoli, time is of the essence. Go." He brusquely shoved the Ambassador out the door, where a Justice Department security guard waited, opening the elevator. Dobrynin never turned around as the elevator doors closed.

Kennedy went back to his desk. His stomach was churning and his eyes burned from lack of sleep. Two days ago, Khrushchev's message had brought cheers to the Cabinet Room. Smiles and cigars and a round of backslapping. Now, this....The Attorney General pressed a button on the intercom set.

"Rudy, have my car ready in five minutes. I need to go back over to the White House.:

10-31-62, Wednesday

Near Moscow

7:15 a.m.

The birch and pine woods around the dacha compound were thick with fresh snow and fallen leaves as Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Suslov tromped through the brush. It was just after sunrise and the First Secretary had invited the Party ideologue to a morning of duck hunting on the grounds of the Uspenskoye estate. They had been hiking for nearly half an hour when Khrushchev called a halt in a well-concealed duck blind and chambered a few rounds in the Antonov hunting rifle. He squinted through the scope for a few moments, checking range.

"Mikhail Andreyevich, I gave you that rifle to shoot at ducks. So far, it's been mostly used to swat branches away. Shall I fire it for you?"

Suslov was wrapped in a black shapka and fur cap, bundled tightly against the wind and cold. Steam swirled around his head as he caught his breath.

"Nikita Sergeyevich, I'm no hunter. I appreciate the chance to talk." He sucked in some more of the frosty air. "But I'd do better back at the lodge."

True enough, Khrushchev thought. Suslov, the great hunter of memos and reports. A tireless enemy of heresy and anti-Soviet agitation. He sighted on a dense copse of branches in the distance, spying movement, and squeezed the trigger. The sharp report of the rifle echoed through the woods. Thousands of birds fluttered into the air, screeching.

"Mikhail Andreyevich, I don't know what to do about the warheads Castro has stolen. Whether to tell Kennedy or not."

The two men moved on deeper into the woods, sliding down into a shallow ravine of fallen tree limbs, then grunting as they climbed the other side. Fifty yards on either side of the men, two squads of gray-jacketed militiamen of the KGB's Ninth Directorate, Department of Special Services, kept pace easily, their Kalishnikovs ready. A perimeter of security, two hundred yards in diameter, moved with the First Secretary as he and Suslov tramped on through the woods, seeking more quarry.

Suslov was soon out of breath again. "Why should you tell Kennedy anything? It opens up too many possibilities for blackmail. It makes us look bad, like a helpless giant. Like we have no influence with Castro."

Khrushchev snorted. "Sometimes we don't."

"Yes. But to tell the Americans that will only invite adventurism. The militarists in the Pentagon already have a very strong hand. Why make it stronger?"

Khrushchev stopped, startled by distant cawing. He sighted on the tiny V-formation and squeezed off a few rounds. Nothing. The targets flew on, oblivious to the First Secretary's marksmanship. He swore at them and lowered the Antonov to load another round.

"Mikhail Andreyevich, you know it's just possible Castro will still wind up provoking the Americans to do something rash. That's why I sent missiles in the first place, to keep the Americans away."

"True, but there's another possibility: Castro may be able to achieve by other means what Operation Anadyr was supposed to achieve: a credible defense for the island, a balance of forces that places American cities under nuclear threat just like ours are, and raises the stakes of an invasion so high that Kennedy can't contemplate such a move."

"It's risky," Khrushchev admitted, "but you may be right. The strategic implications of what Castro's done are intriguing. If we live through it."

"There's another possibility," Suslov added. "Castro can just as easily use or threaten the warheads against our forces. You know how emotional and unstable he is."

Khrushchev conceded the point. "But I think the Americans are the real target. Castro would like nothing better than to bloody Kennedy's nose."

"What are we going to do?"

Khrushchev hoisted up his rifle. "We're going to hunt, Mikhail Andreyevich. That's what we're here for." He stopped short, and raised the Antonov to his shoulders, squeezing off a few rounds at a distant flock. Nothing again. Damn. "It's a good thing the ducks don't have nuclear missiles."

"Comrade Mikoyan will talk some sense into Castro," Suslov said. "He's a good talker, for a diplomat."

"Let's hope Castro will be as good a listener," Khrushchev said. "If Castro bloodies American noses with a Soviet club, the hotheads around Kennedy won't waste any time figuring out who to blame. Any word from our colleague Anastas yet?"

10-31-62, Wednesday

Arlington, Virginia

6:15 a.m.

Mike French winced in paid as he hoisted the 150-pound barbell back onto its rack. Damn shoulder again. He sat up, the spotter helping him, and massaged the aching joint with his hand. Have to go a little easier tomorrow morning. He checked his watch and whistled at the time. He'd been having a decent morning workout at Merrill's Gym on General Bradley Drive for seven months now and only in the last three weeks had he been able to see any results in the bathroom mirror. But that chase and takedown near the Baltimore airport last month had wrenched his right shoulder. Ever since then, the special agent hadn't been able to bench press worth a damn.

French mopped sweat from his forehead. Eddie Marks, the early morning weightroom spotter and trainer, dug his fingers deep into Mike French's tired shoulders, kneading tight muscles. French shrugged a few times and tried to relax. He'd started to nod off sitting up when he heard a distant phone ring. Eddie disappeared to take the call.

"It's for you, Mike."

French got up wearily and trudged over the wall phone. "French."

It was Jim Betters, Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mike French's immediate supervisor.

"I thought I'd catch you at the gym. I just got through a meeting with J Edgar himself, Mike. Get your clothes on and get over here pronto. Something hot's come up, real hot. Looks like you're on the next plane out of National."

Mike fingered stinging sweat out of his eyes. "Where am I going?"

"Houston."

"What's up?"

"Can't say on the phone. "Get your ass over to the Bureau and we'll talk. And pick up your traveling case on the way. Stop home, pack, and tell Julie it's a hush-hush case."

"Understood." He hung up, waved to Eddie and scooped up his bag. He hustled out to the black Ford Galaxy and headed onto the George Washington Parkway for the thirty-minute ride home to Fairfax.

An hour and a half later, Mike French was walking into the headquarters of the FBI's Washington Field Office. Situated on the fourth floor of the Old Post Office Building, at Pennsylvania and 12th Street, the Field Office was home to over a hundred special agents working the Nation's Capital and surrounding areas. French flashed his badge at the duty clerk behind the glass booth and signed in. Minutes later, he was rummaging around the files in the squad room for a travel advance form when SAIC Jim Betters popped in.

"Get your stuff, Mike. There's a meeting now in the ready room."

The ready room was a secure meeting and conference room, just off the radio room on the floor below. An oil portrait of the Director dominated one wall. French and Betters came in and took seats. Cigarette smoke was heavy and cloying in the still air. The fans were on the blink again.

Cliff Hostetler ran the meeting. The Deputy Director, Special Investigative Division, was short and bald, and wreathed in smoke from a Pall Mall that dangled from his mouth.

"Sorry for the short notice, men, but J Edgar just had a meeting with the Attorney General and the President. We've got another crisis situation in Cuba and a potential domestic threat." Hostetler went on to describe what was known at the moment: the aerial photographs of the Bejucal compound, Dennis McDermott's meeting with Brezhnev, elint data indicating general Soviet mobilization on the island, the Navy P-3's reconnaissance of the Sandino.

"All in all," Hostetler summed up, "the Director told me there's a significant potential that, if warheads were actually stolen by the Cubans, that they'll try to smuggle them into the U.S."

Jim Betters was shuffling through some of the action reports. "What do we know about this tanker?"

Hostetler showed him the data from the Navy's Civil Maritime Analysis Department, part of the Office of Naval Intelligence. "Petrocal-Alliant operates her. You can see the specs...75,000 tons displacement, twin marine diesels, standard deck fittings, crew of eighteen. She departed Caracas on Friday, the 26th. Route and manifesting filed with the port authorities. Everything by the book, until Sunday. ONI gets a report from an elint ship off the coast of Cuba that her crew's taken ill and she's heading for the nearest port." Hostetler went to a large map of the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean tacked up on the wall. "Navy fixed her position here..." he tapped on the map with a pencil, "so the nearest port of any size would have been Cienfuegos. In other words, Cuba."

Mike French noted a highlighted dotted line. "What's that line, Cliff?"

"Navy's quarantine line. Apparently, Sandino crossed the line between ships and headed for Cuba. Navy guys knew she was there but a decision was made not to pursue her. Tropical Storm Ella was really churning up the Gulf then. But they did send out some recon planes."

"That's when the P-3 spotted them in the middle of the ocean?"

"Exactly. With a Cuban Navy torpedo boat tied alongside. Here." Hostetler indicated the position.

"And we think the stolen warheads were transferred to the tanker?" French asked.

Hostetler nodded. "No transfer was observed. But the tanker has some crates on deck. And the weather was bad. Sandino's original port of destination was Houston, actually Baytown."

"Where is she now?"

Hostetler read off the figures. "About a hundred and forty miles south of Houston. Navy and Coast Guard are shadowing her, per the President's instructions. About fifty miles from port, she'll be intercepted by three Navy destroyers and ordered to lie to in international waters. That's where we come in."

Betters went up to the map. "That distance was chosen in case she is carrying the warheads. Intel guys at the Director's meeting said their data showed the warheads couldn't be any greater yield than one to one and a half megatons. Fifty miles distance is enough to keep any blast from damaging Houston or the coast. Or so they say."

Hostetler added, "The FBI's sending several agents. Mike, you're in charge of the detail. You'll meet up today with Jack Enders, the SAIC in Houston. There's a meeting scheduled at the Port Authority building in Houston at two p.m. You'll be there. It's my understanding that Customs will also be there, along with the Navy, the Coast Guard, Atomic Energy Commission, a couple of Army explosive ordnance guys and Houston police. For now at least, the FBI's been given the lead agency role."

"Does anybody have a plan?" asked Mike French.

"We're going to board and search that tanker," Hostetler admitted. "Our main job is to make sure that when the Sandino finally docks in Houston, she's not carrying any nuclear warheads. The Navy and the Coast Guard will cooperate on intercepting her at sea. She'll be impounded and the crew taken into custody and debriefed. At the moment, the U.S. Attorney in Houston is planning on being at the two p.m. meeting as well, in case we need legal help. Also, the federal district judge in New Orleans will be in Houston, at the courthouse downtown. For warrants and so forth. But our main job is to stop that tanker at the fifty mile mark, then seize her and her cargo."

French had been worrying with a small wart on his face. Now it ached. "What happens if she is carrying warheads?"

"That's why the AEC and Army guys are there. They're supposed to be experts at detecting and disarming nuclear devices. Even Soviet ones, I guess."

"And if the things go off...?"

Hostetler shrugged fatalistically. "Let's just say I hope all your affairs are in order, Mike. I'm not being flip. It's just that the Attorney General and the Director emphasized that this is a very serious threat and we have to stop it. It's no big secret that Castro hates America. The Director feels that if those warheads somehow make it past us, if there really are warheads on that tanker, we've got a domestic crisis like nothing we've ever seen before."

"No shit," French said. "Two atomic warheads on the loose, somewhere in America. It's enough to make a man consider early retirement."

Hostetler ended the meeting. "Gentlemen, the Bureau is setting up a command post for this investigation next door. Tenth floor of the Justice Department. We're using the old stockroom. Jim, Washington Field Office is the office of origin, so you'll handle all the paper, after it goes through the CP. We're running cabling for secure lines and phones right now. The Director's asked for summaries every four hours, around the clock." He scanned the room, seeing a million questions, then shook his head. "That's about all for now. Mike, you're on your way."

French was already rising. He collected his bags and travel papers and headed out. The flight to Houston would take about three hours. He'd be there by 11:00 am at the latest. Houston SAIC was supposed to meet him at Hobby Airport. Then they'd head for the port.

Mike French was pensive as he threw his bags into the Ford and climbed in. Julie hadn't made things any better. He'd showered and shaved and she'd followed him all around the house, asking questions she knew perfectly well he couldn't answer. Damn. He hated this. Flying off at a moment's notice, on a kiss and a prayer. She deserved better. She and their girls: Margie and Rene.

I thought I'd made it off the tamale squad, he muttered to himself, as he dropped the Galaxy into gear and turned out onto Pennsylvania. He had spent the better part of 1961 detailed to the Miami Field Office, investigating a series of bombings in the Cuban expatriate community. Now here he was again, back with the damned Cubans.

Mike French gunned the big V-8 as he sped across the 14th Street bridge. Ahead on his right, the Pentagon was awash in blazing lights. Helicopters circled overhead, maneuvering for a landing at the riverside helipad. Minutes later, he swung left onto the George Washington Parkway again, this time heading south. Toward National Airport.

10-31-62, Wednesday

Havana

7:00 a.m.

Anastas Iosifarionich Mikoyan uttered a silent prayer as the huge Tu-114 settled onto the tarmac of Jose Marti Airport's Runway 22 Left, its four contra-rotating props biting into the humid tropical air as the plane slowed to turn toward the terminal. It had been a grueling, nail-biting fourteen-hour flight from Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow and Mikoyan was looking forward to feeling solid ground under his feet again. He had nearly vomited three times on the long passage across the stormy North Atlantic and had spent much of the last hour in the aft lavatory, just trying to settle his stomach.

Solid ground, that's what I need, he sighed heavily as the plane trundled toward a huge neon signing flashing Bienvenido a Jose Marti y Havana. Solid ground and a vodka.

A huge black Cadillac awaited him at the foot of the stairs. He came down carefully, gently, still swaying and gratefully grasped the hands of Osvaldo Dorticos, the President of Cuba. Dorticos made some pronouncements in Spanish, which the interpreter rattled off as "welcoming him to the revolutionary workers state of socialist Cuba," or something like that. Mikoyan scarcely heard him. He half climbed, half fell into the back seat of the limousine and unbuttoned his heavy jacket, sweating profusely. Dorticos seemed miffed at the lack of protocol but that couldn't be helped. Mikoyan clung tightly to the armrest and shut his eyes.

The ride into Havana was uneventful and mercifully short. Dorticos ordered the driver to pull up at the motor lobby entrance of the neo-colonial Hotel Nacional. After a brief and forgettable ceremony in front of the entrance--more ramblings about the wonders of the new revolutionary state--Mikoyan was shown upstairs, to a penthouse suite on the twelfth floor. Dorticos fussed about the suite for a few minutes, fixing things to his liking, then stood with Mikoyan in front of a painting depicting Fidel Castro's exile in Mexico, while official photographers snapped pictures of the two statesmen. Popping flash bulbs made Mikoyan's eyes and head hurt. Dorticos soon shooed the photographers out and indicated that the Commandante en Jefe himself would be coming by in a few hours for a chat. Meanwhile, Dorticos observed, perhaps the esteemed member of the Presidium would like to rest.

Indeed, thought Mikoyan, as Dorticos shut the door on his way out. He stood alone for a few moments, dizzy and sick to his stomach. Perhaps a hot shower would do. Mikoyan unpacked a few items and availed himself of the facilities.

An hour later, feeling somewhat more refreshed, he thought to explore this decadent palace of a hotel a little more. To his surprise, he found the double French doors locked. He rattled the doors harder but they were definitely locked. A few seconds later, the doors opened from the other side. Four rather healthy, uniformed Cuban soldiers stood in the hall. They wore the olive green shirts and fatigues of the Revolutionary Army.

The soldiers spoke no Russian and Mikoyan's Spanish was crude. By gesture and written notes, the Soviet learned that Castro was coming over soon and he was not to leave the room. Mikoyan asked when El Lider Maximo would be arriving. He soon determined that the security detail didn't know.

I need to get to the Embassy, he realized. He tried communicating that to the security watch but they professed no understanding. Mikoyan soon gave up, and the door was shut and locked again. He was a prisoner, albeit in rather sumptuous surroundings. Maybe the telephone...

Mikoyan tried ringing the Soviet Embassy. Surely Alekseev or somebody would be able to help. The phone rang for nearly a minute, then a Cuban operator came on the line. Again, she spoke only Spanish. Glumly, Mikoyan hung up. He sat heavily on the side of the bed.

It was going to be a long day.

Ten hours later, groggy and faint, Mikoyan rose at the sound of the doors being unlocked. He realized he had passed out and fallen asleep on the bed, in his suit. He got up, just in time to see the sweat-soaked fatigues of Fidel Castro standing over him.

"Bienvenidos, companero." Castro smiled. He stuck out his hand. "I trust you had a good rest?"

Mikoyan smoothed out the rumples of his suit and stood up, a bit dizzily. Several armed guards had entered the room and stood at attention in front of the door. Castro plopped onto the side of the bed, stroking his oily black beard thoughtfully. Mikoyan found a chair by the night-table and sat there.

"Greetings and salutations to the Presidium and to companero Nikita Khrushchev," Castro intoned. "I assume you've come to see what this revolutionary Cuba is all about?"

"Actually, no, Mr. President," Mikoyan told him. His head was swirling. I'd kill a hundred Cubans for a drink. "I've come to consult with you. And to express the Presidium's great concern over recent events. As you know, we are missing some important pieces of Soviet state property, some atomic devices actually. Your military commanders can help us recover them, I'm sure. I've come to ask your help in this."

Castro folded his arms over a sizeable paunch. "Ah, the devices. Comrade Alekseev asked me about that the other day." Castro looked pained. "It's a tragedy, isn't it? These are terrible weapons, frightful things. When I agreed to host your missiles and your warheads, I'd hoped your people would be able to handle such equipment better. As professionals. Now, you've lost two warheads. A pity."

"Mr. President," Mikoyan had practically memorized the letter he was to deliver, "let's not misunderstand each other. The Presidium has authorized me to deliver the strongest possible warning to the Cuban Government. It's quite plain that these devices were stolen from our base at Bejucal. We all know that. You know that. The time has come to return these devices and play with nuclear fire no more."

Castro's eyes narrowed. With a slight nod, he ordered the security detail out of the suite. "Comrade Mikoyan, let me be blunt. You're an old soldier. So am I. I speak the truth...we have no knowledge of these devices. Cubans are ready to defend the Revolution to the death. But we're not madmen. Now, let's be honest with each other. Your own people have misplaced this equipment. I'm upset that Comrade Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles without consulting Cuba. From the beginning of Anadyr, we've been involved in decisions. Now, the missiles are taken from us and we're left defenseless."

"Mr. President, I hardly think Cuba is defenseless. For one thing, there are still forty-thousand Soviet troops on the island. And all the tanks, the MiGs, the artillery...."

Castro held up his hand. "I am concerned about what the Americans think. What will Kennedy do? Hardly a week goes by when the Yanquis aren't trying something...shelling our coastal villages, dropping leaflets, blowing up power stations. Last year, Kennedy sent an invasion force to the Playa Giron. Only quick reactions from my commanders and heroic fighting kept the invasion contained. If Kennedy were a real commander, he would have sent more planes to bomb my men. I might not be here, having this conversation with you."

Mikoyan rubbed his eyes wearily. The room was swimming. He was still groggy. "The Cuban revolution won't fail. We can't let it. Cuba is the first nation to achieve socialism without being occupied by our Army. We can't afford to relax our vigilance. Every Communist has an obligation to work for the final victory."

"Then why are the missiles being removed?"

Mikoyan had known the conversation would come to this. Khrushchev had drilled the answer into his head. "Because, Kennedy threatens world war. We have to be statesmen about this. What good does a socialist Cuba do anyone if the rest of the world is incinerated? Nikita Sergeyevich is determined that the Cuban revolution will be victorious. But remember Lenin: the Bolsheviks failed many times before the final victory. So it is with every revolution...."

"And in the meantime," said Castro, "the Norteamericanos take over my country. No...this we will not permit." The Commandante en Jefe got up and began pacing the room. "Our revolution is different. We need weapons, all the weapons we've asked for. Even your nuclear missiles. Kennedy respects nuclear weapons. If we can threaten him the same way he threatens us, then our Revolution will be secure. Only then."

Mikoyan realized he was getting nowhere. "Comrade Mr. President, Cuba can't threaten the United States, even with nuclear weapons. That's why you have to return the warheads you've taken. Two warheads may destroy two cities. You may kill thousands of Americans. But the Americans have thousands of nuclear weapons. They have thousands of troops, thousands of aircraft, and ships. Any threat you make against Kennedy can be returned a thousand times over. Is Cuba worth that risk? Think tactics, Mr. President. A good commander probes for weakness. Only a fool charges right into the enemy's strength."

Castro mulled the idea over. "Strength is something we never have enough of. I know Kennedy. He wants me dead. I have men in America who say this. The DGI runs a number of operations with informants and agents and they all report the same thing: Kennedy is obsessed with Cuba. I have no choice but to fight. And Cuba will fight, companero, Cuba will fight to the death. Make no mistake about that. We'll soon be able to take the fight right into the heart of America. When we can do that, Kennedy will listen to reason. Not before."

"In the name of Lenin and Marx, in the name of revolutionary sanity, Mr. President, I'm imploring you to give back the warheads. This is madness. We're on the brink of catastrophe here, maybe the end of civilization. When Cuban survivors are picking through radioactive ruins for scraps, will they be thinking of the revolution then? Give back the warheads!"

"Don't take away the missiles!" Castro countered. He slammed a fist on the table, nearly knocking over the light. "Stop the dismantling work now and see what the Americans do! Cuba has many needs, Comrade Mikoyan. Let me have the missiles! And give me more tanks. More planes and artillery. I've asked for additional MiGs. Order General Pliyev to turn over the SA-2 missiles to us. At least, give us the means to shoot American intruders out of the sky. Everyday, they violate our airspace. Cuba is not a whore! We must have weapons to defend ourselves!"

Mikoyan glared at the Commandante for a moment, then got up himself. He knew enough not to challenge the Cuban leader when he was angry, emotional, confrontational. He started for the door, then halted, remembering the detail of soldiers outside. "I need to speak with Moscow. I need to go to the Embassy, but you've imprisoned me here like a thief."

"Khrushchev is the thief!" Castro thundered. "He steals our future." Castro pointed to the phone on the night-table. "I've arranged for you to make calls from this room. You'll find you can make a phone call all the way to Moscow from that table. And you will stay here, in this room, until I have a satisfactory answer from your colleagues." Castro jammed his thumbs under his belt with satisfaction at the prospect. "My guards will see to that."

The Commandante tore out of the room angrily, slamming the French doors behind him. Mikoyan heard the guards latch the bolt from the other side.

Glumly, Anastas Mikoyan realized he was trapped. Trapped in the clutches of a megalomaniac. He went to the night-table and picked up the phone.

10-31-62, Wednesday

Miami

7:15 a.m.

Miguel Munoz had gotten up earlier than usual Wednesday morning. He hadn't been able to sleep all night and had tossed in bed for hours. Finally, just before dawn, he arose, not wishing to disturb Rosita any longer. He slipped into old jeans and a flannel shirt and went into the backyard of their small house on Gardenia Street, to tend to his garden. There was always work to do: pulling out weeds, re-potting, watering and distributing mulch. It was therapeutic and restful. Munoz knew he needed something to take his mind off things. Hector had given him a basketful of errands to run the last day or so. Odd errands, completely out of character for Operation Moncada. Just yesterday, he had had to hurriedly rent a shrimping boat in Mobile, spending $15,000 of his account money to do the job. What the hell was going on?

Munoz wondered if he should try to contact Sparrow. His handler had warned him never to do that, but still he wondered.

His thoughts were interrupted by Rosita's voice. She called from the porch, dressed in her light blue robe. A phone call had awakened her.

Munoz frowned. At this hour? He took the call in the kitchen.

It was a man named Oscar Hoya, a business associate of Munoz. They had often attended auctions together in Chicago, swapping leads on antiques and knickknacks. Hoya had a good eye for colonial furniture and gifts. Munoz often bought from him.

"I found the farm house for you, Miguel," Hoya was saying. "It's in the Dayton area, of Ohio. As you wished. You planning on investing in farm property now?"

"Not at all," Munoz told him. He couldn't very well explain his nephew Hector's request for an abandoned farm near a highway. "Tell me the details."

"The place was once owned by a family called Sumner. A few miles southwest of Dayton, in the Hamilton area. The realtor owns it now. Bank had to foreclose two years ago. The agency bought it, thinking a new freeway might be coming through. But that project fell through."

Munoz mentally reviewed the criteria Hector had given him: isolated but within half an hour of a major highway. "How much?'

"One hundred dollars a week. The place has no electricity or water though. As I said, it's abandoned."

Munoz had no idea whether such amenities were important to the operation or not. Hector hadn't said. He decided to accept Hoya's offer. "Go ahead and sign the papers. I'll wire you the deposit this afternoon. The farm is isolated?"

"Very isolated," Hoya said. "You can't get anything more isolated."

Munoz thanked him and hung up. Now he had to get word to his nephew somehow. The properties and locations in Atlanta, Roanoke, Mobile and Dayton had been firmed up. He'd done just what his nephew had asked, just as Sparrow himself had said..."the success of the operation depends on you doing exactly as your nephew requests. When he calls, he's speaking for someone very high." Who, exactly? Miguel had wondered. But Sparrow wouldn't say.

Miguel sat at the kitchen counter and sipped the black coffee Rosita had just made. He was mightily intrigued by Hector's unusual requests lately. Was the operation underway yet? Was it going well? Of course, Sparrow had warned him that he was never to breathe a word of this to anybody. And he hadn't. But he was curious, all the same.

Munoz had convinced himself that Hector had to be planning to flee Cuba, probably with some friends. Most likely, his friends had a lot of money. Perhaps, they hoped to make money by smuggling guns and drugs. That made Miguel an accomplice. Such a prospect didn't overly worry Miguel; over the years since he had come to the States, he'd imported a lot of things illegal. It was part of the business. And with the paranoia of the Americans about Cuba these days, Miguel didn't wonder that such an operation as Moncada was the best way to bring refugees in. Hundreds came everyday by boat or raft and look where they were: interned in camps, guarded like dangerous prisoners. Hector and Sparrow and the others had set up a different kind of pipeline.

"That's the only way any of this makes sense," Munoz told himself. "Hector has no money." But when Moncada was over, perhaps, that would change. If Miguel understood the situation correctly, they would all have a lot of money indeed.

The immediate problem was getting word back to Cuba, to his nephew. Hector had warned him against trying to make any phone calls to Cuba these days. The normal arrangement was for Miguel to make a dead drop of his information in an out-of-the-way location. Lately, Sparrow had been asking him to use a small grocer on the outskirts of Little Havana, down at the end of Calle Ocho. He had insisted that the right people would get the information if he did this.

Miguel went rummaging in the pantry for a small plastic pouch, the type he had been using in the drops. Sparrow's instructions were quite explicit: Fold up any documents inside the pouch, staple the pouch shut, then place it in an old empty wine bottle. Then put the bottle in a paper sack. Leave the sack behind the trash bin, next to the third fence post, in the abandoned lot next to the Garcia Carneceria. Do this at noon on Wednesday of every second week.

Today.

Munoz wrote up the details that Hoya had given him. He stuffed the page into a pouch, along with several other pages describing and locating the other properties Hector had asked him to secure. He stapled the pouch. In the pantry, the only wine bottle available still had a half an inch of Bourbon in the bottom. Miguel started to pour it in the sink, then thought better. He downed the liquid in one fiery gulp, then rinsed the bottle.

Miguel Munoz was pleased that Sparrow and the others thought him worthy enough to act as agent and courier for the operation in America. He had always wanted to do his part for Cuba. But the spycraft and the secrecy still bothered him at times. He didn't want to implicate Rosita or his daughters in any of this.

I'm not James Bond, he told himself, though he had recently seen Dr. No for the third time. But it was duty and he stuffed the bottle in a paper sack, then placed the sack in his attache case. He'd drop the sack off on his way to the shop.

Rosita appeared in the kitchen, fresh from her morning shower. Miguel kissed his wife lightly, then set about making eggs and bacon, while she combed her black hair out.

He hoped and prayed that Hector knew what he was doing.
CHAPTER 8

10-31-62, Wednesday

In the Gulf of Mexico

6:00 a.m.

Eight thousand yards off the southeastern quarter of the drilling rig, Jorge Perez ordered Sandino to all stop. Engines cut, she drifted for another mile or so, before the anchor was paid out and took hold in what the fathometer called three hundred feet of water. It was dawn, blustery and cool, and Perez was in a hurry.

For the last four hours, ever since they had made a slight course change to a more northerly heading of 355 degrees, the Sandino's surface radar had tracked several ships a few miles astern. By sunup, even Ramirez was worried. They were being shadowed, there was no longer any doubt of that. The Navy had assigned two destroyers from the Chestnut Line's Task Force 135 to follow the tanker. In the green glow of the scope, both ships lay at the extreme range of the radar, near the outer periphery of the sweeping plot lines. They had kept their distance throughout the night.

Now, Ramirez knew that time was running out. As soon as Perez had Gulf Zodiac Four on scope, he had stationed himself on the tanker's bridge catwalk with a pair of binoculars. At ten thousand yards, the dim shape of the rig had slid over the horizon, winking in and out of view through sea-level fog banks that had formed overnight. A pair of warning lights outlined her superstructure, alternately blinking red and white. Otherwise, she was a vacant hulk of a floating city, massive yet poised on concrete pilings a few hundred feet over the waves.

Gulf Zodiac Four had been vacated only two years before, according to the registry information Perez had shown Ramirez. Owned by the Gulf Oil Company, the rig was technically a semi-submersible drilling platform, floating on submerged pontoons that were themselves anchored to the seabed several hundred feet below. She had been built in Pascagoula, Mississippi in the 50s and towed to her current position, then erected and fixed over the rich oil wells of the Fryerhof Rise in late 1958. Zodiac Four had spent the next two years steadily pumping out the black gold of the Rise until one hot July day in 1960, when an explosion rocked the rig and started a fire that rapidly spread into an uncontrollable inferno.

By evening of that day in July, the oil company had evacuated all crewmen aboard the rig and contracted with a firefighting company out of Houston to cap the well and smother the flames. It had taken Red Brown nearly two weeks but by the end of July, though the deck and superstructure of the rig was a twisted, smoldering heap of wreckage, the fire was out. The inspectors later condemned the entire structure as unsafe. The oil company had declared Zodiac Four a total loss. By Labor Day of 1960, the rig had been stripped of its machinery and saleable items, and a barrier of warning buoys put in place to warn off trespassers. The process of disconnecting the rig from her moorings and disposing of the structure had been mired in court battles ever since. By the fall of 1962, the oil company, the Interior Department and the states of Louisiana and Alabama had been slugging it out for several years.

Meanwhile, Gulf Zodiac Four, scorched in fire, rusting and battered by storms, stood mute and dark in the midst of incalculable wealth buried in the Fryerhof Rise. Once a month, the oil company paid the New Orleans engineering firm of Bryson and Cone to make a cursory inspection of the rig and issue a report on her structural integrity and seaworthiness. The firm's most recent inspection team, ferried in by helicopter from the Crescent City, had departed the rig only twenty-four hours before the Sandino had appeared. Their report, due in a court proceeding in New Orleans on Monday, had reiterated dozens of previous inspection reports: Gulf Zodiac Four was still structurally sound, not yet a danger to the environment, but corrosion and storms had taken their toll. The inspection crew leader, a sandy-haired man named Keith Kyle, had left an updated certificate in the Operations Shack on Level Five and replaced all the red and white warning posters on the main deck. For good measure, Kyle had also disconnected all remaining busbar connections in the electric plant room and let the plant batteries drain. The rig's generators were normally run by natural gas piped off from the well. But the lines had been capped for two years. No sense in leaving any juice to cause problems, he had written in his report.

Rafael Ramirez knew they would have to hurry. With the tanker under surveillance, they would have to get the warheads off the Sandino and stored somewhere on Gulf Zodiac Four, before the Navy closed and tried to board her. He had discussed a plan with Perez during the night. Now, with the first traces of an orange dawn flaring in the east, it was time to get to work.

Like most tankers, Sandino carried several small lifeboats, two-ton picket craft with small marine diesels and room for about ten crewmen. The boats were slung in mooring cradles both port and starboard, abeam of the deckhouse. They could be swung out and lowered into the sea from these positions. Once a cruise, the tanker crew ran through the Abandon-Ship drill, just to make sure the procedure was understood and the equipment functioning properly. The last drill had come the very day Captain Figueroa had been strangled in the engine room and dumped overboard.

Overnight, Ramirez and Dmitri Kapitonov had measured the dimensions of each boat. Though a tight fit, it was apparent that the warheads and their tarpaulin coverings could be carried in the boats, as long as they were lashed securely. Perez had warned the Cuban leader that the boats were not especially seaworthy in heavy seas. "She'll roll and bob like a cork in three foot seas," he had told Ramirez. More importantly, the warheads were heavy. Their eight hundred pound weight had to be concentrated as close to the lifeboat's center of buoyancy as possible, if they were to avoid foundering.

Ramirez had ordered the boats lowered to the main deck even as Sandino was still thirty miles south of the rig. His plan was simple: as soon as Gulf Zodiac Four hove into view, Sandino would lower the lifeboats, each bearing one warhead and half the team, into the sea. The tanker would drop anchor only long enough to get the boats down and away, then she would quickly weigh anchor and get underway again, heading northwest, away from Zodiac Four, as fast as her 65,000 shaft horsepower diesels would take her. With any luck, her brief stop a few miles from the rig would go unnoticed in the dark moonless night. She'd been on her way to the Baytown refinery by sunup and the Americans would be none the wiser.

But weather and navigational complications had put them behind schedule by an hour. By the time the tanker had come to all stop, the sky was already lightening up enough for aircraft surveillance. Ramirez watched anxiously as the Sandino's deck crane steadily lowered the portside boat down. She was groaning and straining in her cradle with the extra weight of the warhead. If anything happened....

In half an hour, the boats were down. Ramirez ordered his men over the sides and, after hurried last-minute instructions to Perez, joined them on the rope ladders. He scrambled down the ladder, then misjudged the distance to the boat and slipped into the ocean with a loud splash. The water was cool and he came up spewing and coughing. He had missed the boat by five feet and quickly kicked his way over to the waiting arms of Barracoa and Arrantes. They hoisted him up and he fell into the boat, shivering.

"Capitan? Capitan, you okay? We were trying to get the boat turned better...that wave came...."

Ramirez coughed out seawater. "Okay," he croaked. "It's okay...get going!"

He heard the small diesel sputter to life and seconds later, they were turning in the choppy wake of the tanker and heading for the drilling rig. Gulf Zodiac Four loomed ahead, a brooding black titan on stout concrete legs. As Arrantes steered them toward the pilings, the scorch marks of the fire could be plainly seen along the sides of the deck, creeping like fingers right up the latticework of the lower derrick. Torn piping hung over the edge like steel spaghetti. The flare stack was gone, only a jagged stump of the metal base remained. Piles of charred equipment littered the deck and huge tanks, burst open like balloons, lined the sides of the lower decks.

Jorge Perez had told him that Zodiac Four, like most modern rigs, had winches and cranes for lifting almost anything from sea level up to the deck levels. In addition, she had an open air elevator cab and track lining one of her pilings. The tanker First Officer didn't know how big the elevator was or what its capacity might be. Until they reached the rig, there was no way to know. Ramirez hoped he might be able to use the elevator to get the warheads out of the boats.

The Russian, Kapitonov, had told him that too much exposure to seawater and salt air could cause problems for the warheads. "It's the firing circuitry," he explained. "The warheads have capacitor banks in a small compartment in their nose cones." Charged by batteries, he had gone on to say, the capacitors generated a pulse of current sufficient to fire the high explosive lenses that surrounded the central fissionable pit of the warhead. The signal to discharge the capacitors came from a barometric pressure-sensing circuit. Other circuits detected the warhead's deceleration in the atmosphere. All the circuits contained relays and contacts that could be affected by corrosion and rough handling. "In this environment," Kapitonov had told him, "I don't know what might happen. We need to get the devices to dry land and let me examine the batteries and circuits."

That is our plan, Ramirez reminded him, though he too secretly worried that the warheads would be inoperable once they made it, if they made it to the States. He peered ahead, watching the wave action against Zodiac Four's pilings, directing Arrantes to turn, then turn again, then chop the engines. Both boats drifted underneath the massive deck of the rig, scraping one of the pilings and some loose cabling floating in the water. Overhead, a maze of shattered piping completely blocked the sky.

"That way," he yelled, spying the elevator cab track on a far piling. Arrantes ran the boat's throttle up a notch and they crabbed sideways through the chop, taking light sea spray over the sides. A few minutes' cautious maneuvering brought them alongside the piling. The elevator cab was nowhere in sight. Only a few metal plates remained. And the track, on closer inspection, was a twisted, scorched seam of steel peeling off the side of the piling.

They were stuck.

"Cut the engines," Ramirez ordered. "See if we can tie up to that track somehow...there has to be something we can grab onto. If we stay down here like this, the waves'll push us over."

Grunting and sweating in the humid morning air, Saguente and Barracoa made fast the boat to a piece of track stanchion and looped the rope tight around the boat's cleats. Aleman and Calderone did the same with the other boat, finding a suitable mooring on the other side of the huge piling.

Ramirez held on and stood up in the bow, scanning the horizon around them. The day was dawning cloudy and cool, though the night's winds had died down. Maybe ten knots, he estimated. On the western horizon, the main mast of the Sandino's funnel stack was just visible. She'd be over the horizon in a minute, on her way to Houston. And with any luck, drawing their curious and persistent surveillance with her. No other ships were visible, as best he could see through the pilings. The sky was quiet, mostly blocked from his view by the mass of Zodiac Four. They were alone and seemingly undetected, for the moment.

Ramirez found a dry spot and hunkered down at the stern end of the boat.

Now we wait, he told himself. In a tanker's lifeboats, bearing two fission-fusion nuclear warheads, yield unknown, tied up to an oil drilling rig in the middle of the windswept Gulf of Mexico. Ramirez smiled faintly, thinking about the time he and Calderone had camped overnight in the cramped confines of a BTR-60 fighting vehicle, only a few months ago, in training. They were practicing night assault tactics on an abandoned hangar at the Campo Justicia airfield an hour west of Havana. He'd made a bet with Felix that night: if they made it to the States alive, he'd see to it that the Subteniente had a night for himself with a room full of Yanqui prostitutas. One night, just to show the young senoras what a real Cuban was like. They'd made a solemn vow on it. Ramirez wondered if Felix would ever be able to collect.

It all depended on Paco now. Had he made it back to Batabano? Had he gotten word to Havana, to the MINFAR? Ramirez had made a quick decision...to stay on the Sandino would have been suicide. They had to get off, find another way to get their weapons into the States. The question now was: how long would they have to wait here? He'd drilled into his men that they would only succeed by being resourceful, by staying several steps ahead of the enemy. Could they get to the mainland at all? Or would they drown in a tropical storm, stranded only a few hours from their objective?

Ramirez settled down lower in the boat, shielding his shivering body from the wind.

10-31-62, Wednesday

In the Gulf of Mexico

8:45 a.m.

Jerome Hollins was glad of one thing. At least, that tropical storm Ella had finally ducked south of the coast and headed back out to sea. He chewed on a wad of jerky as he scanned the shimmering emerald of the ocean ahead of them. Jenny Ann had been underway since just past 4:00 a.m. that morning and the sea had been calm and placid the whole way, quiet as a bathtub. He glanced over at Pete, catching a few winks in the corner of the shrimper's tiny pilothouse. He figured he'd let the boy sleep awhile longer. They would be busy enough shortly, dealing with the smugglers that Mexican Rodriguez had paid him to meet.

Hollins checked the chart once more. By his reckoning, they ought to be seeing that rig any moment now. He'd set the Jenny on course 215 degrees, south by southwest, and they'd been running in light seas at nearly thirty knots for the better part of three and a half hours. He had never been this far south in the shrimper before--the best grounds were west of here-- but he figured he knew this part of the Gulf about as well as any man. And he remembered the stories they had told around Minnie's about the fire that had nearly sent Zodiac Four to the bottom a few years ago. Damn lucky, if you ask me, he had told Pete, while they stowed gear getting ready this morning. A dead crew of roughnecks on that rig would have been a real publicity nightmare for the oil company.

Sure enough, he spotted the wrecked derrick of the drilling rig right on schedule, just peeking over the southern horizon as the Jenny's fuel gauge settled onto the sixty percent mark. Right away, he chopped the Mercury back to nearly idle and made for the rig's open pilings at a more sedate ten knots. He was impressed by the scale of the damage he saw as the boat drew closer.

A little reconnoitering from a distance seemed like a good thing to do.

Hollins steered a zigzag course approaching the rig, cautiously peering ahead for any debris in the water, anything that could foul Jenny's props or damage the boat. A few hundred yards away, he spied one of the Sandino's lifeboats, bobbing next to a piling directly under the rig deck.

"Ahoy!" he yelled out over the water. Beside him, Pete Borders stirred and got groggily to his feet. "Ahoy there!"

Initially, there was no reply. Hollins chopped the throttle even more and let the shrimper drift forward, eyeing the concrete pilings approaching off the starboard bow. "Ahoy there! This is the Jenny Ann!"

For several minutes, Hollins steered the shrimper in a tight circle around the periphery of the pilings, squinting into the shadows. Definitely, one, maybe two boats, were tied up to the concrete legs. He had just made a complete orbit of the platform when a heavily accented voice carried across the water.

"Senior Rodriguez sent you?"

Hollins killed the Jenny's engine altogether, carefully steering away from the rough, massive pillars supporting Zodiac Four. If he wasn't careful, the waves would ram the boat against the piling and hole her. Already Pete was out on the foredeck, on his stomach, ready to toss a mooring line.

"That's right," Hollins replied. "To make a pickup. I'm supposed to take some stuff into Mobile, to a warehouse."

"Who's warehouse?" The voice was authoritative, definitely a Spanish speaker.

Hollins thought for a minute. Should've given me a password. "Red Lynch's Palm Breezes. East Bay."

Nothing was said for nearly a minute. Then: "I'll bring our boat out. Can you tie up to that piling?"

Hollins studied the structure for a moment. He didn't see anything to moor the Jenny to. "Don't see nothing that'll hold us," he called out. "But the Jenny's pretty sturdy. If I have to, I'll drive her bow against the pillar and hold her there."

Hollins re-started the engine and gently maneuvered the boat so that her bow was scraping the nearest pillar. He turned the wheel to starboard and pinned the boat there while the smugglers drifted out from their hiding place. Hollins whistled as he got a clearer look at their boat.

That baby's loaded to the railings. A huge tarpaulin-covered hump in the center of the boat had settled her so low in the water that an occasional wave washed over her freeboard. In higher seas, she'd be swamped in minutes. Four men, Cubans he figured, stood on deck. All wore dingy olive fatigues, soaked with sweat and seawater. The boat's pilot brought her abeam of the Jenny and Pete snagged one of their lines. In a minute, he had the two boats lashed together.

"Looks like you got yourself quite a load there," Hollins offered. He stepped out of the pilothouse and took the stairs three at a time, down to the deck. He held out a hand, as the smugglers' spokesman leaped onto the deck and looked around.

He was a lean, almost emaciated man, with a full black beard and droopy moustache, Hollins noted. The Cuban prowled and poked all around the aft deck, seemingly looking for something. His face was scarred and pocked, and his left eyelid looked sleepy. Hollins stuck out his hand again.

"Jerome Hollins. Enterprise Seafood."

The Cuban scowled at him for a second, looked back at the others on his own boat, then with a faint twitch of his head, ordered them aboard. The other Cubans soon joined him in combing the Jenny Ann.

Finally, the smugglers' leader spoke. "You have enough deck space. My cargo is heavy. We can tie it down here...."

Hollins followed the Cuban around. He shrugged at Pete, still crouching up on the foredeck. Pushy bastards, aren't they? "What kind of stuff you got, anyway? Mr. Rodriguez didn't tell--"

He stopped short, when one of the Cubans jammed an automatic rifle in his chest.

"Hey, now--watch that thing--"

The Cuban leader motioned for Pete to come down to the deck. He complied. The Cubans marched both of them to the railing, and turned them face to the sea.

"Mr. Rodriguez talks too much," the Cuban leader said.

Hollins had instinctively put his hands over his head. "I ain't carrying no cash, if that's what you're after. Look, I made a deal with--"

Ramirez grabbed Hollins by the collar and shoved him forward, so that the shrimper was bent at the waist over the rail. Hollins swallowed hard, drooling into the ocean five feet below.

"What has Rodriguez told you?"

Hollins blinked and stammered, trying to remember what the peculiar caller had related.

"Not much...you guys needed some help getting your stuff into port. Smuggling, I guess. He offered a good price and I accepted. What the hell's--"

Ramirez hissed into his ear. "Did he tell you what I'm carrying?'

"No-no, not at all," Hollins muttered. "Didn't tell me a thing. And I don't need to--"

Ramirez released him and backed away. He nodded at Manuel Arrantes. The corporal raised the Kalishnikov and squeezed off a few rounds. Jerome Hollins' head exploded in red spray and his body jerked as if stung. Ramirez planted a boot in his back and the body pitched over the railing into the sea.

Pete Borders started crying, mumbling and trembling. He screwed his eyes shut. Arrantes fired again, a quick burst. Borders twisted like a windblown stick and crumpled to the deck. In seconds, Aleman and Ramirez had dumped his body overboard too.

Ramirez was already climbing the ladder to the pilothouse. He killed the Jenny's engine, to save fuel, then scanned the panel. The instruments looked familiar enough. He found charts, and laid them out, mentally calculating a course heading into Mobile. Below him, Aleman, Arrantes and the others were already slipping the tarpaulin off the K-5 warhead, preparing to transfer the weapon to the Hollins' boat.

Kapitonov was shaking his head. "She's too heavy. You'll never get her steady enough to get to the other boat. We need some kind of bridge."

The men looked around. Some debris-- metal pipe sections, pieces of tubing, broken plating--drifted in the water swirling under Zodiac Four. But nothing heavy enough to serve as a ramp. Kapitonov convinced them they could roll the device to the shrimper if they could find a heavy piece of plate. "We've got to keep her dry as possible," he told them.

It was Aleman who spotted the elevator cab door. Attached by stout brackets and hinges, the door was a steel plate and wire mesh combination that hung down by a rusted-through hinge pin. Kapitonov saw it too and nodded, indicating it would do nicely, if they could knock it loose. Aleman yelled over to the other boat and explained to Saguente what they needed. The sergeant nodded understanding. He unlashed their own boat and drifted over to the elevator track. After a few minutes of banging, he and Oriente had the door off. It was heavier than expected but they managed to wrestle it aboard the lifeboat. Saguente then steered the boat over to the Jenny and tied up along the port side.

The operation took about ten minutes. Throughout, Ramirez watched from the top of the pilothouse stairs, nervously scanning the horizon for ships or aircraft. He had seen contacts on the Jenny's radar a few minutes before but he saw nothing in the binoculars he had found by the wheel. Commercial traffic, he hoped.

With Kapitonov and Calderone helping, the men managed to secure the elevator door to the railings of both boats. Now they were joined amidships by a short metal gangway, sturdy enough--the Russian hoped--to bear the weight of the bombs. After a moment's rest, four men at each corner of the warhead half lifted, half rolled the device over to the makeshift bridge. With a loud grunt, they lifted it up and nearly lost it overboard when a wave slapped the boats with a shudder. Quick bracing by Calderone kept the device on track and she was soon rolled over and thudded onto the deck planking of the Jenny Ann. A minute later, the K-5 was covered again and the tarp eyelets tied to deck stanchions with nylon line.

The operation was repeated with the other warhead, which was slightly lighter at five hundred pounds. It was approaching noon when the rest of their mission gear was loaded aboard and the steel plate bridge tossed overboard. Calderone and Aleman unlashed the two lifeboats and signaled Ramirez the lines were clear. Underneath them, the Jenny's Mercury diesel rumbled to life.

While Ramirez maneuvered the boat in a tight turn and set them on course, Calderone and Kapitonov saw to the final securing and rigging of the warheads. Their eyes met over top of the heavier K-5.

"Amigo, you did good work back there." Calderone said.

Kapitonov wiped sweat from his eyes with his shirt sleeve. "These are my babies. I've spent a lifetime building and testing them. I don't like to see them mistreated."

Calderone grinned. "Your babies have a bad temper, eh? We don't want to make 'em mad too soon."

Kapitonov ran his hand along the machined metal of the casing. He frowned, looked down and swore a Russian curse, rubbing at something on the metal.

"What is it, ruso? What's wrong?"

Kapitonov pressed his face closer. "The casing...there's a crack. Here--you can feel it...."

Calderone cautiously traced his fingers over a fine ridge. A warm silvery powder coated his fingers. He started to rub it off, but Kapitonov grabbed his wrist.

"Don't! Let me see that..." He peered more closely at the residue on Calderone's

fingers. "My God!---the pit's cracked--"

He was interrupted by a chorus of shouts from above them. Ramirez was pointing at the sky, so was Saguente. Kapitonov stood up, still holding Calderone's wrist.

On the horizon, a trio of black specks droned in the distance. They were headed toward the Jenny.

"Navy planes!" Ramirez yelled. He slammed a fist on the window sill. "Get those nets out! There...and there..."

Calderone tore away, helping the others wrestle the shrimper's nets out of their keeps. They struggled with the seining cords, then unstripped the nets and began tossing them over the side, streaming the nets aft in a tangle of line. Anything to make it look like they were shrimping. Ramirez cut the engines back a half and glared at the oncoming aircraft. As he watched, more specks appeared on the horizon. An entire squadron....

Madre de Dios, we're cursed! He sat down on the pilot's stool and studied the charts again. It was a hundred and fifty miles to Mobile. Three, maybe four hours. Their best course was 025 degrees. And their speed...he'd chopped the engine to diminish their wake, anything to avoid attracting attention. They couldn't possibly know....

Ramirez gritted his teeth, cursing as the first flight of the P-3s roared by a few thousand feet overhead. They kept on course, and made no attempt to turn and inspect the Jenny Ann. That's good, my Yanqui friends, just you keep on going. We're just a simple shrimping operation, that's all. Leave us alone and go chase Russian ships or something. We're just a harmless little shrimping boat....

Ramirez smiled wryly at the thought. A harmless little shrimping boat with a hundred kiloton punch.

10-31-62, Wednesday

Moscow

2:00 p.m.

Nikita Khrushchev surveyed the long line of black ZIL limousines pulling up at the portalled entrance to the Council of Ministers Building with a grim face. It was snowing lightly in Moscow that afternoon and the low dark clouds matched his mood perfectly. He had called an emergency meeting of the Presidium as soon as the Foreign Ministry couriered over the text of Kennedy's latest message. Khrushchev had read the dispatch at breakfast that morning. But he never finished the salted herring and tea Nina had set out for him.

Kennedy's tone was angry and the First Secretary himself was livid. He paced back and forth around the second-floor Presidium meeting room, pausing only to glare out the windows. As Presidium members gathered, he greeted each in turn with a curt nod, preferring to commune with a bust of Lenin in one corner of the room. Gromyko came in first, Podgorny second. In succession, they filed in and removed their shapkas, mufflers and hats. Moments later, Sharidov and Malinovsky entered, then Brezhnev, Kosygin, and the rest. Several helped themselves from the samovar on the stainless steel cart by the door.

Khrushchev shut the double doors with a loud click and sat at the head of the oblong table. Red-bordered TASS-Direct folders were passed out and the members studied the latest missive from the Americans. Coughs and angry mutterings circulated around the room.

"By now," said the First Secretary, "you've read or scanned Kennedy's latest message. Someone has leaked to the Americans that the Cubans have stolen our warheads. Someone in this room," he added, "and I'll find out who soon enough. I'll deal with the traitor in good time. I called this meeting because we have to respond. Kennedy's given us until midnight tonight, his time, to reply."

Mikhail Suslov put down his glasses and frowned. "It's blackmail, Nikita Sergeyevich. Pure and simple blackmail. We're already doing everything possible to recover the devices. We've got Mikoyan there, dealing with Castro. Pliyev's searching the island. What more can we do?"

"That's how we respond," Gromyko muttered. "We have the matter under control. That's all Kennedy needs to know. Why should we tell him anything else?"

"Because we don't have things under control," Brezhnev reminded them. "Marshal Malinovsky, has Pliyev recovered the weapons? Does he even know where they are?"

Malinovsky's perpetual scowl deepened. "Not yet, Leonid Illych. We're scouring Cuba from one end to the other. We've got sources in the government and we're polling them now. So far...nothing.... But we'll find them, you can be assured of that."

"I wish President Kennedy would be so assured," Brezhnev said. "Perhaps we should send the Marshal to Washington to explain in person."

The double doors to the meeting room opened. Four armed officers of the Kremlin Kommendatura entered and took up positions flanking the door. Each wore a sidearm, unholstered. The squad leader, a husky redhead, shut the doors. He nodded to Khrushchev.

"I've been talking with the General Antonov this morning," the First Secretary said. "I've asked the Commandant to send men to guard all entrances to this building. Even as I speak, a detail of troopers are taking posts throughout the complex, here and in the Arsenal Building. All key offices and posts are manned at triple strength this morning."

"I presume you'll inform us why we're being treated like zeks," said Suslov.

"Indeed," said Khrushchev. "We have a traitor in this room. Someone here leaked the Cuban situation to the Americans. I don't know who yet. But I've asked General Antonov to give me some men. Before this day is over, I'll find this scoundrel and have him arrested."

"Nikita Sergeyevich, we should raise the alert level of all our forces," said Malinovsky. "Worldwide, to match the Americans. Raise it to Level 2. The Americans could move against us anywhere."

"Especially Europe, maybe Berlin," said Gromyko. "Kennedy's nearly as obsessed with Berlin as Cuba."

"We're negotiating on standing down forces in the Caribbean," Khrushchev reminded them. "Kuznetzov's already in New York now. You're asking me to negotiate one thing and do another."

"That's never bothered you before," Brezhnev observed.

"Kennedy will understand," Malinovsky pointed out. "We've already mobilized in Cuba. Let me order Pliyev to maximum alert status. The Group of Soviet Forces must deploy to protect itself, from Castro, from the Americans. We are looking for the bombs, you know."

There was general agreement to the Marshal's idea. Khrushchev jotted a few notes on a pad. "Very well. See to it, Rodion Yakovlich. But the warheads stay on the Alexandrovsk. I want the transfer operation to go on. All nuclear warheads moved under strict security to the ship. When they're aboard and accounted for, order the Alexandrovsk to sea. We can't risk losing anymore."

"First Secretary, we have twenty, or rather now eighteen warheads for the RS-12 and RS-14 missiles. Pliyev's ground forces also have tactical nuclear devices for the Lunas. We shouldn't remove these; they're part of the unit armament."

"No," Khrushchev argued, "all the warheads. All nuclear devices. I want them off the island by tomorrow morning."

"First Secretary, you don't--"

Khrushchev banged the table so hard, his pad slid to the floor. "No exceptions!"

Gromyko knew the Marshal was right. He tried another approach. "Nikita Sergeyevich, what the Marshal meant was simply that our ground units train and deploy with the small-yield nuclear munitions all the time. It's part of their equipment. To deprive them of such ammunition, at the same time we raise their alert status is unwise. We don't send the Red Army into the teeth of an enemy without the right weapons, do we?"

Khrushchev could see that Rashidov and Shelepin were ready to agree. Exasperated, he threw up his hands. "As you wish, as you wish. I've heard enough. The Luna warheads stay. But guard them well, Marshal. Guard them very well. I hold you responsible."

"What about Kennedy's proposal to meet?" Kosygin asked. "It's unprecedented--he's asking for us to cooperate, join forces in the investigation."

Khrushchev shook his head. "I don't like it. He proposes a meeting in Lisbon. Why not Vienna? A meeting between their intelligence and investigative people and ours. The CIA and the FBI, at the same table with our own State Security. Can you imagine that?"

Semichastny was the Chairman of State Security. His face darkened at the prospect. "No, I cannot. It has to be a trick. They're looking for weakness."

Suslov steepled his fingers in front of his face, toying with an errant lock of gray hair. His black glasses slid down to the end of his nose. "We should decline Kennedy's offer. Our own State Security is quite capable of finding and punishing the perpetrators."

"I'm not so sure," Brezhnev interrupted. "No disrespect to Comrade Semichastny. But isn't there a chance we could gain a lot from cooperating on a case with the FBI? New methods, new technologies, that sort of thing?"

Kosygin added, "And the deception and disinformatsiya possibilities are endless."

Semichastny wasn't convinced. "Too much chance of compromising operations. We have scores of actions going on right now in America and Canada. Even if we did cooperate, we'd have to make sure the contacts were well insulated from our covert directorates. Especially Department K and our Eighth Chief Directorate. The risk is too great."

Debate erupted for several minutes and Khrushchev let it flow, watching arguments flare and die off like May Day fireworks. The usual factions developed. Brezhnev, Kosygin, maybe Podgorny, were in favor. The First Secretary scowled and circled their names on the memo pad. He didn't trust Brezhnev at all, never had. Suslov, Marshal Malinovsky and Semichastny were vehemently opposed. The First Secretary

was inclined to their view of things. Letting the Americans work on a joint investigation with State Security officers was tempting but probably foolish. In any case, Kennedy's letter indicated he thought the warheads were on the Venezuelan tanker.

After several hand votes, the First Secretary could see that he was outnumbered by the Brezhnev faction. He could have dictated the decision, but he decided not to. Perhaps, Leonid Illych needs extra rope to hang himself, he thought. He had long ago suspected the Dnepropetrovsk chief of disloyalties. Perhaps, Brezhnev's sympathies could be flushed out in the open. Like a duck, Khrushchev thought, then recalled his poor marksmanship at Uspenskoye that morning.

After another hour of arguing, a counter-offer had been worked out and agreed to. Khrushchev noted the details in his furious scribbling: three agents from State Security would be allowed to meet with the Americans. Directorate Ten, responsible for security and transport of nuclear materials around the Soviet Union and Department 10 of the Third Chief Directorate, covering the same duties in the Greater Moscow area, would be represented. Lisbon was provisionally agreed to, pending a report that afternoon from the Foreign Ministry on embassy preparedness. Semichastny also had a report to furnish. The First Secretary wanted to know what assets and operations Moscow Center was running in the Portuguese capital. Geneva and Vienna would be counter-proposed in Khrushchev's reply, the draft of which was gradually taking shape on the memo pad.

At the First Secretary's prodding, the members agreed that a framework for cooperation would have to be worked out and signed by the highest authorities before such unprecedented cooperation could begin. Strict limits would be placed on what the State Security officers could reveal of Soviet investigative methods and operations. Semichastny argued for and was granted the right to appoint a "watchdog" as one of the officers, authorized to prevent, by deadly force if need be, either of the other two from cozying up to the Americans too much.

"Colonel Penkovsky has taught us all that much," Semichastny reminded them. The GRU officer had recently been arrested. He would soon be charged with high treason and disposed of in the usual way.

"We'll keep a tight rein on these fellows," Khrushchev agreed. Penkovsky had fed extremely sensitive information to the West for several years. Only now, was the extent of his treachery coming to light.

"Then we are agreed," Khrushchev summarized. "I have notes for a draft response. I'll have this typed up and circulated to your offices for review. With any luck, we'll have Kennedy's response on its way to the American Embassy by six."

The meeting lasted another few minutes. Khrushchev ended the gathering just short of 5:00 p.m. Outside frosty windows, the Kremlin's bright sodium lights burned through fog as heavy night clouds descended on the capital. With a quick nod, the First Secretary indicated to Semichastny and Malinovsky that he wanted to see them in his office.

Alone with the Defense Minister and the Chairman of State Security, Khrushchev had a proposal.

"Can you put a tail on comrades Brezhnev and Kosygin?" he asked Semichastny. I don't trust them. I'd like a report of their movements and contacts over the next two weeks"

"It can be done, Nikita Sergeyevich," the Chairman told him. "But it's risky. Leonid Illych has friends in the Kommendatura. He's already got Antonov's deputy feeding him tidbits on everyone else's movements. The General himself told me that."

"But you can run a surveillance operation on the man, isn't that true?"

Semichastny hedged. "First Secretary, we have the assets. I'm not sure we have reliable assets that high in Moscow. I'll need some time to locate political surveillance elsewhere, maybe Leningrad."

"It's urgent--" Khrushchev said.

"The GRU can do this," Malinovsky cut in. "We have assets in place now, right here in Moscow. I can set up a detail in less than a day. A reliable detail." He glanced over the Semichastny, who reddened.

"Very well. I want twenty-four hour coverage on both men. Everywhere they go, everyone they meet."

Semichastny was embarrassed. He wasn't about to let the dear little brothers of the Glavnoye Razvedivitelnoye Upravlenie upstage State Security before the First Secretary. "I have assets too, Rodion Yakovlich. By dawn tomorrow, I'll have a detail ready. I can have the detail commander report to your office."

"That won't be necessary," Khrushchev said. "As long as your boys at Dom Dva can handle this one. Just make sure I get a report every day, before I leave my office." Khrushchev sank back in his leather chair. He rubbed his eyes wearily.

"I'm going to pay out just enough line to catch this fish," he told them, "then I'm going to reel him in and destroy him for good."

11-1-62, Thursday

In the Gulf of Mexico

1:30 p.m.

Mike French watched the Texas coastline disappear underneath the skids of the Coast Guard HH-52 Sea Guard helicopter. Galveston Bay peeked in and out of low-hanging clouds as the pilot throttled up the General Electric engines and cranked in a bit of cyclic. Straight as an arrow, the Gulf Freeway pointed seaward and French followed the line off into the distance, then onto the mid-afternoon horizon, noting dark gray cumulus clouds building in the from the west. Yet another stormfront seemed to be taking dead aim on them and French checked his seat and shoulder straps. Commander Lemuel Standard, CO at Coast Guard Station Galveston smiled as he watched French cinch up his belts tighter.

These ground-pounders don't have much stomach for air-sea flying, he told himself. We'll be seeing a barf bag here any minute now.

The Coast Guard helicopter had just lifted off the tarmac at Coast Guard Air Station Houston, Ellington Field, and was headed out to sea, and a rendezvous with a small flotilla of ships standing to alongside the Sandino. Standard knew the Navy CNO, Admiral Anderson, had ordered two destroyers off the Chestnut Line to shadow, then intercept the Venezuelan tanker. The Coast Guard had chipped in two tenders as well, the Laurel (WLB-291) and the Conifer (WLB-301), homeported at the Eighth District's New Orleans docks. The four ships formed a tight cordon around the tanker, parked nearly one hundred and fifty miles south of Galveston Bay.

A Navy-Coast Guard boarding party was already aboard the Sandino, with no resistance reported, according to Standard. He'd been listening in to the operation over the Coast Guard net at the ops shack at Ellington for the last hour, waiting for the rest of the helo party to show up. Just shy of 1:00 p.m., the FBI had arrived: Mike French out of the Washington Field Office and Bob Pierce, Special-Agent-in-Charge (SAIC) of the Houston Office. Chief Inspector Dan Renfro of Customs had shown up as well and was riding in the back of the cabin. After a brief meeting in Standard's office, the HH-52 had lifted off for the 45-minute flight out to the intercept site.

To Mike French, the Sandino and her Navy and Coast Guard escorts looked like the invasion of Normandy. The huge tanker had dropped anchor and was riding peacefully in moderate swells. A Navy utility boat was tied up alongside her starboard aft quarter, just below the bridge. That was the boarding party. French studied the ship carefully as the Coast Guard pilot circled her once to gauge the winds, then chopped power and settled with a bump onto the helipad. A pair of Navy destroyers, the Bristol and the Atherton, stood a few thousand yards off the port quarter, their five-inch guns trained and loaded. The Coast Guard tenders had taken up station opposite the Navy, neatly bracketing the Sandino. If she tried to make a run for the coast, French observed, she'd be easy pickings for the five-inch mounts.

Assuming one wants to lob a few rounds into a loaded oil tanker carrying nuclear warheads.

The helo party disembarked, meeting Commander Roy Fiske, head of the boarding party. Fiske shook hands with all, but kept one hand on his cap. A steady twenty-knot wind was blowing across the tanker's deck and the helo's downwash didn't help. Fiske jerked his thumb aft, indicating the ship's bridge. French and the others followed him, jogging alongside a massive pipe run snaking the length of the ship. It took nearly a minute for them to make the six hundred foot trot. Fiske held open the deck door as they ducked inside.

The ship's crew had been mustered in the wardroom. Mike French studied their faces; mostly Latin he judged, though several might have Islands backgrounds. They were nervous, their eyes darting about the room. Several men, officers from their uniforms, formed a small knot off to one side. Armed sailors surrounded the group, about twenty men.

Fiske pulled Standard and French aside, to a dining table covered with maps and papers. "Ship's logs and manifests, right here," he indicated several leather bound books opened in front of them. "We've gone over their paperwork, and ran a crosscheck with the Navy's Fleet Civil Maritime Center. Some discrepancies but nothing to lose your breakfast over. She's carrying sixty-thousand gallons of Venezuelan Number 5 light crude, supposedly bound for the Texaco docks at Baytown. Plus miscellaneous parts: oilfield equipment for repair, seismic gear loaned to Petrocal, that sort of thing."

Commander Standard flipped through several pages. "Search underway?"

"It is right now. I got several details, two port, and two starboard. They're already working their way forward. Finished the bridgehouse a few minutes ago. Zilch, except for some bags of cocaine we found in a seaman's locker." Fiske indicated the small bag of white powder.

The Customs inspector, Dan Renfro, picked up the bag and judged its weight. "A couple of kilos. I got some sniffer dogs back at the port authority building."

"Hold up on that, Inspector," Fiske said. "I've got orders to secure the ship for hazardous materials inspection first. Search parties are working the first auxiliary levels now. This ship's got a lot of bulk cargo space on top of her tanks. Three deck's worth, running from the bridge here all the way up to the bowcap. It'll take several hours."

"What about the crew?" French asked. "Anybody done interviews?"

"A few, the officers mostly. Perez over there is the ship's captain, acting. Seems they unloaded quite a few of their crew two days ago, a few hours west of Jamaica. Some kind of contagious disease. Navy planes on the quarantine line picked up several distress calls."

"I read the reports on the way down here," French said. "A Cuban Navy boat took them off?"

Fiske nodded. "Hard to believe, but that's what the Task Force commander told us. They got a visual one night, right in the middle of a storm. Weird, ain't it?"

"Damn weird." French studied the crew some more. They were haggard, fatigued, anxious, grimy with oil. "What kind of disease?"

"We don't know. I've had several corpsmen over here this morning checking them out. Nobody's dying, but sick bay reported a few cases of clap. That's about it."

"Let's have a chat with the captain." French and Pierce went over and introduced themselves. "You're the ship's captain?"

"First Officer Jorge Perez," the man said. He tilted his head up.

"Ship's documents show the Captain as Antoni Figueroa, Mr. Perez."

"The Captain was unfortunately taken ill, along with a number of my crew. He was transferred to another ship and taken to port."

"And that ship was a Cuban Navy torpedo boat?"

Perez shrugged. "We had an emergency situation. The Cubans responded first. The Cuban commander promised to take my men to a safe harbor and get them medical attention."

French didn't buy it. "What was the nature of this illness that struck your crew?"

"Senior, I'm no doctor. Some of my men were throwing up blood. Some were unconscious, others had high fevers and chills. It was spreading--" Perez shrugged again. "I had to do something...."

"Very well, Mr. Perez." French saw Pierce motioning him to come over. The two huddled by the table with the log books. "What've you got?"

The Houston SAIC lowered his voice. "One of the crewmen, the radioman, just told me there was a mutiny in the crew last week. Just out of Caracas. He said Perez is one of them."

"Maybe we ought to separate these jokers and do individual debriefings. Did he say how many of the crew were involved?"

"No." Pierce opened the palm of his fist, showing French a scrap of paper. There was some indecipherable scribbling on it. "Radioman passed this to me just a minute ago. His name's de Cunho. Brazilian, I think."

"Understood," French said. He regarded Perez coldly. "Either the First Officer's a lying son of a bitch or I'm Mickey Mantle--"

"Excuse me, Mike," the Coast Guard commander interrupted. "There's something here you should see." He waved up another man, a civilian French hadn't seen before. He was a young, lanky fellow with a black crew cut. A big gaudy Western belt buckle stuck out from his belt.

"Jeff Torburg," said Standard. Torburg stuck out his hand and shook French's. "Atomic Energy Commission. Got here last night, from Los Alamos."

Torburg grinned. He had a nasal, north Texas twang. "Sorry, sir, should've wiped the grease off my hands. Actually I didn't come from Los Alamos. Came all the way from Hawaii."

"Never been there," French admitted. "Vacation or business?"

Torburg's smile faded. "Business, sir. We were just getting ready to fire Dominic Kingfish when I got a call to come to Houston. Boss told me it was an urgent national security matter."

"What's Dominic Kingfish? Some kind of dance?"

Torburg had a proud glint in his eye. "High-altitude megaton weapons effects test, sir. Johnston Island. She's set to go tonight, from what I heard. She'll probably light up the night sky for the whole Pacific Ocean."

"An atomic bomb test? Jesus H. Christ," French muttered. "What have you got for me?"

Torburg had a roll of paper, inscribed with parallel squiggly lines. "This is from my neutron flux detector. I brought it all the way from the instrument lab at Johnston. Look here..." He spread the roll out on the dining table, over top of the Sandino's log books. "I got slight readings here, and here--" he pointed out small humps in the traces, "then here, I got a local peak. That was just outside, in fact just under the lifeboat davits. "Same thing on the other side."

French studied the pen tracings. "What exactly are you saying? What does this show?"

Torburg wet his fingers and slicked back his crew cut. "Well, sir, it means I got a higher than normal ambient flux of high-energy neutrons at these locations. See the scale? That's four MeV. Four million electron volts. Something hot was definitely here, and not too long ago."

"An atomic bomb?"

"Could very well be. I'd need to do some more tests, check other radioactives, sample the air, some of the structures. But, yes sir, a nuclear weapon could easily generate this kind of flux. You got decay of the plutonium core going on all the time. Cosmic rays knocking off neutrons. We could test for tritium, try to see if it's a boosted device. There are other explanations for this kind of neutron bath. None of them good."

"But no bomb?"

Torburg stood up to his full six foot three inch height. He wiped perspiration off with an oily rag. "No sir, not yet. But we got a long way to go."

"Torburg here's an expert on Soviet nuclear weapons," Standard told them. "That's why he's here. They had some kind of meeting at the White House. AEC and the President. Jeff's name came up."

Torburg nodded. "That's right. Next thing I knew, I'm flying an Air Force jet back east. I'm the Task Unit 6 supervisor. I was right in the middle of prepping the command system for the Kingfish shot."

French was growing more and more uneasy. "Jeff, what the hell are we dealing with here? We got intel saying the Cubans ripped off two Soviet warheads. More intel from the Navy saying they might be aboard this tanker. And your device seems to corroborate that. But where are the warheads? What would they look like? How big would they be?"

Torburg found a scrap of paper on the table and sat down. "I'll sketch it out for you." he told them. "Most bombs, including Soviet bombs, are like onions. Lots and lots of layers. Right here in the middle is what we call the initiator. Usually beryllium and polonium mixed together. Surrounding that is what's known as the physics package, the fissionable material. In most cases today, plutonium or a mix of plutonium and uranium 238. The initiator is like a kick-starter. It shoots a bunch of neutrons into the plutonium right when the core is compressed to a critical state. That's what starts the chain reaction going."

Mike French studied the diagram carefully. "The Russians do it this way too?"

"Pretty much. You can play with the design some, but the laws of physics don't change. Outside this core of plutonium, you got something called a tamper. This could be made of a bunch of things: Beryllium, tungsten carbide, natural uranium, graphite. Something heavy. The tamper is like a reflector. It keeps the neutrons bouncing around in a small space to really get the chain reaction going good."

"Your diagram makes it look like a bunch of concentric balls."

Torburg shrugged. "Depending on the design, that's about right. Most recent Russian devices are what we call multistage fission-fusion-fission devices. They implode inward, compressing the core." He continued sketching the diagram. "See, outside the tamper, you got more layers. Typically, there's a layer of aluminum or something to protect the tamper. Then you got the high explosive layers. This is some sort of solid explosive material, usually shaped into lenses, to focus the detonation wave inward right onto the core. Beyond that's your outer structural shells and plating for the casing. And your arming and fuzing electronics." Torburg looked up. "Recipe for an atom bomb."

French felt an uneasy burning in the pit of his stomach. "How big would such a device be?"

"Depends on the yield. What I seen of the data show these missile warheads to be about a megaton or less. If you use that figure as a reference, your average Russian multistage thermonuclear device might have a few kilograms of lithium deuteride and tritium, to help boost the efficiency of the chain reaction, several kilograms of plutonium and about a hundred or so kilograms of uranium. Maybe three or four hundred pounds for the core materials. Then you add the weight of the tamper and outer shells, the high explosive layers, the casing, and that bulks up to about eight hundred to a thousand pounds easy. The whole shebang probably wouldn't be much longer than a man is tall, but it'd be damned heavy, probably three plus feet around. And it would have to fit in a missile nose cone too."

"And that gizmo of yours can pick up radiation from a bomb?"

Torburg patted the detector log like an old friend. "Not exactly. We've taken this baby all over the world, sniffing for atomic detonations. One thing we do know about Soviet bombs is that they're 'leakers.' They throw off neutrons like an oil can in a shooting gallery. Something about the way they design them. See, we found out about five years ago the Russian atomic guys like to do what's called a layer cake. They spike their bomb tampers with alternating layers of deuterium and tritium and heavier elements. Gives a hell of a bang, if you can make it work. The problem is that this tamper is so damned hot, you have to machine a special casing to keep from irradiating everybody before the bomb is used. And, from what I seen, Russian casings aren't so swift. So, they leak."

"How far away can you detect a bomb?"

"Depends again on the bomb. Normally, not too far away. The detector's got to pick up extra neutrons of the right energy, over and above the natural background radiation. And that varies a lot. Fly over a big mountain of iron, you get a lot of natural radiation. The detector would have to be closer. Fly over a beach, and you get less."

French watched the ship's First Officer closely. Perez stood straight, chin up, but his eyes took in everything that was going on. "This is a big ship, Commander. If there's a bomb aboard, we could be days finding it. It could even be down in the oil storage spaces."

"That right, Mr. Torburg?" asked the Coast Guard commander.

"It's possible. I haven't been able to pinpoint anything. The detector gave me high readings right outside here, underneath where the lifeboats are. Or were."

That puzzled French. "Where are their lifeboats? Wouldn't a ship like this carry some?"

Standard nodded. "Several. The davits are empty."

French went back to Perez. "You seem to be missing a few lifeboats. Mind telling me where they are?"

The First Officer sniffed. "Both boats were used to offload some of my crew. By now, they're in port, somewhere, being tended to."

"Obviously, we'll check that out." French was growing increasingly annoyed with the man. What are you hiding, mister? "Commander Standard, I think it's time we take these men into custody."

"We are in international waters," Perez reminded them. "You've stopped and boarded my ship illegally. The Government of Venezuela will be--"

"Read the papers, friend," French told him. "You violated the quarantine line." He motioned to the boarding party commander. "The crew is under arrest. I'd like them detained and moved to your station in Galveston."

Commander Fiske waved his men over. Perez and the others offered no resistance. On his way out, Perez muttered, "I demand to speak with my government."

The wardroom was cleared. Standard said, "We'll have to leave a skeleton crew aboard her, Mike. Operating safety. My men and the Navy guys can manage the situation. I'd like to leave her anchored right here for now, especially if you're going to do a more extensive search. She's no threat here."

French sat down and studied Torburg's diagram. "Agreed. My orders are to make sure this ship doesn't come anywhere near the U.S. coast until we're sure she's not carrying an atomic bomb."

Standard said, "The only way we can be sure of that is to search every compartment from bow to stern. Offload the oil, safe the tank spaces and take a look. You're talking days, maybe longer. Plus we ought to clear it with the State of Texas too, in case something happens."

"I know, I know. It's just that I have a feeling, a gut feeling."

"About what?"

French looked up at them. "That the bombs aren't here. Maybe they were. Torburg's device seems to be telling us that. But I think the bombs are gone."

"Where?"

French shrugged. "That's the problem. I don't know. Maybe they dumped them in the Gulf. Maybe they went back to Cuba, with that torpedo boat. Hell, your guess is good as mine. Jeff, you want to make another sweep around the ship with that gizmo of yours?"

"Sure, Mr. French. I just did the top two decks and bridgehouse so far. I understand there are several more decks."

French was already buttoning up his windbreaker. "Indeed there are, son. From what the Coast Guard tells me, there's enough decks on this ship to keep us going all week."

It was a few minutes to midnight when a fatigued Mike French sank wearily into a seat in the Sandino's galley. Commander Fiske had ordered provisions sent over from the Atherton, along with several mess hands and a cook. French sipped steaming coffee gratefully, and munched on a bologna sandwich. Jeff Torburg was still belowdecks, with a search party detailed to him from the Coast Guard. So far, in nine hours of sweeping every deck and compartment, they had turned up nothing. Bob Pierce, the Houston FBI SAIC stood nearby, slurping coffee from a cup he had just filled.

"We'll find the bomb," Pierce was saying. French hardly listened. "If it's here."

"It's not here," French muttered. "I'm sure of it."

"You said that before, Mike. Playing hunches again?"

"Hunches got me three arrests last year in the Marti bombings in Miami. Convictions too. Hell, look at the facts. Even Torburg says the highest readings come from the main deck, by the bridge. That hasn't changed all afternoon. I'm telling you the bombs aren't here."

"Does your bloodhound nose have a whiff of where they might be?"

French was about to reply but they were interrupted by Commander Standard, who had just ducked into the galley. He waved a flimsy.

"Call for you, Mike. Up in the bridge. We're patching it through the comm center at Galveston."

French followed the Coast Guard officer outside, then up several ladders to the bridge. A yeoman handed him the radiotelephone handset.

"French."

It was Jim Betters, at the task force office in Washington. French summarized what they had found so far.

"Bottom line is zilch, Jim. No bombs yet. But we're still looking. This AEC guy has given us some good evidence that bombs were here. Looks like they ditched them or transferred them before we got here. The only question is where?"

"Keep the search going until you're sure, Mike. Let Bob Pierce take over. I need you on a plane right away."

"Where am I going?"

"Lisbon," Betters said. "Portugal."

11-1-62, Thursday

Atlanta

2:30 a.m.

Manuel Obriega hadn't worked this hard in years. In truth, he hadn't spent this much time in the dark recesses of his basement in years either. The cardiology professor at Emory University Medical School would have much preferred to spend Wednesday night relaxing in the comfort of his upstairs study, engrossed in the latest Life magazine, or maybe just watching a movie, while absent-mindedly thumbing through an old physiology text he had recently picked up at a book sale.

Only an urgent call from his friend Miguel Munoz down in Miami could have sent him into the basement, clearing space, brushing away cobwebs, moving around boxes of old dishes and records he had brought from Cuba six years ago.

Obriega was out of breath and sweating, as he shifted things around. There were too many boxes, just too many, for much space to be had. For the last two hours, to the consternation of his wife Carmen and the barking hounds next door, he had been steadily moving things out of the basement, into the backyard or into the shed where he kept his lawn tools. After a half hour phone call from Munoz, Obriega had agreed to make the huge basement of his hillside home on Mason Mill Road available to some importer friends of Miguel's. They're bringing in contraband goods, Miguel had told him. It's a violation of the embargo. They need space for storage and for a little 'show', after all the goods are in. Can you help out?

At first, Obriega had demurred. He loved Cuba and he had a grudging respect for Fidel, though not always his methods. Still, contraband was a risk. Obriega had worked hard since coming to America. Just last year, he had been appointed a full teaching professorship at the medical school, the only non-U.S. citizen so honored. He fully intended to become a citizen, God willing. But the workload at the clinic had been heavy and he hadn't had time. Now Munoz had called. They had talked of Cuba for a long time, of patriotism and the Revolution, Castro and salsa, aguardiente and el imperio America. In the end, Obriega relented.

Munoz was a very good salesman.

The importer had told him to expect six to eight men in a few days, men with "extremely sensitive and valuable goods to show." Obriega had offered to help out the cause by arranging for some of Atlanta's Cuban community to visit his house and see what was being offered. But Munoz had persuaded him not to, not just yet. "There are several shipments, spread out over several weeks. Let's get all the goods in place before we exhibit. For now, just having a secure place to store the material will be a help." Obriega had agreed.

He had been working diligently in the basement since before midnight. Three times, Carmen had implored him to quit and come to bed. She was worried the neighbors would complain about the lights and the noise. "You're making enough ruckus to wake up the whole neighborhood," she had complained, standing on the patio in her robe and slippers. One Cuban family moving into this middle-class community had been enough for many; already, Carmen was afraid to venture out alone at night. Twice in the last month, their yard and their new Ford had been trashed. But Manuel told her to go back to bed. "I'm almost finished. Just a little project I've been meaning to get around to." She disappeared back inside, shaking her head. Obriega realized he still had several more details to attend to.

He had been puzzled at the request but Munoz insisted. "Put up plywood and heavy drapes over the windows and doorways," the importer had requested. "At least two to three inches thick."

When Obriega had asked why, Munoz said only, "I've talked with my nephew Hector in Havana. He says the goods are extremely sensitive. They need a controlled climate or they'll deteriorate. But if even one of the items sell, we all be millionaires. I plan to donate some of mine to the refugee centers here."

Not wishing to seem unpatriotic, Obriega quickly agreed. Munoz had added that the materials will be coming in crates, large crates. "We'll need to use your garage doors," he had said. "And you may want to move your cars outside."

Though Munoz would never tell him what the contraband was, he had his own opinions. There were really only two things that could command good prices: guns or drugs. The cardiologist had reconciled himself to trafficking in either, only for the good of the community. Cubans everywhere need help these days, he had said to Carmen at breakfast the other day. We have to do our part for the Revolution.

The thought of it gave him a little extra burst of energy.

There was one other small detail that Miguel Munoz had asked him about. A most puzzling thing, but Obriega had learned not to question the importer. Miguel has connections. He knows the right people. He knows what he's doing.

Some large empty wooden crates, Munoz had described. He specified the size: four feet on a side, made from hardwood, nailed together. Seal the corners with tape and the interior with black plastic sheet. Leave an opening, hinged, with a sturdy combination padlock. He'd asked for four of them.

So Obriega had gone down to a lumber yard a few miles away and described what he needed. Money wasn't a problem and the flatbed truck had dropped off the finished crates this evening, right after supper. Munoz had indicated he would arrange to have the crates picked up at the same time the contraband goods arrived.

Obriega had the truck stack the crates just outside the garage doors. Curious, he finished up the last of his work in the basement and killed the backyard floods. He backed the Ford out of the garage, then lit a cigarette and examined the crates critically.

Maybe Castro needs them, he thought. There's a crate shortage on the island and the Revolution will fail unless we help out. The tobacco crop or maybe sugar cane....Obriega thought back to the day he had left Mariel on the tiny steamer, bound for Miami and a new life. America had given him opportunity and another chance, free from the madness of Batista and his thugs. Now she was squeezing little Cuba like a ripe lemon, squeezing the life out of her. If he and Carmen could help, in some small way, help Cuba stand on her feet and be proud among the world's nations, then a little smuggling was worth it.

Obriega sucked hard on the Lucky Strike, enjoying the aroma of tobacco on this cool November evening. Contraband or not, he was proud Munoz had called him. Proud to be a warrior on the front lines.

11-1-62, Thursday

Miami

3:00 a.m.

Eight hundred miles south of Manuel Obriega's home, Miguel Munoz was deep in thought. Alone at the gift shop, he sat at his antique rolltop desk under the glare of an old brass lamp, scanning the latest message from his nephew Hector. He'd retrieved it from an old cigar box at the dead drop location behind Garcia's Carneceria right after supper two nights ago. He had gone quickly back to the shop, and phoned Rosita, telling her he needed to work on the books for a few hours, not to wait up, he'd be along around midnight.

In three hours, the sun would be up. But Miguel Munoz was oblivious to the time.

He had read and re-read Hector's message, decoding it carefully from the little phrase book Sparrow had furnished him a month ago. Three times, he went over the decryption, just to make sure. Maybe he was using a new code, for the message had made less and less sense the more he read it.

In the message, less than three paragraphs long, Hector had asked him to arrange a rental truck to pick up some crates in Atlanta, at Manuel Obriega's home, and deliver them to an address in Miami. He had described how the crates should be built, down to exact dimensions and materials. When he had first decrypted the message, Munoz had puzzled over the address Hector had given. Of course, his nephew had never been to Miami but it didn't make any sense at all. The address was an old abandoned warehouse on 20th Street, right across from a car dealer. The warehouse was slated for demolition in a few months. It had once belonged to a local freight forwarder who had gone out of business years ago. The building was derelict, practically falling down, and had been for several years. Why make a delivery there?

Just to make sure, Munoz had driven by the address in Hector's message, and sure enough, it was the old Pinckerton place. The message had added that Obriega would have the crates loaded and manifested for pickup on Thursday evening. In other words, tonight.

Munoz had dutifully called Manuel Obriega in Atlanta and relayed the requests. Obriega was curious--so was Munoz--but Miguel could offer little explanation. For the Revolution, he had explained. And our refugees in Miami. Obriega had accepted that.

Munoz hadn't.

He had stayed at the gift shop tonight to go over the paperwork and to wonder, alone. What in God's name was Hector up to? He had already contacted the freightline in Atlanta and requested a truck of the make, model, and markings required. The forwarder, a deep Southern drawl at the other end of the line, had called him back at the shop about nine, saying he had just such a truck coming into Atlanta from North Carolina Thursday morning. Munoz gave him the pickup and destination address. He worked out the details mainly on the phone. His import connections gave him credentials that helped, though he had never used this freight line before. The forwarder indicated he would be sending along some paperwork with the driver, for completion by Munoz after the Miami dropoff.

Munoz thumbed through all the decrypted messages Hector had sent him through the dead drop the last week. Rental trucks in Houston, a shrimper in Mobile, Alabama, the warehouse in Mobile, the farm in Ohio, the trailer park in Roanoke, Virginia, the warehouse in Newark, now Obriega's home in Atlanta. He leaned back in his chair, and it squeaked heavily under his weight.

"Whatever they are smuggling," he said quietly, "it must be extremely valuable." He had said as much to Obriega last night. Munoz began listing everything he could think of that Operation Moncada could be smuggling: cigars, antiques, guns, drugs. All of them. "Something of great value, a rare and irreplaceable heirloom, perhaps. Or a truckload of assault rifles." A gift from Cuba to the Americans, he told himself.

Munoz knew that with the Russians now withdrawing their missiles, Cuba and all things Cuban would be well scrutinized very closely by Immigration, Customs and the Coast Guard. His own business had already been affected by the missile crisis, the quarantine, and all the attention focused on the Caribbean the last few weeks. He had found the dockside stands and the flea markets almost bare, nothing of value arriving on the shores of America. Then came Operation Moncada, the greatest smuggling caper ever. Risky but potentially very lucrative.

Munoz turned off the lamp and sat quietly in the darkened shop. He made a decision. The first shipment of contraband was due at Obriega's house late Thursday night. He hadn't had many customers the last week; if the shop were closed for a few days, nobody would mind.

He decided he would drive to Atlanta, today, and see what the smugglers brought to Obriega's house. He would see what Hector had up his sleeve, what valuable things Cuba was offering. When the bank opened in the morning, he would take out a few thousand dollars and be ready to make a bid on the best merchandise.

With that thought in mind, Miguel Munoz left the gift shop and got in his car for the ten minute ride home. He crept quietly into the house so as not to awaken Rosita, changed and crawled into bed.

But he still couldn't sleep.

11-1-62, Thursday

Mobile, Alabama

5:45 a.m.

Rafael Ramirez waved silently at Felix Calderone and the subteniente chopped power to the Jenny Ann's diesels. The boat drifted through light early morning chop as the dock materialized out of the gloom of the night. With a quick burst of power, Calderone swung her bow around and settled the flanks of the shrimper against the row of old tires lining the wharf. Jenny Ann scraped and bumped, then came to rest at Slip Number 5 of Spivey's Marina.

The men made her fast to the docks, while Ramirez jumped off and reconnoitered the area. It was a dilapidated place, he realized, with broken lights and littered gutters and rusting shacks all around. There was a restaurant down at the end of the dock road. Tasty Snapper, the sign read. A Pure Oil gas station and a machine shop tucked away in a small wood frame bungalow opposite. He was soon joined by Oscar Oriente and Jorge Aleman.

The three of them had started down the dock road toward the gas station when a truck's headlights stabbed the darkness, nearly blinding them. An engine coughed to life and the truck rumbled toward them. Oriente and Aleman instantly dropped to their knees, AK's ready, aiming for the center of the lights. Ramirez froze. The truck came to a halt about twenty feet away. A lone figure dismounted and came toward them.

"Howdy!" Red Lynch's voice carried over the ground. A husky T-shirted man emerged from the truck lights, hands extended to shake someone's hands. "I been waiting for ya'all all night. What took you so long?" Lynch came up and grasped Ramirez's hands, pumping them up and down.

Ramirez extricated his hand. Lynch spied the Cubans with rifles trained on him and chuckled, holding up his own hands to show he was clean. "Guess we're not exactly saints here, are we? I got the truck you wanted. Your Mexican friend asked me to bring a two-tonner, so here she is."

Ramirez studied this sweating pig of an American. "Your name, senor?"

Lynch put his hands back down. "Red...er that is, Rufus Lynch. Most people call me Red. I guess you'll be wanting to unload your , uh, cargo, and get it stowed. I can turn the truck around, back her up to the dock, if you'd like."

Ramirez inspected the old flatbed. In faint relief on the sides were the words Mayflower Van Lines. It had an extendible ramp. Inside, the hold seemed large enough, framed in dented and blackened wood planking. It would do, he decided.

"Who contacted you?" Ramirez asked.

Lynch mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. "Fellow named Rodriguez. Said he was an importer, and had some stuff he wanted to bring in kinda quiet-like. No fuss with Customs, that sort of thing. He rented my whole refrigerated warehouse for two nights, said I was supposed to meet you at the dock tonight. I thought you'd be here a lot earlier." He warily eyed the assault rifles trained on him. "Honest to God, boys, I don't care what you're bringing in. I'm just in it for the money."

Ramirez snorted. "A true American, eh Senor Lynch? How far is your warehouse from here?"

"About two miles. Five to ten minutes, maybe."

"Very well. I want to get unloaded before the sun comes up. Back your truck up to the boat."

Relieved, Red Lynch gave Ramirez a mock salute and hustled back to the vehicle. A few minutes later, he had the old van backed up to within a foot of the wharf edge, wheels chocked and the cargo doors propped open. Several of the Cubans helped him extend the metal ramp across to the Jenny Ann's deck.

Felix Calderone took charge of the operation, with Kapitonov watching anxiously. The first K-12 warhead was fastened to the boat's rigging hoist and lifted up, then walked by Gallegos and Saguente across the ramp, as Oriente operated the hoist controls. Red Lynch stood in the open doorway and helped wrestle the warhead in and down to the floor, where he, Calderone, and Kapitonov unfastened the buckle from the warhead's padeye and released it.

"Mighty heavy gear you got there," Lynch observed, mopping his forehead again. "What's that thing weigh?"

Kapitonov was kneeling alongside the device, feeling for the crack in the casing. He looked up, scowling. "About four hundred kilos. Let's use these straps to hold her down."

"Sure thing, mister." Lynch helped the Russian secure the warhead with restraining straps.

The second K-5 was handled in a similar fashion. Oriente swung the hoist around and, after the ring was fastened, shifted the hydraulic lever and raised the warhead over the deck, swinging it carefully toward Lynch's truck and the ramp. Again, it was walked over, not without effort, as Saguente lost his balance and pitched headlong into the murky water with a loud splash. He thrashed about for a minute, until the others could pull him up by the arms, back onto the wharf. He scrambled up, cursing and sweating, then resumed his station on the ramp, guiding the device into the back of the van.

Helping Kapitonov secure the second device, Lynch noticed tiny Cyrillic script by the padeye. It was a lift and handling warning, in Russian.

"What's that say, partner? Don't look like Spanish to me."

"It isn't," Kapitonov replied.

"It's Greek," said Calderone, climbing into the van. "That's all you need to know."

"Okay, okay, pardon me for being curious."

The three men checked all straps and holddowns, then Kapitonov pronounced himself satisfied. The rest of the crates of mission gear were then loaded aboard. When they were secured, he and Calderone hopped out of the truck.

Lynch reached out and swung one door shut. Before he jumped out to secure the other door, he knelt down, spying an odd silver residue coating one of the containers, near its lift point. Cautiously, he dabbed at the powder. He was surprised to find it warm, quite warm. The residue seemed to issue from a hairline crack in the outer casing. He

rubbed the dust between his thumb and forefinger. Weird shit, he told himself. Like it came from an oven or something. What the hell's in there anyway?

"Senor Lynch, we are waiting," called Ramirez.

"Sorry, amigos. I was just fixing one of your containers better." Lynch popped out of the cargo hold and slammed the other door shut, ramming the locking bolt over. He untwisted a padlock and fastened it over the bolt. "That oughta do it. What's in those containers, by the way?"

Ramirez smiled faintly. "I thought you weren't interested."

Lynch shrugged. He wiped the rest of the residue on his jeans leg. "Of course, it really ain't none of my business. But I was just curious. You know that bugger's real warm to the touch."

"Indeed," said Ramirez. He had long ago developed several stories for situations like this. "We're bringing in a special form of raw Cuban tobacco, for cigars. A very unique blend. Think of the 'containers' as giant thermidors."

"That so?" Lynch was instantly intrigued. He knew about the embargo. "What's so special about it."

"It's very potent. When this tobacco burns, it'll knock you flat. Guaranteed."

Lynch nodded wisely. He wasn't sure he believed the Cubans but it didn't matter. What with the embargo and all, maybe it was tobacco. No telling what a real cigar lover would pay for his favorite smoke.

There were nine Cubans in all, plus the 'Greek' guy with a funny accent. Lynch let Ramirez and Calderone ride up in the front cab. The rest hunkered down in the back, after Lynch opened the cargo hold again. He fired up the engine and they rumbled down the dock road, through the gates to Spivey's Marina and out onto North Sunrise Road. Ten minutes later, the darkened sign announcing the Palm Breezes Warehouse materialized out of light fog and Lynch wheeled left into the parking lot. The warehouse was a trio of long cinder block structures, arranged in rows, with a metal frame building off to one side. That was the refrigerated storage bay. The Mexican Rodriguez had paid a bundle to rent the whole place. Lynch intended to give them the deluxe treatment.

"Ya'll want to have breakfast with me after we unload your stuff? Lu-Ann's Skillet's just around the corner. She makes real good pancakes and omelets."

Ramirez and Calderone were already out of the cab, waiting for Lynch to unbolt the doors. "Thank you, Senor, but no," the Capitan said. "We have a lot of work to do. Let's get our gear inside."

Lynch rummaged up a heavy-duty wheeled dolly. The bombs were heavy enough but the Cubans were experienced at handling them. In turn, each warhead was slid carefully, inch by inch, down the back ramp of the truck and onto the dolly, then pushed into the refrigerated bay and offloaded onto the cement.

While the others were preoccupied with the rest of their gear, Lynch found himself alone in the chilly room for a few moments. Curious, he knelt down and began prising at the crack he had seen with a pocketknife. More powder coated the blade. "Sure don't look like tobacco to me," he muttered to himself. He studied the container more closely, wondering.

He was about to examine the wireway conduits when he felt the barrel of a gun pressing against his neck.

"Senor, you're very foolish and very careless." It was Calderone.

Lynch held his hands out, dropping the knife to the cement. He got up slowly.

"That ain't no tobacco, is it?" He turned around carefully, eyeing the Cuban. Calderone was a bear of a man, black moustache, square shoulders and muscular arms. His finger rested lightly on the trigger of an AKM machine gun.

"It is no concern of yours, believe me." With a slight upward motion, he indicated Lynch should place his hands on his head.

"Guns. And ammunition. That's what it is. You guys are running guns."

Calderone smiled, a slight gap evident in his teeth. "You've been very hospitable, for a Yanqui." He squeezed off a five-round burst. Lynch's chest exploded red and he jerked backward, falling heavily. His body twitched for a few moments as his life drained onto the cement.

Ramirez came running. "What happened?"

Calderone bent to examine the warhead casing. "The Yanqui was trying to open the bomb with his knife." He retrieved the pocketknife and stuffed it in his own pocket. "I stopped him."

Ramirez knelt over Lynch. He felt no pulse. He got up, thinking. "We would have had to kill him eventually anyway. But I would rather have done this later, just before we left. Now we've given their police something to investigate. It's bad...too much evidence "

"We're behind schedule," Calderone observed. He checked his watch. "Sun will be up in less than an hour. Are we staying here?"

Ramirez was nervous, pacing around the cold room. He lit a cigarette, drew in the smoke hard and exhaled. "We should, Felix. You know the rules of engagement. We're not supposed to travel during the day. But we should already be pulling into Atlanta by now. When the Yanquis figure out the warheads aren't on the Sandino, they'll start tearing up the countryside looking for them. We shouldn't stay here any longer than necessary."

Calderone shivered and ducked out of the refrigerated bay into the warm humid early morning air. He shouldered the AKM. "Might be some office people here soon, Capitan." He indicated a small brick house, in the corner of the lot, converted into an office for the warehouse. "I'll have a detail get rid of the body." Calderone shouted, calling the men over. He explained what had happened. "Take the body and hide it. Use one of the storage sheds. In the back, if you can get into one."

Aleman and Oriente took Lynch's lifeless body and half-dragged, half-carried it around the corner, heading for the very end of the row of sheds. While they disposed of the man, Kapitonov appeared. The Russian was plainly worried.

"One of the warheads' got a hairline crack in the outer casing," he told them. "It's the RS-12 device. I think the pit's damaged."

"Meaning what?" Ramirez asked.

Kapitonov ran a hand over his sweaty bald head. "Meaning the outer plutonium-uranium layer has lost integrity. It's a sphere, cast, then machined and inserted into the pit with the initiator, tamper and other parts. Somewhere along the way, maybe the way it's been handled...."

Ramirez was thinking fast. "Will it detonate? Can the device be triggered?"

Kapitonov shrugged. "Hard to say. If the core's cracked, it may not compress properly. Without even compression, you get a dud or a low yield at best."

"Damn!" Ramirez stubbed out his cigarette. He grabbed Kapitonov's arm. "You did this...you've damaged the bomb...."

Kapitonov shook free. "The warheads have been dropped, and banged and rolled half a dozen times since you stole them. No wonder there's damage. These aren't mortar shells, you know. Proper handling is required."

"Damn, damn..." Ramirez spat furiously. "We have to do something...we're way behind schedule...now this...." He'd promised Fidel they would be in position on Election Day. Next Tuesday. Two bombs. New York and Washington. Everything depended on them. He had worked too hard, too long, for Operation Moncada to fail now.

"Get the men together," he told Calderone. "We're loading up the truck. I want to be at the safe house in Atlanta by sunset."

"It's risky, Capitan. In broad daylight. The Yanquis will be looking. There could be roadblocks."

"We'll stay off the main highways. Keep away from the larger towns. Check the gas level in the truck. And get some food. We're not stopping until we get to Atlanta."

The men got busy. The truck was backed up to the storage room again and ramps extended. Carefully, grunting and sweating, they pushed both warheads back up the ramp and into the truck. Squatting in the back, Kapitonov found a flashlight and examined the cracked warhead, muttering to himself, shaking his head. He knew perfectly well that the device had probably been damaged beyond use with all the rough handling since Bejucal. Barbarians...didn't they realize how delicate the devices were?

Calderone sent a detail of two men to break into the office, and look for food. Barracoa and Arrantes slid a screwdriver behind the door casing and prised open the door, splintering the casing completely. They found a small break room, with a box of crackers and some warm Cokes and gathered up as much as they could carry back to the truck.

Ramirez followed them to the office, looking for a telephone. He had to get word to 'Florio' that the team was ashore, with two devices, heading for the target cities. Ramirez dialed long-distance to the Miami number, giving the operator the name he was seeking, and waited impatiently. At length, an answering machine clicked on.

"We're climbing the Cordillera, with full packs," he said, using the code phrase established for this phase of the operation. Then he hung up. He hoped the message would get back to Havana. Raul Castro would want to know their status. It was a miracle they had gotten this far but Ramirez knew they couldn't relax now. They were in country, in the enemy's land, with danger everywhere. They would have to be alert and on guard every minute from now on. Strict operational discipline was the order.

Which I've already violated by driving in the open in broad daylight, he said to himself. But it couldn't be helped.

Felix Calderone offered to drive the first leg of the trip. Ramirez rode up front, the rest of the team stayed in the cargo hold with Kapitonov and the bombs. Before they left, Aleman rigged up a lantern he had found in the office. He wired it into the truck's battery, so the cargo space would have some light. It was just dawn, cool and misty, when Calderone slammed the transmission into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, onto North Sunrise Road, heading northeast. A few minutes twisting and turning and a wrong turn entering the town of Crossroads caused a few minutes' confusion. Calderone backtracked along Highway 225 and made a U-turn at an Esso station, then a right onto Highway 138 put them in the right direction. In minutes, they were navigating light traffic through Bay Minette and onto U.S. 31. Calderone settled in behind the wheel. "Four or five hours, Capitan, then we'll see. You rest, and make plans. I'll drive."

Back in the dim yellow light of the cargo space, Corporal Luis Gallegos studied the faces of his comrades. All were drifting off to sleep, save the Russian. Kapitonov had scrounged up a writing tablet from the warehouse office. He was deeply absorbed in sketching something.

Gallegos watched the ruso for a moment. He can teach me how to arm and disarm the bomb. Gallegos knew he would have to pick and choose his spots. He had joined the Moncada team at Camp Columbia, where he had been a rifleman with the 18th Infantry Battalion. Word had trickled down from Battalion that a special commando unit was being formed, a unit handpicked by Fidel Castro himself, for counter-revolutionary duty. A unit to deploy abroad and silence the enemies of the Revolution, especially in south Florida. Gallegos knew Felix Calderone; they had served in Guevara's Eighth Column together, dodged bullets taking Santa Clara, and marched with the Commandante en Jefe in the big victory parade in Havana in '59. But Calderone didn't know everything about Gallegos. He didn't know about Marti.

They were small and tight-knit, the Marti, just a few dozen rebels who had made life miserable for Batista's militia in and around Havana. The University of Havana had nurtured them, shielded them from harm, and when Batista had fled on New Year's Day 1958, the Marti celebrated. But not for long.

That Castro had betrayed the Revolution had long been an article of faith for the Marti rebels. It was their manifesto, their Constitution and their Bible. Somehow, some way, each had pledged to take back their country. At first, they had only killed the village and provincial chiefs of the people's militia, the lackeys Castro and his men installed to exact justice and root out the last elements of Batista sympathizers. By 1960 and 1961, though, the Marti were seeking bigger game: party functionaries and regional ministers, regimental commanders, even a department head from Havana--Herrera himself, who had come on the Granma with Castro from Mexican exile in '56. That had raised eyebrows in Havana and it wasn't long before the FAR had deployed a special task force to hunt them down.

But the Marti were like snakes, always one step ahead of the Rebel Army, able to melt away into the forests or the backalleys of the cities. The campaign bogged down into sporadic engagements and furtive clashes, always in the dead of night, always in ambush, often with several Army dead and the freedom-fighters gone behind smoke and grenade explosions. Within the highest ranks of the FAR, the name Marti came to spoken with more than a little fear and respect. That they had taken the name of the Great Liberator himself only added to the mystique.

Luis Gallegos had been a founding member. Because he was a disciplined and dedicated soldier, he had pledged the blood oath even though he remained a corporal in the 18th Infantry at Camp Columbia. Though sworn to destroy Castro and the 26 of July Movement, he stayed in the Army for there, it was agreed, he could do incalculable damage to Castro's machine. And it had been at Camp Columbia, on a hot August night in the barracks, when Felix Calderone had told him about Capitan Ramirez and the commando unit he was forming.

Gallegos met with his comrades and argued. They are going to kill Cubans in Miami, murder exiles and emigrants to silence them. Let me go inside. We can smash the Fidelistas good, cripple their operations, embarrass them.

So it was agreed. Gallegos would apply. If accepted, he would take Marti's fight into the very heart of the Fidelistas and deal them a crushing blow. And he had been accepted. It was only later, in the training, that Gallegos had learned the real mission of Operation Moncada.

Luis Gallegos shifted positions to move over next to Kapitonov. At first the Russian ignored him. On his tablet, he was sketching some kind of contraption. Another bomb, maybe? Gallegos nudged him, indicating the K-12 warhead at their feet.

"You designed the bomb?"

Kapitonov grunted. "Part of it."

Gallegos spat on the side of the casing. "It's evil, ruso. A coward's weapon. We should get rid of it. Fight like men. The way we rebels fought Batista."

Kapitonov continued sketching. At length, he said, "Do you know what I'm called around the shop?"

"What's that?"

"The 'Caretaker.' I take care of the bombs. They're like children to me, each one different, sometimes temperamental. They have personalities. See that writing at the top? That's my signature. I personally sign each one."

Gallegos laughed. "You're mad, ruso. But even so, we have the bombs now."

They both leaned, shifting as the truck bounced hard on deep potholes in the road. Calderone swerved them side to side, then finally straightened out. Across the other side of the weapon, Saguente and Oriente and the others stirred briefly, then nodded off again.

"You handle them like donkeys. These are precision weapons. They need special care. Something you obviously don't know anything about."

Gallegos jammed the barrel of his Kalishnikov in the Russian's side. "Perhaps I'm not a nuclear physicist, eh ruso? But, then I don't need to be, to use one of these." He clicked off the safety and poked again. Kapitonov shifted a bit.

"You know how to arm and disarm the bomb?"

Kapitonov resumed sketching. "Of course. I designed the arming /fuzing/ detonating circuits on all the K-12s."

Gallegos edged up closer to the Russian, so his voice wouldn't carry. None of the others seemed to be paying any attention.

"Show me how it's done. Calderone wants backup, anyway. Now's as good a time as any."

Kapitonov mulled over the idea. This Cubantsy was no monkey, like the others. But State Security would have him up on treason charges if he said too much. Nuclear weapons security was paramount, and had been from the beginnings of Operation Anadyr. Kapitonov snorted at that. The Cubantsy would kill him like a useless insect the moment he wasn't needed any longer. Staying alive was paramount now. And knowledge was his only defense. If he told them too much...Kapitonov put down his tablet. Only enough to get by, that's what he would do. Only enough to stay alive.

"It's a simple process, actually," he told Gallegos. "See those wireway conduits around the base?"

"I see them."

"They carry wiring for arming and fuzing. The small knobs in the nose are instruments, accelerometers actually. They sense where the warhead is in its trajectory, whether it's ascending or descending, slowing down. There's a relay panel in the warhead re-entry vehicle. It's not on the device itself. The panel takes signals from these instruments."

"What happens after that?"

Kapitonov sketched out a simple warhead on his tablet, adding pieces as he explained. "A barometric pressure sensing switch starts the arming sequence, after the missile gets to a pre-set altitude. As long as the missile is on-course, the relay panel determines where it is, using accelerometer readings, and completes the next step, which is to fuse the warhead for airburst at the programmed height. The final circuit, with a timing delay, is closed by another baroswitch, sensing the correct altitude for the burst. At that point--" Kapitonov quickly drew in some other components off to the side--"the batteries have fully charged the capacitors in the nose cone. At the planned burst height, the capacitors discharge into the detonating circuit and fire the high-explosive lenses, surrounding the pit...here," he indicated with his foot a point along the edge of the warhead, "and the rest is simple physics."

Gallegos studied the sketch. "These electronic devices are in the missile nose cone, correct?"

Kapitonov nodded. "And the nose cones are still at Bejucal."

"But the device can still be triggered?"

Kapitonov smiled faintly. "There is a way. I can modify the initial arming circuits to accept other inputs than pressure readings. Working around the accelerometers is harder. The relays do some calculations with their inputs, figuring a ratio of longitudinal to lateral acceleration, in order to compute where the missile is. I would have to change the relay logic, or bypass it, to close the final arming circuits. The fuzing circuit on descent could stay like it is; it's just a switch signal based on the computations. I would need my shop equipment to do this."

"But you know how to do it. With the right equipment, the bomb could be armed?"

"Certainly." The Russian looked around the truck at the sleeping Cubans. "But I can't do it in here."

Gallegos was already thinking ahead. The bombs wouldn't work unless their detonating circuits were modified. Kapitonov had insisted on that. But did Ramirez or Calderone realize that? If the Russian were to somehow die, unexpectedly, or be kept from modifying the circuits, the bombs were useless. Moncada would fail. And Marti would be that much closer to the final victory.

Gallegos knew he would have to alert the General. Marti needed to know this. The Americans too. He had no great love for the Yanquis but they had furnished weapons and help in the past. The question was how to do it. There was no way while the truck was moving. He would have to wait until they reached Atlanta.

At Obriega's house, he might could slip away, while the team was unloading gear from the truck. The FBI had an office in Atlanta, he was sure of it. They had to. If he could get away for just a few minutes, on a pretext, maybe stocking on food up at the mercado, he could alert the Americans. They would be able to tell the General about the bombs.

Gallegos saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Barracoa and several others were stirring, waking up.

"Hey, Luis, you got anything to eat? I'm starving."

Gallegos shrugged. "Tell the subteniente. He's driving this bus."

Barracoa's shoulder still ached. It was still broken. "Just like training, eh? A long ride to the Libertad airfield in a hot stuffy truck. Only this time, we're not going to Libertad."

Saguente poked him in the side. "No, companero, this time we're going to hell!" They laughed loud and hard, until Barracoa starting coughing.
CHAPTER 9

11-1-62, Thursday

Lisbon, Portugal

1:30 p.m.

The capital of Portugal stands on the westernmost point of land of the European Continent, where the Tagus River flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Eight miles upstream from the Atlantic, the river expands to almost two miles in width. Just beyond the soaring gateway of the Salazar Bridge, the river expands to a bay seven miles wide called the Mar de Palha - the Straw Sea.

Though one of the most scenic and spectacular harbors in the world, the basin of burnished water that forms the port of Lisbon is a modern commercial center. Amid freighters, warships, liners and ferryboats, the timeless scene of the fragatas with their Phoenician silhouettes, black hulls, and sepia sails reminds the casual visitor of times gone by. Most of the harbor's lighterage is done by these sleek craft.

The port maintains an intimacy with the city that extends back to the days before steam. Vessels tie up at quays open to the everyday life of the town, where the clang of the trolley cars blends with the sound of ships' bells. At dawn, fishing smacks deposit their catch at the town's front doorstep for noisy auction to Lisbon's many dealers, while the fishwives wait to fill the baskets they will later peddle through the streets. Beyond the port itself, the city's cobblestone streets soon give way to even more colorful fruit and vegetable markets.

Mike French closed the CIA Country Study book he had been reading and glanced out the window of the 707. They were descending through brown murk toward Lisbon, turning on final to Salazar International Airport. A meeting had been scheduled at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and French was thoughtful. A meeting of American and Soviet officials. The FBI and the KGB. He wondered perhaps if someone in Washington had finally lost their mind.

Cliff Hostetler and Jeff Torburg were on the same flight. As the Boeing jet dropped the last few feet onto the runway, Hostetler finished reviewing the reports from the Sandino inspection.

"No bombs," he muttered, closing the folder and stuffing it into his attache case. "But neutron signatures galore. Looks like we were a day late and a dollar short."

"Yes, sir," said French. "You've seen the debriefing reports too? The Bureau did interrogations assembly-line style at the Coast Guard station. We found nothing of substance to go on."

Hostetler nodded. "The crew's either well trained, well paid, or a bunch of lying sons of bitches. Either way, we got us a tanker full of oil, a shipping line about to sue the United States, and no bombs."

"Torburg here says the radiation signature matches several suspected Soviet weapons designs."

Jeff Torburg was sitting in the seat ahead. He twisted around and remarked, "That's right. The Russians use a special blend of plutonium and uranium in their bomb cores. The actual ratio is classified but we've backtracked from sniffing their atomic bomb tests. Fission products from a detonation can only come from a certain number of sources. They leave a big fingerprint you can read if you know what to look for."

"You're sure these were bombs? Not some background radiation, from the ship. Or the oil?"

Torburg's forehead wrinkled. "Not one hundred percent. But the neutron flux centered around energy levels at four to five MeV. That's characteristic of neutrons being knocked off something heavy and dense, like plutonium and uranium. Odds are it was one or more multistage atomic warheads, fission-fusion-fission type, I'd say."

The passengers had started to rise from their seats for deplaning. Hostetler ended the conversation, realizing the dangers of further discussion in a public place. In the terminal, they were met by Lieutenant Colonel Spencer, Air Attache with the U.S. Embassy. He was accompanied by Jose de Carvalho, from Portugal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Welcome to Lisboa," chirped de Carvalho. "May your stay be filled with days of joy and satisfaction"

Locked in a room with the KGB, thought Mike French. He shook hands. De Carvalho then processed them through Passport Control and Customs. In minutes, they were shown to a black Mercedes limousine for the ride into the city.

A twenty minute drive took them through the heart of Lisbon's old quarter. Cruising down the Campo Grande Republica, de Carvalho happily narrated the history of Lisbon and identified notable landmarks and monuments. Off to their right, as they approached the 28 de Maio and the Bullfight Ring, the verdant green sward of the Campo Grande Gardens spread across several city blocks. The Mercedes swung right at Saldanha Square, and headed south on Fontes Pereira de Melo and the city center. Lisbon was filled, block after block, with colorful blue and red and green baroque and arabesque buildings. Huge Moorish arches framed the Marques de Pombal Square, named for a prime minister from colonial days past. Another five minutes brought them down the Infante Santo to a small park-like setting, studded with juniper and eucalyptus trees and well-manicured hedges. The Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Internal Affairs faced each other across the street, each building an imposing stone palace surrounded with statuary, reflecting pools, and rows of obelisks.

As the men disembarked for a brisk walk into the Ministry building, French saw ships' masts craning through the tree limbs. Less than three hundred meters south of the park, hard by the Tagus River itself, the Alcantara Dock was jammed with ships and lighters from every shipping line in the world. He was startled to see the blue and white crest of Petrocal-Alliant on the smokestack of one ship. The Sandino's sister ship? he wondered. Beyond, the latticework suspension cables of the Salazar Bridge framed bare rock hills in the distance.

De Carvalho showed them to an ornate, mirrored conference room on the second floor. A tea service had been set, garnished with fresh fruits and vegetables. Tall gilded windows opened onto an interior courtyard. The Minister himself, Sr. Mario Soares, introduced himself and the Russians. The Soviet delegation rose as one and lined up for the formalities.

The Russians had sent seven men. French remembered few of their names, but he understood the pecking order well enough. Directly across the table sat the delegation leader, Gavril Popovich, First Deputy Chairman of the KGB. Accompanying him were two officers from the KGB's Tenth and Third Chief Directorates. French jotted down their names on a pad as best he could make them out: Alexei Maximov and Valery Kudinov. He wished he'd spent more time with the Bureau's Counterintel people, studying up on KGB organization and methods.

Minister Soares, as facilitator, opened the proceedings with a statement about cooperation and trust and confidence-building measures. French doodled faces and curlicues as the Minister droned on. When he was done, he gave the floor to Cliff Hostetler, representing the Americans.

"The United States," Hostetler was saying, "faces a potentially grave crisis today, as grave as the missile crisis itself. We're facing the possibility, perhaps probability, that two Soviet nuclear warheads, taken by a commando unit of Cuban regulars, has infiltrated our borders with mission and destination unknown. The exact nature, yield, characteristics and signatures of these weapons are also unknown to us. We don't know where the Cubans are going, or when they may strike. There's presumptive evidence, from intelligence sources, that they intend to target one or more major cities or key military installations. Again, we don't know for sure.

"My Government has sent this delegation to establish a working relationship with the delegation from the Soviet Union. Two days ago, an agreement was reached between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev, an agreement that mandates cooperation in a major investigative and law-enforcement operation. Frankly, I don't mind mentioning that I was skeptical about what we can achieve. It's no secret, Mr. Minister, that many of my people think the Soviet Union, in addition to bringing the world to the edge of catastrophe last week, has also been criminally negligent in handling and securing their warheads. There are some people in Washington, even within the Bureau, who say why are we doing this? Why should we trust the Russians, after the missile crisis? They've just tried to sneak ballistic missiles right into our own backyard. Let's handle this case ourselves."

Hostetler shuffled some notes. He'd written and revised his statement several times on the flight over. "I was originally one of those people. But I've changed my mind. Actually, the facts changed my mind. Two Soviet atomic bombs are in America now, most likely. Where? We don't know. Nor do we know what they look like, nor how to detect them, though we have some ideas. The Soviet delegation, let us hope, can supply those answers. They have the technical knowledge to help this investigation. And they have working relationships with the Cuban military command and leadership that can also be helpful, determining what this commando unit may do, where they may go, what their targets and methods may be. The Soviets have been training Cubans to use Russian weapons for several years now. My country doesn't like that. But today, in this investigation, such background information is vital. To be honest, we need it." Hostetler took off his glasses and laid them on the table.

"The American delegation is pledged to cooperate fully with our Russian visitors, in resolving this new crisis as quickly as possible. God willing, without further damage or destruction."

Mario Soares indicated to Popovich that he could make a statement in reply. The Deputy Chairman was heavy, with a shock of white hair and red eyes. He blinked them rapidly.

"Minister, I am authorized to protest Mr. Hostetler's words most vehemently. It's not our fault that Americans act like cowboys, throwing their weight around the Caribbean. The legitimate aspirations of the Cuban people deserve to live. We Soviets, as fraternal allies of all socialist peoples everywhere, pledged long ago to spare nothing in defense of the workers' revolutions."

Before Soares could stop him, Hostetler had already interrupted. "This is exactly the kind of crap we don't need, Minister. We flew over here in good faith. This is supposed to be a working meeting. Hell, we've got a case to solve, and people will die if we don't. Can we dispense with the bullshit and get down to law enforcement matters?"

Popovich's face reddened. "The Soviet Union has the right, under international law, to help people defend themselves!"

"Not with nuclear missiles, for crying out loud! You guys screwed up and got your fingers caught in the cookie jar. That's why you're mad. You don't like it when we slam the lid down."

"You have missiles surrounding us! My people have lived in your atomic target sights for many years. Why should you--"

Soares stood and thumped the table with both hands. "Enough! Enough of this!" After a few seconds, the arguments stopped. Popovich and Hostetler glared at each other like rabid dogs. "That will be quite enough, gentlemen. I am in charge here. You're all guests of Portugal. I suggest you act like guests."

Hostetler was still smoldering. "I suppose I have a hard time swallowing this line of bull. Everybody in this room knows what caused the missile crisis."

Popovich was set to reply, but Soares cut him off in mid-sentence. "I have the floor here. It seems there is considerable mistrust around this table. I guess that's understandable. But it stops in this room, now. Your own leaders, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Khrushchev, have mandated this meeting. They expect results, I'm sure." Soares took his seat again. "Shall we try this again? You're all law-enforcement professionals, experts in your fields. This isn't the United Nations. It's a meeting of policemen."

Hostetler smiled ruefully at the situation. "Speaking as a long-time cop, I'd say we have a little softening up to do. If Mr. Popovich were under interrogation, I'd be using the back of my hand about now."

That brought a smile to the Russians. They exchanged a joke among themselves. Popovich leaned forward. "Our methods are better," he said. Maximov and Kudinov chuckled and nodded. "We don't leave any marks."

The tension broken, the men exchanged war stories for a few minutes. Soares let the banter flow on, aware that time was pressing but unwilling to change the atmosphere. As he watched, a certain wary respect developed on both sides.

"The agenda, gentlemen," he finally cut in, "has only one major item. By order of President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev," he read from the dispatch, "the mission of this conference is to create an interagency working agreement. With procedures for liaison and contacts on both sides. The objective you know already: to locate and neutralize two Soviet warheads stolen by the Cubans."

"What proof is there that the Cubans have taken these devices into America?" Popovich asked.

"There are several items," Hostetler said. "The most damaging is the neutron signature Torburg here detected on the tanker Sandino. We know from the ship's manifesting and routing that she was destined for Houston. It's likely the Cubans intended to bring the devices into the U.S. that way."

"There's no evidence of such intention," Alexei Maximov observed. It was the first time the KGB officer had spoken. Mike French studied the Russian for a moment. He was a barrel-chested man, with sandy blond hair and an errant lock of the hair kept falling into his right eye. "The Cubans may target other locations, may they not? The Panama Canal, perhaps Puerto Rico, or other countries."

"They may," Hostetler conceded, "but the weight of the evidence points to infiltration into the United States." And I've got elint intercepts of Castro's letter to Khrushchev to prove it, he said to himself. But he decided against revealing that.

"Our biggest concern now, assuming Cliff's right, is to prevent such infiltration," French added. "On the flight over, we got updates on all the security being set up. Port cities all along the Gulf and south Atlantic, from Houston up to Norfolk are most at risk. The Coast Guard's on full alert, with all districts and detachments mobilized. U.S. Customs has beefed up its force at all legal ports of entry, not that we expect the Cubans to come waltzing in that way. The President's ordered the Army National Guard and the Navy to conduct round-the-clock surveillance of the entire coastline, by air and sea. That consumes a helluva lot of assets."

"Perhaps our Soviet freighters will finally be left alone," Popovich said.

"They will be," said Hostetler, "as long as the missiles come out."

"Freedom on the seas is a right--"

Minister Soares held up a hand. "Gentlemen...no more of this bickering. We have a job here."

"Our job would be a lot easier if we knew exactly what we're looking for," said French. "Like warhead dimensions and characteristics."

"I've got signature data from your atomic bomb tests," Jeff Torburg told them. He passed some sheets of paper over the table to Maximov, who studied them carefully. "We probably don't have the exact composition of the core materials right. That would be nice to know."

"I'm sure it would," Maximov said, scanning the figures on the sheets. "Such information is a state secret in the Soviet Union. If we were in Moscow, I would arrest you for espionage. Most likely, you would be shot before the week was out."

"If we don't know what we're looking for, we'll never find it," said Hostetler. "I know there's a lot of suspicion and mistrust between us. I understand that. But we've got to cooperate on this investigation. Frankly, we need Soviet weapons experts on the team." To Popovich: "Your men are knowledgeable about atomic weapons? And weapons security?"

Popovich nodded, in Maximov's direction. "Alexei Nikolaevich is an officer with our Tenth Directorate. His job requires him to travel to many of our military bases, inspecting atomic safety procedures, storage and security arrangements, transport of bombs and atomic materials from place to place." Indicating Kudinov, Popovich added, "Much the same is true for Valery Pavlovich. He is an officer with our Third Chief Directorate, liaison as you would say, with our Rocket Troops. He works on atomic safety and security at our rocket bases."

"I'd like both of them to come to the U.S. Work with our agents."

Popovich frowned. "That will be difficult. These officers possess vital state security information. Under the current circumstances--"

"Look," said French. "We're all cops around this table. Whether it's kidnappings, bank robberies or atomic bombs, we're just cops. And every cop knows at least one truth: you've got to hit the streets, do the legwork, if you're going to nab the bad guys."

"I can share some of my data," Torburg offered. "Not the methods we use to collect, but some of the raw data. I need verification of these figures. If I had some idea of your chemistry, I can tune the detector. Some idea of the specific ratios of uranium 238 and plutonium. Get a better reading, you know. Exclude more stuff and zero in on the real McCoy."

"We need your men to work with my men," Hostetler said. "On the scene. You don't catch crooks in Moscow by sitting in an office, do you?"

Popovich sniffed. "We have no such things in the Soviet Union. In any case, I will have to consult with Moscow Center. I think we can get agreement on these officers coming to the United States. Beyond that..." he shrugged.

"In America," said French, "we have a saying about 'pulling teeth.'"

Minister Soares interjected a thought. "Mr. Popovich indicated to me, before you arrived, that he had some intelligence he could share."

The Russian opened his attache case and extracted some blue-bordered pages. "That's correct. I must emphasize how sensitive this information is...we have penetrated the Cuban Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias at the highest levels. Obviously, I can't reveal sources and methods."

"Obviously," said Hostetler, sarcastically.

"We have had indications of something like this...operation, or commando assault, on our base for several months. Intelligence sources tells us it has been planned and referred to in intercepted military traffic since at least the first of July, if not earlier."

"Jesus," said French, "how long have you guys been putting missiles into Cuba?'

Popovich darkened. "I don't possess such information, Mr. French. And if I did, I wouldn't be here. The Party doesn't consult with me on matters of state."

"Mr. French, perhaps we should limit our questions to the case at hand," said Soares.

French was developing a real dislike for this officious prick of a diplomat. He smiled sweetly back at the Portuguese minister. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."

"In any case," Popovich continued, "our sources have intercepted some message traffic concerning this operation. We think it was approved at the highest levels."

"Meaning Castro?" asked Hostetler.

"We think so," said the Russian. "We have also intercepted traffic around the island concerning a small craft near Batabano, on the south coast. This craft sent signals last Sunday to the Venezuelan tanker Sandino. Our sources indicate a good probability the stolen bombs were taken to Batabano after the raid at Bejucal, and somehow loaded onto this craft, then transferred at sea. Possibly to the Sandino."

Hostetler confirmed similar indications from U.S. elint intercepts. He said nothing about the Oxford, or her mission off Cuba's north coast.

Mike French relayed the results of the Coast Guard/Navy search details aboard the tanker. Jeff Torburg described the neutron flux signature he had received. Maximov asked several pointed questions about the exact design of the neutron detector, which Torburg brushed off. The Russians were keenly interested in the apparatus, and Torburg had orders from Los Alamos and the Atomic Energy Commission not to reveal design details.

"The information you want is a state secret," Popovich said to Torburg "You wouldn't reveal the size, mass, yield and other characteristics of your weapons. Neither do we."

"Well, hell, how can I know if I'm chasing the right animal?" Torburg said. He was starting to get more than a little irritated with these Russians. "I don't have a detector with enough sensitivity to distinguish the bomb from background. Every granite lump in America could be a source. I need mass data to calculate atomic weight and number. I need your uranium-plutonium ratio to know what isotopes I'm dealing with, atomic numbers, that sort of thing. Otherwise, it's a damn crap shoot."

"We must know how your detector works," Maximov explained, "to be able to tell you what to look for."

Hostetler could see this was getting them nowhere. "When you can leave for Washington?"

Popovich had obviously been well briefed on what to say if this question was asked. "My government proposes to allow officers Maximov and Kudinov to come to the United States, to join your investigative team. We require that they work from our Embassy in Washington. Every day, your case officers will bring samples and copies of all available evidence to the Embassy. Our officers will analyze this evidence, produce conclusions and meet with your case team every day, in the afternoon."

Hostetler considered it. "Not the best way to work. I may need your guys in the field from time to time."

"That will require specific approval from Moscow Center. You must notify the Embassy at least three days in advance."

"Cliff, this is ridiculous," said French. "It's useless. If they're on the case, they're on it. One hundred percent. Otherwise...."

Hostetler knew he was in a bind. "Let's arrange for meetings twice a day. At the Justice Department. Noon and six p.m." He glared at Mike French. Shut up, will you? We can work this out in the States.

Both sides dickered for a few more minutes, discussing and arguing over arrangements, who would report to whom, what could be shared and what couldn't. It was clear to Hostetler that the effort of cooperating would be very difficult. Years of suspicion couldn't be erased in one day. But what choice did they have? Kennedy and Khrushchev had said do it, leaving the details to others. The case needed the Russians. Hostetler and French both knew that. If the bombs had already been infiltrated into the U.S., the Soviets' knowledge might mean the difference between intercepting the bombs and catastrophe.

We have to find a way to work together, he told himself. Thinking about what Khrushchev had just tried to do, the prospect made him ill.

For the rest of the afternoon, Hostetler, French and Torburg shared what evidence they had with the Russians. Maximov agreed that indications pointed to the bombs already being in the U.S.

"These devices have explosive yields in the two hundred to seven hundred kiloton range. In a large American city, you could expect casualties of up to a million citizens, perhaps more. The blast effect alone would essentially vaporize any structure out to a radius of six to eight kilometers."

The conference room door opened and a Ministry staff assistant appeared, indicating a phone call for Hostetler. He took it in the adjoining room. The Deputy Director returned a few minutes later.

"That was Washington," he told them. "It seems we have some new evidence." Hostetler started gathering together papers, stuffing them in his own attache case.

"What is it?" French asked.

"Alabama State Police are prosecuting a suspected homicide in Mobile. A warehouse on the east side of the bay. For a few hours, they were treating it like any homicide, standard procedure. But they found something, some kind of residue, not gunpowder or anything like that, on the deceased's clothing. State crime lab couldn't ID it, but they were suspicious. They called in the University of Alabama and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency from Huntsville."

"And...?"

Hostetler stopped inserting papers. His eyes caught French's. "Turns out the residue is highly radioactive. Dirt and oil particles plus some specks of plutonium."

"Plutonium? Are you sure?"

Hostetler nodded. "FBI's got lab guys there now. Forensic chemists, I was told. ID's been confirmed. It is plutonium."

Popovich began a heated discussion, in Russian, with Maximov and Kudinov.

Torburg asked, "Any details? Like MeV levels on the plutonium? Isotopes? Geiger readings?"

Hostetler shook his head. "Not on the phone. I guess the game is on, gentlemen. Castro's kicked the ball to us. Now we have to find it. We're chasing down a couple of atomic bombs somewhere in America. And one of them seems to leak."

Popovich spoke. "My officers are prepared to travel with you to the United States. The Embassy has already been notified. We can catch the next flight to Washington."

Hostetler sat down heavily in the seat. The enormity of what they had to do began to sink in. "We're not going back to Washington. We're going to Mobile, by way of Miami. Mr. Popovich, it's time to fish or cut bait. I need your men at the scene of the crime. Bad."

Popovich looked ill. "I must clear this with Moscow Center. I can't promise anything. Our procedures are strict. But I will try."

"I guess that's all any of us can do," Hostetler muttered.

11-1-62, Thursday

Homestead Air Force Base, Florida

6:30 a.m.

General Olin Haley snatched up his briefing papers and headed for the staff meeting outside the Command Operations Center. CINCLANT himself, Admiral Robert Dennison, had called a meeting for 0630 hours at Homestead and Haley was representing the Marines. Senior command officers from all the services would be on hand, to review deployment positions and strategy in light of recent developments. Haley knew Jack Stone would also be there, as Task Force 132 commander. He intended to press Stone on the matter of Operation Sierra.

They met in a converted school cafeteria, partitioned off with plywood panels hung with maps. Black and white TV monitors flickered from desks around the perimeter of the room. The conference table had been requisitioned by the base commander, Colonel Raines, from a supply warehouse at Patrick Air Force Base. It had been brought down and set up in the frantic days of expansion several weeks ago. The dark mahogany table bore the marks of too many meetings: embedded coffee cup stains, fragments of bored doodlings, a few chips and scrapes. Rumor had it the table had once served as Hap Arnold's planning board for Eighth Air Force bombing runs over Nazi Germany. Haley tended to discount the story. Eighth Air Force types would never have settled for mere coffee.

CINCLANT called the meeting to order. Dennison nodded to his staff J-2 from Norfolk, a lean Captain named Warren Dale, for the order of battle summary. Dale switched on an overhead projector, to accompany the maps he had fixed to an easel.

"As of 0500 hours this morning, as most of you know, CINCLANT received orders from the CJCS to standdown readiness to Defense Condition Three, DEFCON Three. As of this time, force dispositions are as follows..."Captain Dale used a extendible pointer to call out ship and unit positions and dispositions.

"Task Forces 135, 136 and 132 are here, here, and here, per Operational Order 45-62. The Walnut, Chestnut and Peanut Lines are fully manned with separate carrier battle groups, centered around the Independence, the Enterprise, and the Essex, with underway replenishment groups supporting and air cover out of Cecil Field, Patrick, Homestead, Key West, MacDill, Tyndall, and Corpus Christi. This is unchanged from 17 October, except for tactical re-deployments needed to enforce the quarantine. We've had some shifting of air assets to support the quarantine, at General Sweeney's request--" Dale nodded at the TAC Commander sitting at the far end of the table--"so the Air Force can prepare target sets in support of ground operations in Cuba, should that be ordered. Currently, the bulk of aerial picket duty in the mid and western Atlantic is being performed by P-3s from VP-30 and VP-45, out of Cecil Field. Gulf and Caribbean duty is being handled by VP-94, NAS New Orleans and a detail at Corpus. And our friends from SAC are chipping in with B-47 and B-52 sorties, something like a hundred and fifty a day, from bases on the east coast.

"Also, we have embarked on the Iwo Jima and sister troopships the First Battalion of the Sixth Marines--" Captain Dale indicated General Haley--" and the Second Battalion of the Sixth Marines. Second Battalion of the Second and Second Battalion of the First are ashore at Guantanamo, and we have the First of the Eighth on three-hour standby alert at Cherry Point. Marine Air Wing 14 has stood up to full strength, after relocating from Cherry Point to Key West, and is flying sorties daily in support of all Task Forces.

"As for the Army..." Dale paused as the officers shuffled their handout briefing sheets. He flipped over another page on his easel and changed slides on the projector. "General Howse and General Cox have just informed me that the 101st is still bivouacking three ready brigades in the ready center at Ft Campbell. Same for the 82nd. We can put over six thousand airborne troopers into a hot DZ in less than two hours from the word go. General Ruggles and General Billingslea have updated status of the First Infantry, Fort Riley, and the Second Infantry, Fort Benning, to combat condition one, full packs and loadout, ready to roll. General Haines has two thousand tanks on rail transporters at Fort Stewart and the First Armored is marshalling supplies and stocks at Hunter Air Field for deployment south, if needed. They'll have support from the First and Third Battalions of the Sixth Artillery, as well.

"I've detailed unit positions, conditions and readiness levels in your handouts, as well as on these charts. This information is current as of 0500 hours this morning." Dale looked around the room, seeking questions. When there were none, he said, "That's about it. Admiral...."

CINCLANT rose and took a position slightly to the right of the lectern. His left shoulder intruded a dark shadow on the projected slide of the western Atlantic. "Thanks, Captain. Gentlemen, I called this meeting because we have some decisions to make and CJCS wants recommendations by 0900 hours. As you know, we've been ordered to set DEFCON Three. That's going to necessitate some re-deployments of our forward forces, especially in the task forces. My charge to you is to help me come up with a logical system of re-deployment that achieves three aims, all of them conflicting: (1) continue close aerial and sea surveillance of the missile withdrawal, (2) continue to enforce the quarantine provisions mandated by National Command Authority, and (3) position all forces to strike into Cuba immediately, according to OpPlan 316 or variants as needed, should that be ordered. I don't mind telling you that I consider the standdown order to DEFCON Three a mistake. But we have our mission."

Olin Haley spoke first, "Admiral, I concur with your assessment. Going to DEFCON Three is a serious mistake, if you ask me. We got the Russians on the run, we ought to keep after them."

Several officers seconded Haley's thoughts. Jack Stone added, "It's gonna be tough enough to keep their ships under surveillance as it is. Just about every one of their skippers has some kind of deception effort going. We have to buzz the ships a dozen times from low altitude, paint 'em with targeting radars, to get them to show us the missiles on deck."

General Howse, Eighteenth Airborne Corps commander, growled, "We ought to get close enough to kiss 'em. SECDEF's wrong about this, Bob. Incidents or no, we have to see those missiles and count 'em. All of them."

"Amen to that," agreed Corky Ward. Ward was commanding officer of Task Force 136. "I'll bet my mother's jewelry box the Russkies still have a few missiles squirreled away in Cuba."

"Shit," said Haley, rising to the occasion, "we got the forces in proximity now. Why the hell don't we go in and smash Castro once and for all? Be done with it."

Dennison had gotten a bit more than he bargained for. "I sympathize with you, General. But the NCA says pull back. I want our forces as far forward as we can legally be and still comply with the directive. Thoughts?"

The officers discussed proposed re-deployments for half an hour. Haley, Stone, and several others pressed for keeping the assault ships embarking Marines as close as possible to Cuba. "What if we have to go in and rescue our boys at Gitmo?" Haley argued. Ward and Dennison agreed. Exact positioning of the Iwo and the Raleigh were discussed for awhile. In the end, the staff decided to pull back the assault ships two hundred miles. Haley shook his head sadly.

"It's a mistake we'll regret, Admiral. Sure as I'm a Marine, we'll pay eventually."

"Opinions noted," CINCLANT said firmly, putting an end to this phase of the discussion. "We have our orders. The new positions still give us two-hour response capability, as long as the units remain loaded out." He turned and changed slides to show the Walnut Line. "Corky, your turn...."

Ward joined Dennison at the lectern, and explained his task force maneuvers in the past week. "The main thing is I need to keep my destroyers close enough to the five-hundred mile mark to intercept any inbound traffic. I'm detailing Bigelow, McCaffery and Forrest Royal to inspection duty for outbound traffic. They need to be within a day's steaming time of the approach and departure channels. The Soviets like these routes--"he sketched in some light course headings--"when they head back to Russia. Otherwise, we'll pretty well situated."

Ship positioning for the task forces was worked out in ten minutes. Admiral Stone pressed to keep his command ship, the Dearborn, on station off Cuba's southwest coast. "Gives me better tactical options," he told them, glancing over at Haley as he spoke. "That way I can monitor outbound traffic from Cienfuegos and the southern ports. Plus we've had intermittent ASW contacts in those waters. My S-2 thinks the Russians are probing the area for submarine operations, maybe for the future."

Stone's proposal was agreed to.

For the next hour, unit position and readiness was systematically detailed, debated, and altered as needed to comply with NCA directives. General Howse argued vociferously for keeping the airborne ready brigades at full loadout, ready to embark. Haley and several others backed him up, pointing out that the missile withdrawal was something that could evaporate in hours, pending negotiations at the UN. And General Power, SAC commander, flatly refused to reduce the number of B-52's on airborne alert unless specifically ordered to do so by the President. Dennison ordered Power's objections noted in the minutes. A followup meeting was scheduled for 0830 hours, Dennison telling Captain Dale to set up a conference call on the secure Purple line with the SECDEF and General Taylor.

The main briefing ended just shy of 0800 hours. General Haley caught Jack Stone's eye as the Admiral was preparing to leave. He came over.

"Stop by my office, Jack. We need to talk."

Stone stood for a moment, eyes locked with the Marine's. He knew what Haley wanted. In a distant corner of his mind, he had hoped Haley would drop the whole thing. Sierra was dangerous business and he wanted no real part of it. Haley was right, even Stone would admit that. Hell, they were all right. Not a flag officer at CINCLANT's briefing would have disagreed with Haley's sentiments. But the Marine general was a different animal, a force that sometimes couldn't be tamed. As he followed Haley down several narrow corridors to his office, Stone felt a gnawing tightness in his stomach. He wondered if cattle felt the same way, on the walk to the slaughterhouse.

In his tiny office, Haley closed the door and propped himself against it. Stone stood by the window, silently counting staff cars in the parking lot.

"Jack, you know what this means. The standdown, I mean. We got to get Sierra going. Tonight."

For a minute, the Admiral didn't answer. He heard Haley's voice as if a distant, tinny squeak. "Olin, I can't do it. I just can't."

Haley exploded. "For Chrissakes, Jack! We've already been through this a dozen times. We have to act now, if we're going to act. Move up the first phase of the operation. Tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest. If we wait any longer, Dennison'll have us so far apart we'll have to take a cruise ship to get in the battle."

Stone sat down heavily at Haley's desk. He was grim, tight-lipped. "The first phase is reconnaissance, right?"

"Of course. Force Recon. I got the units already picked." Haley had slept with the plan for months, dreamed of it, ate and drank and argued with it, until he knew every line and word and punctuation mark. "Second Marines, Charlie Two-Five, to be precise. Company's commanded by Sam Fields. Helluva a field officer too. I had him with me in Lebanon in '58. He beats the pants off the other companies every year at Phibriglex."

Stone stared hard at the General. "Don't you think putting over two hundred men ashore in Cuba is a bit risky? What if the Russians arm and launch their missiles? The ones left."

Haley dismissed the argument. "Life's risky, Admiral. Soldiering's risky. Hell, don't talk to me about risk. Talk to Khrushchev. Now that's a risk. Remember your military history. In every campaign, there's a moment when the battle can be won or lost, depending on what happens. The commander on the scene has to decide: which way do we go? Advance or retreat. Attack or feint. Tanks or infantry. Howitzers or mortars. Jack, we're at that point right now. I can feel it. Can't you? We got the Russians and the Cubans on the run. By God, if we don't finish 'em off now, we'll have hell to pay in the future. Patton was right in Europe in 1945. MacArthur was right in Korea in 1950. And I'm right too. I'm the son of a bitch who says out loud what everybody else is thinking."

Stone propped his chin up on folded hands at the desk. "Olin, you should have been a car salesman. You're in here telling me to commit treason, insubordination and God knows what other crimes against the state. Disobeying a direct order from the Commander-in-Chief. What do I, or you for that matter, get out of this?"

"History," Haley said quietly. "The satisfaction of knowing that history will thank us for having foresight. Having the balls to do the right thing."

"History won't be the only ones after our balls."

Haley pulled up a chair and sat in front of the desk. "Look, here's what's going to happen. Charlie Two-Five will be dropped off a few miles inland, near Puerta Esperanza. We already scouted the area with assets in-country. I got the intel from ONI a few weeks ago. It's perfect. They scout air defense installations around Campo Justicia, the air base near Vinales. Five platoons of men are all I'm talking about. They pinpoint SA-2 sites and radars, troop embarkation points, and weapons depots around the area. Once your Navy fly-boys come over and pound 'em, Charlie Two-Five's already in place for on-the-ground fire control. That puts us a leg up on Target Package One, the Havana-Mariel-Puerta Esperanza area, for Phase Two a day later."

Stone rubbed his eyes wearily. He hadn't slept well the last few nights. Haley's face kept appearing in the dark, bombs and rockets going off all around him. "You know what my last ROP said? Bob Dennison did it a few months ago. It said 'Admiral Stone is an excellent staff officer, with a keen grasp of issues and superior delegating skills. In the area of decision-making, there's room for improvement.' That's what's written down. You know what Dennison said to me personally?"

"What's that?"

"He termed it 'analysis-paralysis,' I believe. To put it bluntly, I study an issue to death and never want to decide. Can you believe that?"

Haley smiled. "Actually, I can, Jack. Why the hell do you think they call you 'Slip?'" When Stone looked pained, he hastened to add, "Don't get your nose out of joint. I've been living with 'Hellacious Haley' since my days in China. Look, you think Dennison's giving you a raw deal? Now's your chance to do something about it. You yourself said Sierra was a bold gamble. When the President pins a few medals on that pretty chest of yours for getting rid of Castro, you'll be able to write your own ticket, right to the top. Dennison and Taylor and a few stupid performance ratings won't amount to a pile of horse dung. Not when you've changed history."

Stone was shaking his head slowly, looking at Haley's plans scattered around the desk, the maps, the tables of organization and equipment, weapons issues, unit rosters, the guts of the operation. "What if we fail, Olin? What if all this just blows up in our face?"

"It can't fail," Haley said. "We've done the planning, hell I've done the planning. It's just a little variant of OpPlan 316. We've done the same things, year after year, at Vieques, Panama, Camp Lejeune. We know how to do this. Besides, what kind of admiral would you be thinking failure? Nimitz didn't talk like that when he ambushed the Japs at Midway, did he? Sure it was a gamble, but a good one. He smashed them and turned the war around."

"He wasn't disobeying direct orders either."

"Neither are we, Jack. We're re-deploying to cover the quarantine, and watching the Russians get their asses out of our backyard, that's all. And when they start getting a little antsy and shooting at our boys, we spank 'em. Hard. SecDef approved OpPlan 316 over a year ago. We have the right to respond to provocation, under the rules of engagement. I'm just helping that process along."

Stone had known Haley would bring him to this very point. He had been here before. In June 1955, Stone had been skipper of the destroyer McKinley Ford, participating in joint maneuvers to support a simulated amphibious landing on the Italian coast by U.S. Marines and other NATO units. During the exercise, due to miscommunication and sloppy ship handling, two Italian frigates had collided. One had her hull severely breached and was taking on water. The Ford was nearby but Stone delayed rendering assistance. He had to get unequivocal NATO and 6th Fleet/CINCLANT approval to approach and pick up crewmen in the water. That was standard procedure in joint exercises. He was just following procedure. The Ford's delay contributed to the deaths of several Italian crewmen.

Jack Stone had never been one to make a quick decision. Until now.

"I suppose you've got the paperwork already done?"

Haley grinned. He stuck out his hand. Reluctantly, Stone shook it. He was aware of the sweat on his own palms.

"You bet your sweet fantail I do." He reached into the attache case and extracted an official looking Operation Order page. "All the details right here."

"Even got the forged signatures, I see." Stone took the sheet and scanned it, noting the Commandant's signature, under the CJCS. "Where'd you get those?"

"Don't you worry about that. Just read."

Stone did so. Haley had created a bogus OpOrd straight from the Joint Staff, with all the numbers, dates, references, and transmittal lists filled in. It was counterfeit as hell, but only two men knew that.

Jack Stone signed in the designated place, as commanding officer Task Force 132. Haley did likewise, in his capacity as commanding general, U. S. Second Marines. When they were done, Haley and Stone looked at each other. It would soon be irreversible and Stone figured he had seen the last of any sleep for a long time. Suddenly he felt very tired.

"I'll get this over to the communication shack right now," Haley said. Three ships were involved: the Independence, providing air cover for the Force Recon units on the ground, the Iwo Jima with her embarked Amphibious Group 4 and the Dearborn, Stone's task force flagship. The operation would run from Dearborn's CIC. "We don't have a moment to lose." With that, Haley stuffed all the operation documents back in his attache case and locked it, then carefully placed the case in a locker behind the door. He saw Stone dejectedly twirling a pencil at the desk.

"Cheer up, Admiral. You're gonna be a hero." And he was gone.

Stone got up and left the command center, to walk the flight line alongside Runway 25 Right. Half a dozen C-124 transports gleamed in the bright November morning sunshine. A C-130 Herky Bird had just kissed the tarmac at the far end of the runway and was rumbling toward the hangar and debarkation stripe in a cloud of blue engine smoke. More gear, Stone muttered. More equipment and supplies and men for this mosquito-infested hellhole. Stone wished hard he was back on the Dearborn, sipping black coffee on the bridge, the ship on course at thirty knots with a breeze snapping pennants back and forth on the weather deck.

They were disobeying direct orders from the Commander-in-Chief. And fabricating an OpOrd with forged signatures and bogus authorization. Stone inhaled a deep breath, sucking in fumes of avgas and hot asphalt from the flight line. No chance a military tribunal would see it any other way. He found the thought invigorating, for all his doubts. Maybe Haley was right. You had to take a stand, make a hard decision sometime in your life.

With any luck, the real nature of Sierra would remain undetected for several days. Realistically, that was all he could hope for. You could conceal the movements of the ships and the loadout of the Marines for combat as necessary re-deployments for continuing the quarantine, setting DEFCON 3 conditions, at least for awhile. After a day or two, the game would be up.

The whole thing hinged on being in Havana, with their boots on Castro's throat by that time. If the operation bogged down, if anything unexpected turned up, he and the General would be fried by the NCA.

And the name of Admiral Jack Stone would never pass the lips of middies at Annapolis again. Except maybe as a curse for the ages.

Stone went back to the Navy office and found a young lieutenant manning the duty desk. His name was Roy Cedars. Stone checked the board for daily COD flights out to the fleet, then ordered up a C-2 Greyhound for afternoon pickup. He wanted to be at sea, to get away from Homestead and the swamp of politics and personalities infesting the place.

"Lieutenant, you seen General Haley lately?"

Cedars said, "Yes, sir, Admiral. That's him right out there, heading for that '124." He indicated a burly man with a briefcase, trotting toward a Globemaster at the end of the flight line. The props of the big transport were already turning. Stone parted the blinds and squinted through the bright sunshine. It was definitely Haley.

"Where's he heading?"

"He's catching the shuttle up to Camp Lejeune, sir. Said he had a few things he needed to wrap up."

### Operation Order / OpOrd

Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

No. JCS 6291.1 CJCS O-1 Control: 77651

To: Distribution Circulation: ELITE COSMOS

Dtd: 011155Z, November

PRIORITY: Flash 01

ACTION: CO, ARG 4 (USMC): CO, CVA-62; CO, LPH-3; CO, DD-915; CINCLANT; CINCCARIB; CINCSTRIKE; CINCSAC

REFERENCES: (1) OpOrd 6291.1 Attachment 1-1 Operation Sierra OpPlan 322.5

(2) Unit Briefings

(3) Fleet Comm General Order 30.2

1. Authorization granted for Reference action to commence NLT 0600 Hours 021100Z.

2. Reference action is a Force Reconnaissance operation pursuant to Attachment 1-1.

3. The following units are authorized for commitment:

a. 1st MAW, U.S. 2nd Marines (embarked LPH-2)

b. Company C, BLT 2/5, U.S. 2nd Marines (embarked LPH-2)

c. VFA-82, VFA-83, VF-103, U.S. Navy (embarked CVA-62)

d. Command Elements (embarked DD-915)

4. Statement of Commander's Intent: The purpose of this action shall be to scout air defense installations, troop concentrations, armor and artillery marshalling areas, and provide fire-control / strike targeting for follow-on Reference actions. Fire teams will not engage targets except when required for effective unit defense or to achieve mission objectives.

5. Effective command of Units 3(a), 3(b), and 3(c) assigned to Unit 3(d). Material support for achieving Reference action objectives will be accomplished per Reference 1.

6. OpOrd 6291.1 / Operation Sierra flag communications shall be set at ELITE COSMOS Priority 01, Reference 3, regarding signal codes and precedents.

By direction:

CJCS O1_______________________________________________

GEN Maxwell D. Taylor

Commandant, USMC______________________________________

GEN David M. Shoup

Command Authority:

CO, Task Force 132_______________________________________

RADM John Stone

CO, U.S. 2nd Marines_____________________________________

MAJGEN Olin L. Haley

KKL: 15

Attachments and Distribution Follow

Message Ends

### NOFORN

### Reproduction Prohibited Unless "Unclassified" / OADR

11-1-62, Thursday

Aboard the Iwo Jima (LPH-2)

2:15 p.m.

Marine Captain Sam Fields scanned OpOrd 6291.1 and its attachments for the third time. The Iwo's skipper, Captain Lesley Winter had dropped off the dispatch from Command Ops at Homestead a half hour ago, and Field was puzzled. It didn't make any sense.

The purpose of this mission is Force Recon. You are to reconnoiter military installations west and north of Pinar del Rio, locating positions of SAM sites, weapons depots, vehicle staging grounds, and air fields. This information is to be returned to CIC Dearborn (DD-915) via field radio equipped with PYRAMID encryption devices. Deployed units shall embark to be at Landing Zones George, Prince and Michael not later than 0300 hours 021162Z. First reports due at CIC not later than 1200 hours 021162Z. Reference: Target Package 1 (Puerta Esperanza and surrounding areas/beach lodgment) OpPlan 322.5.

Jesus H. Christ, Field told himself, as he flipped through the attachments and references. This is no OpOrd. It's a fucking full-scale invasion. He had gotten word at the staff meeting last night in the 02 Level wardroom that they might be standing down to DEFCON 3 today, but that was only a rumor. Still, there hadn't been any other notices of impending action, no upgrade of status, readiness changes, weapons issue, not even scuttlebutt. The OpOrd had come like a slap in the face.

There wasn't any use to pondering what was up. Fields could plainly see the order was oversigned by the CJCS and the Commandant, with countersignatures from General Haley and the Task Force commander. He had been in the battalion personnel officer's shack checking on liberty chits for Charlie 2/5 when Captain Winter had come by with the order. After scanning it once, he had sent word for the company's platoon leaders and Gunnery Sergeant Burns to meet him in the wardroom aft. Then he had asked the Captain if knew what the hell was going on.

Winter had only shrugged. "Came in on the wire a few minutes ago. I'm as mystified as you. I thought we were re-deploying today."

Fields tucked the paper into a breast pocket and chewed on his unlit cigar. "Me too. Looks like somebody has other plans. What the hell...I always wanted a Caribbean vacation."

An hour later, Fields sat with Gunny Burns and five platoon leaders from Charlie Company, Battalion Landing Team Two of the Fifth Regiment, U.S. 2nd Marines. The 02 Level wardroom was a cramped compartment filled with tables, chairs and maps. Located aft and directly under one of Iwo's helicopter pads, the wardroom seemed to vibrate with a constant low-level hum, surrounded as it was by engines revving, elevators rattling and ductwork exhausting fumes overboard. Around the table, Fields had to yell to be heard.

"You've all seen the orders. I'm taking four platoons, first through the fourth, with me to the LZs. Standard issue on weapons and ammunition."

"What about mortars?" asked Lieutenant Ripley, of Second Platoon. "We're short on serviceable 81s right now."

"I know that, Rip. We'll have to make do with the 60s. I want M-14s, BARs, M-60s for the machine gunners. The full draw. Plus we got some special squad radios to be issued. SCR-300s with new coding devices attached. It's called Pyramid. Issue one to every platoon."

Lieutenant Masters, Fourth Platoon, studied the tactical map of Pinar del Rio province. "Ain't there a lot of cane fields around here?" He circled Landing Zone George, about five miles southeast of Puerta Esperanza.

Fields said, "That's what Major Swift says. Battalion did up these maps, so they're the best we got. All I know is we got to clear this highway here--" he indicated a major road running along the coast--"that runs from the port all the way back to Havana. All the LZs are on the other side. George is halfway to this town--Consolacion del Norte--and Prince and Michael bracket the San Cristobal area and the airfield here. Campo Justicia, it's called. The tamales got a lot of armor and artillery revetted around this area, plus some MiGs at the base. Our job is to find this shit and mark it, then send coordinates and order of battle information back here. And keep our fannies out of trouble if we can."

"We planning on a big invasion, Captain?"

"Hell if I know. The more I look at this deal, the more it reminds me of a training exercise we did at Panama last year. Or maybe it was Puerto Rico. Phibriglex whatever. Where we did recon, then the air assault, then the airdrops and the amphib stuff. Except I never heard of this OpPlan 322."

"Some staff weenie at Headquarters, no doubt."

"We're going in vertical," Fields told them. "CH-46, four of them. I checked with the fly guys. We can get Huey coverage of the LZs for a half an hour before and after entry and exit. That'll help if some hotshot tamales jump us. And the Air Boss on the Independence will give us CAP coverage with Crusaders, four or five, in case the MiGs get nervous. Once you hit the ground, head for your first objectives. Steve," he said to Lieutenant Masters, "I'll be with you and the Fourth. We got the airfield itself to scout. G-2 says the place is crawling with SAMs and AA guns. We slide up real close from the west, along this ridge line here," he drew his finger along an elevated line approaching the base. "Aerial shows a lot of woods cover here, so we ought to be able to get in close. Take inventory of the defenses, gun count, planes, and so forth, do the perimeter recon like before, then get the hell out of dodge. We got six hours to get out of the LZ, reconnoiter Campo Justicia and the suburbs, and get back to George. Anything happens, we get jumped or lose our way, we hightail it over to Prince. If Prince is too hot, we go to the beach, five miles west of town and light off our flares, once every ten minutes. Helos will be standing off about twenty miles, ready for pickup."

"Gee, Captain, look just like Panama to me," said Lieutenant Garcia, Second Platoon. "What about Russkies? Any chance Ivan will be in the area?"

Fields wet his lips nervously. He had discussed this very point with the battalion commander less than an hour ago. "Colonel Parkes checked with G-2. Ivan's supposed to have a full motorized rifle regiment based here--" he pointed to a town called Artemisa--"about a hundred miles east. The 74th, from Kiev, he said. Twenty-five hundred men, thirty or so T-54 tanks, some 100-mm cannon, nine or ten 120-mm mortars, anti-tank missiles, 57-mm AA guns, 122-mm tube artillery, about sixty APCs and assorted cars and trucks."

"Ouch," said Garcia. "Not my idea of a pleasant day in the country. What's our rules of engagement?"

"Hold fire unless fired upon. Just like training. We're in for recon. Save the fighting for the big boys. And hope to heaven Ivan stays in his barracks."

Fields spent the next half hour going over equipment issues, call signs, LZ procedures and the intel data Headquarters wanted them to grab. He told the platoon leaders to assemble their men in the debarkation area at 0400 hours. "I want to say a few words. Then, we're doing recognition drills. Break out the briefing boards from Tactical Ops. I want every Marine to know an SA-2 from a MiG or a T-54 from an AA gun."

The meeting broke and Fields headed for LFOC - Landing Force Operations Center, to check on the weather forecast for the LZs. With our luck, he said ruefully, we'll hit the ground in the middle of a damn hurricane. After that, he planned to head down to 04 and check any outstanding maintenance orders on Charlie Two-Five's gear. Gunny Burns had been on the warpath all week with the gun techs in the machine shop, trying to get more of their 81mm mortars signed off and stowed for combat. It was high time he paid a little visit himself to Chief Warner, and lit a fire down there. He really wanted the close-in punch those 81s could give him, in case things started heating up in the target area.

The next six hours passed all too fast. Fields spoke briefly with the designated platoons in the dekarkation area, standing on an ammo crate, explaining OpOrd 6291.1 and the Force Recon mission. He didn't have any stirring speeches to give but he did want to remind them of the rules of engagement. "Our mission will be successful if we get the intel data the big boys need and get the hell out with no casualties. It'll be 0300 hours when we hit our LZs. If we do our jobs right, the Cubans'll just be waking up to morning coffee and tamales when we exit the country. That's the way I want it to go: we're wheels up and feet wet, heading for the Iwo when Jose opens his eyes and hits the alarm clock. Got it?"

The men replied in unison and Fields spent the next few minutes circulating around the platoons, answering questions and checking field packs. The men were sent back to their berthing compartments for a little rest while the officers sacked out in the wardrooms, playing cards, writing letters, telling jokes and lies to each other. Before heading up to his own bunk, Fields dropped by and visited Charlie Two-Five's NCOs, down in Iwo's "goat locker," the 04 level, for a few minutes. Gunnery Sergeant Burns filled him on the 81s. Then Fields retired for an hour's shuteye, before heading back for "debark" to begin fitting out.

At 2300 hours sharp, Sam Fields boarded Whiskey Five-Five, a CH-46 Sea Knight chopper, rumbling and snorting on Iwo's portside helipad, with the rest of Fourth Platoon. It was dark, cloudy, blustery and cool as the helo bounced on her wheels and tilted off to climb up to cruising altitude for the hour and half run into the theater. Fields checked the forward porthole as he situated himself on the hard bench. In the distance, the other three '46s were settling in line abreast, the red and white running lights of the Iwo just passing by beneath them. Outboard, a pair of UH-1 "Hueys" rode a few hundred feet higher, their 7.62-mm guns poking out like metal whiskers. He knew another pair of Hueys would be checking in off their starboard side too.

It had been eight hours since he had first seen the OpOrd and he hadn't had a spare moment to think about what they were trying to do, until now. Hell of a way to run a mission. He checked around the cabin. Most of the men had already dozed off, the helo's droning rotors made real conversation impossible anyway. A few had their eyes open, staring straight ahead. One Pfc near the door was fiddling with the camou paint, like an actress prepping. What were they thinking?

There were a million questions about the mission but Fields knew he didn't have any answers. What were the tamales doing? Were they flying right into an ambush? Would they have to fight the Russkies? Would some wise guy get nervous and light off a few missiles, maybe nuke Washington or something? Fields smiled to himself. That might not be such a bad idea.

He leaned back, closing his eyes. If he listened carefully, he could hear the whop-whop-whop of the other '46s just outside the cabin. Or maybe it was the Hueys. And somewhere overhead, he hoped, a flight of Navy A-7 Crusaders was screaming by, ready to blast any MiGs that got in their way.

Somehow, the sound of all that firepower didn't seem very reassuring.

11-2-62, Friday

Havana

5:00 a.m.

A sharp noise somewhere in the distance startled Fidel Castro awake. He sat up groggily, at his desk, focusing on the blurry figure in the doorway. He'd been dreaming, a strange brew of U Thant and John Kennedy, in black robes and headgear like Santeria priests, standing on a beach somewhere. Playa Giron? Castro shook his head, dissipating sleep.

It was Del Valle. The Chief of Staff was grim.

"What is it? What's going on?" Castro sat up, stretched, realizing he had nodded off in his chair, surrounded with maps and papers. Paper was strewn about the office. He had been reviewing the deployment of the Western and Central Army commands around Havana. Other matters too: the long night's study finally returned to him. He had seen communiqués from Raul about Operation Moncada. There was word from "Florio" that the warheads were finally in the States. He'd been reviewing intelligence reports from the DGI about the missile withdrawal. And two days of haranguing U Thant and his team of UN lackeys had left him drained. Castro focused harder on Del Valle. "What's the matter, Sergio?"

The Chief of Staff said, "Raul just came to the center, Commandante. I told him you were sleeping."

At that moment, the MINFAR burst in, waving sheets of paper from the telex machine. His brother had a dark look of worry on his face.

"Fidel, it's happened! It's finally happened, just like you thought!"

"What's happened?"

"The Yanquis have landed. Near Puerta Esperanza, just an hour or so ago."

Fidel stood up so abruptly that the chair fell over. "Bastardos! I knew it! I knew they would come! Where? On the beaches?"

"Inland. Apparently by helicopter. The reports are confusing. Three or four places west and south of Esperanza, near the Campo Justicia airfield. It may be just the first wave."

"What strength? Do we know what strength?'' Fidel started gathering up papers, hunting for tactical maps. "What forces do we have in the area?"

Raul brought him a map of the province. "I've already ordered the 15th Infantry Brigade into this gap, along Highway Three." Raul showed him the positions. "Western Army Command's putting together a brigade at Vinales now. Elements of the 28th Infantry, and some tanks. New T-54s. The Guardia Rural's also sending a few companies."

Fidel adjusted his glasses and leaned over Raul's map. "We need air, Raul. We've got to get some planes over there. Remember the Playa Giron? The banditos had no air cover and we chewed them up. What's at the airfield?"

Raul read from a crumpled list. "Five MiG-21s. The pilots are still in training. Five MiG-15s as well. There's a few B-26s at Libertad too."

"Get them in the air! We've got to get control of the air over the battlefield. Do we have tanks?"

Raul Castro indicated out several points on the map. "I've already ordered 12th Mechanized Regiment to get moving. They're on Highway 2 now, near La Palma. All T-54s, with some BTR-40s and '60s. That's Diego's regiment."

"Diego, yes," Fidel Castro stroked his beard. "He helped me at Bayamo, a year after the Granma landed. We outflanked Batista's men and wiped out three companies. Diego's a good man."

"Somoza's coming, too. He's in charge of the 30th Cavalry at Guane. I just got off the phone with him. He's sending three companies toward this junction--" Raul Castro laid a finger on a highway crossing north of Pinar del Rio--"to cut off the southwest. If the 15th can hold for an hour, we'll have them encircled."

Fidel nodded. "Just like the Playa Giron. Keep them on the beach, keep them contained, and we can kill them. If we let them break out, it'll be hell for everyone."

"This assault looks like a scouting force to me. From what the 15th are saying, they're engaged with platoon levels at most. Thirty to forty men, some mortars, some machine guns, light infantry. No heavy armor or tube artillery at the moment."

"That may be so," Fidel said, "but it's just the first wave. The main question is where will they land, and when? I know the Marines. The Americans will send a division onto the beach if we let them. And their airborne can create havoc in the rear. Keep the anti-aircraft batteries on their toes, Raul. And the SAMs. Where are the batteries?"

"SA-2 sites are at San Cristobal, Vinales, and Pinar. The crews are mixed ruso and Cuban. The battery commanders report to Grechko. Our people aren't authorized to fire unless the Russians agree. So far, except for the U-2 last Saturday, the Russians aren't engaging the American aircraft."

"That will stop," Fidel decided. "I'll talk to Pliyev myself. Cuba has the right to defend herself!" He started pacing the small room. Fifty feet above them, the streets of La Habana Viejo, surrounding the Plaza de la Revolucion, were struggling to life. Fruit and vegetable vendors were pushing their carts along the Avenida de la Independencia, converging on open-air markets to select their daily inventory of produce. All along the avenida, black-out curtains darkened windows and lamps, a reminder of the alarma de combate Castro had called last week. At every corner and intersection, Guardia National militiamen leaned on their AK rifles, ready to repel the Yanqui invaders. And from every storefront and belching Chevy taxi, radio CMQ broadcast alerts, warnings, news of the crisis and martial music.

Fidel Castro was fully awake now, alive and angry. He paced the tiny office, chewing an unlit cigar. A trail of maps and papers followed him. "Kennedy means to destroy the Revolution, Raul. There's not a day goes by that some traitor's not bombing a police station, or a power plant, or shooting up our villages. But he's going to get burned this time. We crushed them last year in the Zapata swamps and we'll do it again. Kennedy still hasn't learned his lesson." He stopped circling and pointed the cigar at his brother. "The Cuban people will not allow the norteamericano gangsters to impose another Batista. Never. They'll fight to the death, and die heroically every one of them. We'll strangle the Marines in the woods and blast their airborne troopers out of the sky like pigeons. A glorious battle, Raul, that's what's it is."

"Fidel, what about the special airplane? The Tu-114 at Libertad. Should I call the hangar, have them get it fueled?"

Fidel Castro remembered the gift Khrushchev had given him last spring, his personal transport aircraft, a well-trained pilot and crew. The cockpit had a case of maps for every airport within a thousand miles.

"Don't be stupid. I'm not evacuating. We've got a fight on our hands!" He pounded the desk. "And we're going to smash them, Raul! We're going to blast the Yanqui bastards right off the beach and send them straight to hell!"

Raul Castro wished he shared his brother's enthusiasm. As MINFAR, he couldn't afford the luxury. "We need more air. More fighters and bombers. You should call Pliyev, talk to him."

"I'll do more than that," Fidel said, making up his mind. "I'll summon Pliyev and Alekseev. A meeting. At 8:00 o'clock this morning, right here in this room. And then I'll lock the door. We'll see what fraternal allies these rusos are."

"Khrushchev promises to defend Cuba against aggression." Raul spat out the words. "Now would be a good time to begin. Pliyev should release his troops, put them under my command. He has two regiments within a hundred miles. Almost five thousand men, and plenty of MiGs."

Fidel Castro was already on the phone, arranging it. He dialed up the Soviet Embassy, had a few words with the Ambassador, then rang up Torrens. Pliyev's deputy, Dankevich, answered. The Commandante blasted the strategic rocket force officer for ten minutes. Raul could well imagine the balding Russian's eyes bulging at such a tongue-lashing. Pliyev was in the field, but yes, Dankevich had stuttered, he could be reached. Yes, yes, he would raise the general right away. When Fidel slammed the phone back into his cradle, Raul could easily picture the frantic commotion at the Group of Soviet Forces headquarters.

"Eight o'clock?" Raul asked.

Fidel nodded. "In this office. I'll have Pliyev's forces marching into battle before he shuts the door."

Raul circulated around the room, picking up maps and re-posting them on the walls. "There is one other asset we can use, Fidel. The warheads Ramirez took from the Russians. We have word from 'Florio' that Moncada's in the States now, leaving Mobile, Alabama as of yesterday. They're headed for Atlanta."

"What happens after that?"

Raul said, "The operational plan is to split the unit in Atlanta. We had hoped to get five warheads but the raid only got two. The primary targets are New York and Washington."

Fidel was thoughtful. "So, you're saying maybe the Yanquis will listen to reason better if we bring the war to them?"

"I'm saying the Moncada plan is to have all bombs in place by Election Day in the States. That's next Tuesday. We could move that timetable up."

"Indeed," said Fidel, "a demonstration of what little Cuba can do might well get Kennedy's attention. An atomic detonation in the middle of a major American city, before next Tuesday." The idea definitely had merit. Fidel mulled over the possibilities, imagining the terror and destruction such an explosion could create. Just a month ago, Alekseev had shown him some film footage of a fifty-megaton surface burst at Novaya Zemlya. An atomic test, and a fireball ten miles wide, reaching seventy-thousand feet in the air. Already, Kennedy had American schoolchildren cowering under their desks in fear. And to think the Russians had brought such power to Cuba. Now, thanks to Capitan Ramirez and his commandos, he held such power. The power to obliterate an entire city.

"We should do it, Raul," he decided. "Perhaps Mobile, or Pensacola. Or even Atlanta or New Orleans. Ramirez could detonate a bomb in one of those cities, couldn't he? This weekend, perhaps, while Americans watch their football games. Tomorrow would be best."

Raul agreed. "A message even a Kennedy can understand. And the earlier the better. An atomic bomb leveling one of their cities should get their attention. And help our boys at Esperanza."

Fidel was already composing a message in his mind. "I need to make a statement, a written message. We'll release it to the Americans here. They've got an Interests Section at the Swiss Embassy." Castro tried out different phrases for a few moments.

"'Withdraw your Marines immediately, Mr. President, or a major American city will be incinerated by atomic bomb.' End this criminal act--'"

"Exactly." Raul and Fidel passed ideas back and forth, examining different ways to say what they intended. In five minutes, they had a statement. Raul sent for an Army stenographer to type up the statement. A boyish sargento soon appeared, took their scribblings and disappeared into the coding room.

"I think we should detonate the bomb in Atlanta," Raul said. "Ramirez will be there soon. And there are military bases all around that city. It's a major crossroads."

"Agreed," said Fidel. "We have agents to get word to the Capitan?"

"The DGI uses Sparrow in Miami. He's been running an agent named 'Florio' for contact with Ramirez and Calderone."

"Florio. Yes, I remember...that's Hector's uncle, isn't it? An importer or something."

"That's right. He emigrated around 1954 to Miami. Batista's goons roughed up his family in a riot at the University. He's done a lot of work setting up safe houses, scouting routes, that sort of thing. Very reliable, according to Sparrow. A soldier for the Revolution."

"Excellent," said Fidel. "Set the deadline for noon tomorrow. If Kennedy doesn't pull his Marines out by then," he snapped his fingers, "Atlanta is gone. Where is Hector now?"

Raul checked his watch. "He's on the staff at the centro at Point One. Right now, he's off duty."

"Summon him," Fidel ordered. "Here. I'll speak with him myself. I have a few things I want Ramirez to know about." He sat back in his chair and propped his boots up on the desk, scattering papers again. Absent-mindedly, he extracted another cigar. "If Kennedy has half a mind, he'll get his Marines off my beaches now. If not," he shrugged, "I guess he'll learn what a sting little Cuba has acquired."

11-2-62, Friday

Havana

8:00 a.m.

The Commandante en Jefe leaned forward on his elbows and leveled a hard glare at General Issa Pliyev. The Russian blinked but stared back.

"You rusos came to help Cuba, didn't you? That's what Senor Khrushchev and I agreed to. A people's revolution, right at the capitalists' front door. Lenin was smiling, he told me. And Marx laughing. Now, you won't give me the troops and the guns to defend it."

General Pliyev stroked his chin. He had come to detest Fidel Castro, in fact he wished the whole island of Cuba would sink in the next storm. They were lazy, volatile, stupid and stubborn. Pliyev could easily think of farm animals in the fields around his boyhood home near Voronezh that were easier to deal with. At least, the animals knew how to take direction.

"Commandante, I can't release all my forces without specific authorization from Moscow. Operation Anadyr is very specific about--"

"I don't care about that!" Castro thundered. "My men are fighting and dying now! Give me the help you came here for. Or get out! I should kick every last ruso out of the country now."

Ambassador Alekseev interjected. "We'll send cables to Moscow right away. Secure lines. I'm sure the General will get immediate authorization, once they know the situation. We're committed to defending your revolution."

Castro threw up his hands. "Spare me your platitudes, Alexander. Both of us know all the right words to say. Words are useless now. I need guns, bombs, planes. The American Marines have invaded my country. Every Cuban is prepared to die to defend our glorious Fatherland. We may die and we may be wiped out completely as a race but the Yanqui will pay in blood for every inch, that I can assure you."

The Chief of Staff, General Del Valle, stirred uneasily next to the Commandante. "General Pliyev, you and I have met many times. I know you have MiG-21s attached to your 10th Antiaircraft division, do you not? A regiment of about forty planes, at Santa Clara."

Pliyev nodded. "True but their first mission is air to air combat, not ground attack. I don't have weapons for ground support at Santa Clara. The bombs are still in bunkers at Mariel. And I would need Marshal Malinovsky's permission to release them to another mission."

"Perhaps five or six of your MiG pilots need a training flight, General. I'm sure extra practice wouldn't hurt. Perhaps, they could practice aerial gunnery and tactics over western Cuba, say near Consolacion del Norte, Esperanza, those areas. Wouldn't that increase their proficiency? Do you need Moscow's approval for training flights?"

"Of course not," Pliyev said. "But the MiGs have only their air-to-air missiles. And cannon. None of the two-hundred kilogram bombs you'd need for ground support."

"Missiles and cannon will do nicely," Del Valle said. "Just so we gain control of the air over the battlefield. What else can you do without Moscow?"

Pliyev glanced over at Alekseev. Get me out of this, Ambassador. He shrugged. "I can detach units assigned to garrison and security duty for a short period. I can re-deploy to maintain readiness. There are several companies of military police at San Cristobal, if Dankevich will give them up. Two Guards companies attached to the 74th at Artemisa; they're on field maneuvers now anyway. State Security has several thousand First Chief Directorate troops in Havana and Mariel, port security detail and so forth. They can probably be released."

Del Valle said, "Commandante, I know these units. Most of them are equipped for full combat. They have armor, artillery, everything."

"That's true," Pliyev told them, "but they're not normally kept at a high level of readiness. In any case, I have specific instructions not to engage American forces without informing Moscow."

"Nonetheless, you can send them on maneuvers. A field exercise in the Esperanza area. And if they are attacked--?"

"They are permitted to defend themselves, of course."

Del Valle had what he wanted. "It may be enough, Commandante. We're getting estimates of company-size units moving out from their landing zones. The Marines are straddling both sides of Highway 3. With the 15th Infantry, the forces Raul is moving up--" Del Valle checked his notes, "--that would be Diego's 12th Mechanized and Somoza's 30th Cavalry, and Pliyev's men and planes--" he nodded to the General, --"on maneuvers, of course, we may be able to contain the Yanqui to a lodgment about thirty miles wide. If we can keep them out of the towns and cities, especially Vinales, we can use Pliyev's MiGs and our own aircraft to pick them to pieces."

"Very well," said Fidel Castro. He sat back in his chair and stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Last year, we smashed them on the beaches. A great embarrassment for Kennedy. I want to do that again, annihilate the Marines, turn them into dust." He suddenly swung his chair upright so abruptly the casters scraped on the hardwood floor. "General, you told me once that your motorized rifle divisions have small atomic artillery with them."

Pliyev felt his throat go dry. "That is true, Commandante. Luna rockets. Twenty -five mile range unguided rocket charges. There are twelve in total. Several with the 74th and 134th."

"And the warheads? Where are they?"

Pliyev moistened his lips. Before leaving Torrens to come over, he had re-read Malinovsky's message about the rules of engagement for the Lunas. It had come on September 8, encrypted Trostnik (Reed) for Soviet headquarters, addressed to him personally.

If, in the course of an enemy landing on the island of Cuba and of the concentrations of enemy ships involved in such a landing off the coast of Cuba in its territorial waters, the destruction of the enemy is delayed and there is no possibility of receiving the instructions of the USSR Ministry of Defense, you are permitted to decide on your own to employ the nuclear means of the Luna, IL-28 or FKR-1 as instruments of local warfare for the destruction of the enemy on land and along the coast in order to achieve the complete rout of the invaders of Cuban territory and to defend the Republic of Cuba.

"The warheads are safe, for now," Pliyev told him. "They're near the rockets, but not physically mated." And well guarded against Cuban thieves, he wanted to add.

"What is the yield of the warheads?"

Pliyev recalled the facts from memory. "The K-20 is one to two kilotons explosive yield. In our exercises, we practice with the K-20 fuzed for air-burst at a height of five hundred meters. Concentrations up to regiment size would be completely destroyed, along with their equipment. However, I would prefer not use the Lunas unless the situation is really desperate."

"You have the authority to use them?"

"In theory. But we must be extremely careful using atomic devices against the Americans. I know, from our own intelligence sources, that the Americans possess similar devices, for their Lance and Honest John rockets. A duel of atomic barrages would not be a good idea."

"Indeed," said Castro. He could well imagine the damage to the countryside. Dozens of towns and villages vaporized into radioactive rubble would not bode well for the future of the Revolution. "Of course, I agree with you, General. But the weapons are available, if they're needed. In the meantime, I have a battery of phones available to you in the communications centro. I don't care whether you call it an exercise, or a re-deployment or La Navidad, you get your forces moving in support of Somoza and Diego now. We're going to crush the enemy right where he is." He stood, and immediately, the others followed suit.

Del Valle led Pliyev and Alekseev out, even as Raul Castro was coming in. The MINFAR waited until the room was clear, then shut the door behind him.

In the bunker's communications room, Pliyev made several calls. His first call was to General Grechko, deputy commander of all PVO Strany units on the island. He wanted to get the air defense net activated right away, and the SA-2 regiments up to full alert. The Americans would probably already have airborne forces on the way. The skies would soon be black with paratroopers. With luck and good shooting, Grechko's batteries would shred the airborne formations to pieces before they entered Cuban airspace.

At the other end of the room, Alekseev made a few calls of his own, using the centro's secure lines. He made calls to the Foreign Ministry and to State Security at Dom Dva, just to let them know what was going on. He wanted to get permission to get the Embassy's women and children aboard the Poltava, just in case. If Pliyev failed, American troops could be marching down the Avenida de la Independencia right above them in a very few hours.

After shutting the door to the Commandante's quarters, Raul Castro placed a neatly typed press release on the desk in front of Fidel. His older brother adjusted his glasses and read slowly, a smile of satisfaction spreading across his face.

"Hector has made his phone call, Fidel. Sparrow will forward the instructions on to 'Florio', and from him to Ramirez and the Moncada team. They should have them in a few hours. Shall we release our message to the courier? The Swiss Embassy is only a few blocks away. The American charge can have the message in fifteen minutes."

Fidel nodded yes. "Excellent, excellent. Of course, right away. It's past time to teach that Yanqui dog Kennedy a lesson he won't forget."

11-2-62, Friday

La Esperanza, Cuba

8:30 a.m.

Captain Sam Fields hopped into the hastily dug foxhole just in time and ducked his head. Cuban mortar barrages raked the field, popping off geysers of dirt as the 88-mm shells burst overhead. The Cuban mortarmen were good, too damn good, for Fields' comfort. They dropped a few registration rounds around a target, then calmly walked each succeeding shell closer and closer. Another flash!BOOM ripped the air where he'd just been standing, and rocks and dirt rained down on the foxhole.

Better get out of Dodge, he told himself, slapping the corporal on the back. "Let's go!" he yelled, pointing to a tall pile of cane cuttings nearby. AK fire whizzed past them as they slogged across the drenched underbrush. It had been raining steadily for the past hour, ever since they'd crossed Highway 3 and outflanked that platoon of tamale infantry that had pinned them down right at the LZ. Now, they seemed to be in a cross-fire, caught like insects in a spiderweb of prepared Cuban positions, with no where to hide in the open cane fields. Fields cursed and grunted as he fell hard to the ground, stumbling right after Corporal Jackson. Fields waved the rest of Jackson's Second Platoon on. They had to do something to bust out of this straitjacket.

"Damn weather's for ducks," he muttered, his face nearly buried in Jackson's sweaty back. "We gotta get some air cover. Where the hell are those Hueys?"

It had been windy and drizzly in Pinar del Rio all morning and Charlie Two-Five's luck had been going south right from the start. They hand landed right in the middle of a Cuban infantry unit, easily regiment size, maybe larger, on maneuvers. Of all the shitty luck, Fields had grumbled as they poured out of the Sea Stallions and ran for cover. Aerial recon had been less than sterling too. The planning wizards that had thought up this cockamamie operation had dropped them right smack in the middle of a sugar cane field, and most of the cane was down. A soggy, open field of fire, with a few stands of trees and piles of cane cuttings for cover. They'd taken bad casualties right at the LZ and Jackson's platoon had taken the worst.

Some quick fire support from the Hueys had pushed the Cubans back long enough for them to break out and head, south by southeast, for Highway 3 and their first objective. Force Recon my ass, Fields thought. The whole country would soon know they were here. Then they had run into another unit, smaller than the first one, but better trained and much better armed. In less than an hour, astride a small stream that meandered across cane country, a few hundred yards from the highway, they had bogged down and were trapped in a murderous cross-fire, pinned in a tight semi-circle by 88-mm mortar fire, well-entrenched machine gun nests and light artillery. The Cubans had them in a shooting gallery and Charlie Two-Five was being slowly chopped to pieces.

Fields scampered from the cane pile to a rock mound a few dozen yards away. He waved his platoon leaders over. One by one, they scurried and slipped and stumbled to join up. Fields drew out the tactical picture in the mud.

"Best I make it, we're about five miles southeast of the LZ, about here." He checked a soggy map, and passed it around, but the best chart was the one he had drawn in the mud. "If I'm right, the first objective is still ten miles away. That way." He pointed east. "That's Campo Justicia. An airfield with some MiGs and probably SAMs and AA too. This town here's Consolacion del Norte."

"I hope we're going around it," said Lieutenant Bryers, Second Platoon. "And soon. We're getting eaten alive where we are."

"I figure we follow this ridgeline," Fields replied. "By the map, it's woods and ground cover." He looked around at the men. "The sooner we get out of these cane fields, the better. On the way, we take soil and ground cover measurements for the airborne guys. Once we get to the airfield, Bryers, you take Second and circle to the north--this way," he indicated on his makeshift map, --"Phillips and Carner, you head south. I'll come with you. Battalion needs tactical deployments at the airfield--how many MiGs, revetted or not, hangars, air defenses, that sort of thing."

"Captain, we gonna have to slug our way back to the LZ through all this shit?"

Fields knew damn well they ought to have had more air cover than four Hueys. The plan called for a pickup in a clearing a few miles south of the airfield--Site Bravo it was called on the tactical maps--if they got that far. "The tamales'll cut us off from the LZ in another hour for sure. We got primary and alternate sites near Campo Justicia. Bravo and Echo. We get that far and we should be okay." He hoped his voice sounded more reassuring than he felt.

A shell came whistling by overhead and the men hit the ground. Twenty yards away, it slammed into a canebrake and ripped the air with a hot detonation. Fields looked up through raining debris, at several Marines staggering away from a fresh crater. A bleeding stump of an arm lay twitching ten yards in front of him.

"Jesus! That's no fucking mortar, Cap'n!" yelled Lieutenant Leary, First Platoon. The round had come from well beyond the tree line ahead, chewing up a small knot of Marines in a makeshift foxhole, a direct hit.

"Field gun!" Fields yelled back. "Maybe one of the 152s!" Another round rocketed over their heads, exploding long, maybe a hundred yards distant. A spurt of red and yellow flame was followed by a geyser of dirt. Several more rounds followed.

"Let's get the hell out of here!" Fields screamed at the top of his lungs. Smoke and cordite fumes choked the air. "Form up over there! By those cane piles! Head east!" The men scrambled away from the rock mound and ran squatting and weaving across the field. Crisscrossing streams of PK machine gun fire peppered the area, raising spouts of dirt and mud, as the gunners walked their fire across the field. Charlie Two Five was trapped in the clearing and several Marines fell heavily, crying out in pain. Fields stumbled himself and went headlong into the mud. When he got up, he saw a bright flash and ducked his head. A round slammed into the ground ten yards away, flipping him over and nearly burying him with wet mud and cane clippings. He felt the heat of the concussion and the world went silent for a moment. He wondered if his eardrums had burst. Then, staggering to his feet, he heard the faint whine of bullets spanging off the rock mound behind him. Thank God! He scampered and slipped the last twenty yards to the cane pile.

He'd give the Cubans credit for knowing the terrain and using it to advantage. As he lay on his side, he realized he was bleeding. He felt along his legs and came to a slick spot at his side. Shrapnel, probably. He didn't feel anything. He yanked his jacket up and saw the jagged wound, blood flowing freely from a three-inch slash just above his hip. He'd need a corpsman before long.

The Cubans seemed to have them nearly surrounded, judging from the direction of fire. G-2 said they would be facing small units at best, a few companies, but this one had the firepower of a regiment. They had made some progress the last hour, maybe two miles, but at this rate, there wouldn't be anybody left once they got to the airfield. Somebody sure didn't do their homework, he told himself. It's like they were expecting us. The best he could figure, the Cubans had a battalion or more directly east of them. He'd ordered several scout patrols out and they had come back only ten minutes ago with the bad news. Tamale infantry and armor moving up Highway 5 in force. The highway was their next obstacle. Cross it, and the airfield was a short jaunt to the southeast. But he didn't have the manpower for a frontal assault on a Cuban infantry battalion. They would have to veer off, probably north he figured, and come at Objective Alpha from the northwest. If they made it, they'd be in a better position to make a dash for Site Bravo and the extraction.

Lieutenants Jackson and Bryers came up and squatted next to him, resting on the butts of their M-14s. "Charlie One and Charlie Two" on the radio call list, both men were rifle platoon leaders. Fields waved Gunny Burns over and the top sergeant scrambled just ahead of a burst of machine gun fire. "Charlie Five" showed up seconds later in the person of Lieutenant Petty, chief of the mortar platoon.

"We got to lay down some heavier fire over those trees," Fields told them. "Recon says there's a couple of 122s, maybe even a 152 about half a mile away. Plus the ravine's loaded with mortars. We gotta get our own 60s set up. Petty, form up a semi-circle, centered on this location, but spread out. Your 81s working?"

"Yes, sir," said Petty. He was young and blond and his face was streaked with sweat. A big gob of mud clung to the lip of his helmet. "81s checked out and ready."

"Set 'em up and start hammering those tamale positions now. I'll get on the radio and get our Huey friends back. If we don't get some more air cover soon, we're gonna be

chopped liver."

"Cap'n, look!" Jackson pointed up. Through a purple low hanging cloud, they caught a glimpse of something flying. It flashed between clouds and the jet roar blanketed the battlefield. "Planes!"

"Fucking MiGs!"

They scattered as the MiG-21 wheeled about and came roaring in low, right above the treetops, stitching the cane field with twin streams of 30-mm cannon fire. Fields heard a loud cry and curled up in a ball, as the fighter thundered by overhead. Seconds later, a second MiG joined the fray, blasting the treeline with short bursts from its wing-mounted guns.

Christ Almighty, Fields muttered. He chanced a peek at the second fighter as it disappeared over the tops of the trees.

"Radio!" he yelled. He had to raise somebody at Ops before they were all annihilated. The corporal with the squad radio backpack came hurtling into the dirt beside him. Fields grabbed the handset and cranked out a signal, coughing up dirt as he tried to croak into the speaker.

"Captain Fields!" It was Lieutenant Petty, about fifty yards away. He was helping a mortar unit set up, levelling the bipod and baseplate as fast as they could. "There--between the trees--!!"

Fields scanned over. He heard it before he saw it but there was no mistaking the clanking, deep-throated rumble of diesel engines. Palm trees swayed and snapped along the treeline. Seconds later, the snout of a T-54 battle tank nosed into the clearing, twisting on its tread. The turret swung around and the coaxial machine gun spat fire, raking Petty's mortar position with 7.62 shells.

Petty's mortar crew was wiped out in seconds, and the tank accelerated into the clearing, bearing down on Fields and the radioman. Another tank followed, then a third.

The radio crackled in Fields' hands and he screamed into the speaker. "Dugout, this is Charlie Six! Dugout, Charlie Six! We're under intense fire here! Pinned down! I've got MiGs in the sky and no sign of the Hueys! We need air cover bad!"

The voice was faint. It was the Colonel Johns, force commander for the battalion landing team. On the Iwo. "Understood, Charlie Six. I'm trying to free up some air cover now. Say your position, over."

Fields gave the Colonel the map grid position as best he could determine it. The nearest T-54 was scarcely two hundred yards away.

"Dugout, be advised we're under attack now! T-54s and supporting armor! Plus heavy artillery, 122s and 152s! The whole damn Cuban army's right on top of us!" The T-54 turned slightly, drawing a bead on another target to Fields's left. Another mortar position. Fields saw the tank's markings clearly for the first time.

"Dugout, Charlie Six! Three tanks, T-54s, overrunning our positions! Situation desperate! And those tanks aren't Cuban, either, Dugout! We got us three tanks, Soviet markings! We're gonna be toe-to-toe with the Russians any second now!"

11-2-62, Friday

Atlanta

2:30 p.m.

Manuel Obriega had been pacing back and forth across the living room carpet for most of the afternoon. When he heard a heavy truck gearing down as it negotiated the steeply curving street, he opened the front door and saw the red lettering of Palm Breezes Warehouse and Storage Company flitting through the trees. The truck went past Obriega's house, then stopped and began backing carefully toward his driveway. Obriega went outside to help.

Negotiating the hump in Obriega's drive wasn't easy. The cardiology professor introduced himself to Rafael Ramirez and the two of them helped guide the truck back, clipping a few low-hanging tree limbs in the process. The truck wouldn't fit in the garage. The Cubans would have to unload her cargo in the driveway and wrestle it into the garage.

As the men began preparing to move the warheads, Obriega pumped Ramirez's hand.

"Welcome, welcome, to my house. It's a great day for us, helping out like this. I'm glad to help. Carmen and my daughters and I.-- we're so grateful to be able to help the cause. You must be thirsty. Something to drink? To eat, perhaps?"

Ramirez regarded the professor coolly. "We have to work to do, profesor. Let me see your storage room."

Obriega gladly showed him the garage he had cleared out and modified. Ramirez inspected the garage closely, sizing up Obriega's workmanship. After a time, he pronounced himself satisfied.

While Obriega and his wife looked on, the Moncada team unloaded the warheads and shoved them back into farthest recesses of the garage. The professor stared oddly at the Russian Kapitonov. He thought to ask Ramirez about this foreigner but judged the time not right and decided to wait. Ramirez's men worked with a dedicated intensity and it was only after the rest of the crates were also unloaded and squared away that the men began to relax a bit. Obriega hadn't really known what to expect. The gear that was unloaded from the truck certainly didn't seem like a typical smuggler's load. Curious, he went into the garage to have a look.

"I'm honored to help out the Revolution," he told them. Before he could get too close to one of the warheads, Felix Calderone intercepted him.

"It's better if you don't know or see," Calderone told him. He grabbed Obriega around the shoulders, firmly, and steered him back to the front of the garage. "The Revolution needs good soldiers. You're helping the cause just by giving us sanctuary."

"My contact in Miami said you wanted to store your goods for a week or so. Then, perhaps, a little show. Atlanta has a small Cuban community, but it's growing. I know a few businessmen who'd love to--"

"Don't you worry," Calderone told him. "We'll be here a day or so at the most, then we'll be gone." He gave Obriega a gentle but firm shove out of the garage. Puzzled, the professor jammed his hands in his pockets. He had a right to know what they were smuggling, didn't he? He was about to march right back into the garage and demand to know the contents of the containers but a car door slamming stopped him. At the front curb, a slightly-built man in a tweed jacket got out of a late-model Chrysler Imperial. He strode across the lawn, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and stuck out his hand.

"Buenos dias, I'm Miguel Munoz."

At first Obriega didn't believe him but Munoz managed to convince the professor that he was indeed the one who had called him a few days ago from Miami.

"I drove up to see what this was all about. I just had to see what our, er, 'friends', have brought us."

Obriega introduced him to Calderone and Ramirez. Munoz pumped Ramirez's hand excitedly. "It's good to finally meet you, senor. A true patriot. I am 'Florio.'"

Ramirez froze, even as Munoz grasped his hand warmly. Florio, here? In Atlanta? Ramirez's eyes narrowed. The man was a fool, if he was Florio. Just to be near the Moncada team violated every principle of the rules of engagement, not to mention common sense fieldcraft. He glanced over at Calderone for a second and they both had the same thought. A plant, or a setup.

"Who sent you?" Ramirez asked. "Why did you come?"

"I was curious," Munoz told him. "Besides, I have a message. From Havana."

"Let's go inside, Capitan," Calderone suggested. They were too exposed out here. Surveillance would be too easy. Inside, they could talk.

Obriega's living room was all wood beams and glass, with a view of dense pine forest behind the house. The cardiologist's wife, Carmen, served strong Cuban coffee to all.

Ramirez questioned Munoz closely for a few minutes, before satisfying himself the man really was "Florio.' "It's a foolish risk, you coming here. What message have you got?"

Munoz extracted an envelope. Inside, a page contained his own careful handwriting, detailing Hector's instructions. He had been incredulous when he learned the real mission of Moncada. But Hector had no time to debate. He told Miguel to get the message to Ramirez, fast, anyway he could. The importer was already planning a trip to see what the smugglers had brought in. Now, he wished he hadn't.

Ramirez took the envelope and opened it, scanning the note. His face paled. Angrily, he waded the note into a ball, squeezing it hard. Calderone frowned.

"What is it? What does it say, Capitan?"

Ramirez tossed the waded-up note on the coffee table. "Fidel's changed his mind. He wants us to detonate one bomb here, in Atlanta. By noon tomorrow if I don't hear anything else."

"Why? Atlanta's not a target."

Ramirez glared at Munoz, who cleared his throat and got up to refresh his coffee from the pot. "The Marines have landed. Esperanza, just a few hours ago."

"What? Are you serious--?"

Ramirez nodded. "Several battalions, the note says. Fidel expects more. Airborne forces would be next. The Army's engaging the enemy now, around Campo Justicia, Vinales, that area. Fifteenth Infantry and some others. Diego's in charge. So far, he's got the Yanquis contained to a small perimeter around Consolacion del Norte. But Fidel's worried about air cover. If the Yanquis send in more aircraft--"

Calderone rubbed his chin nervously, feeling a knife scar from ages ago, a street fight in the back alleys of Havana. "And the bomb?"

"Fidel wants to send Kennedy a message. They're going to announce us to the Americans this afternoon. An ultimatum: pull the Marines out or lose a major city. Fidel wants Atlanta. But I disagree. We can still make Washington at least. It's not that far. We could be there in ten to twelve hours. The deadline's tomorrow, noon. We could have the bomb in place and armed by then."

Carmen Obriega became so nervous at the conversation that she dropped her coffee cup. The cup and saucer clattered to the hardwood floor, spilling coffee everywhere. Obriega helped his wife clean up the mess. Carmen fled the room, a napkin covering her mouth. The cardiologist apologized.

"She's not a soldier, you understand. She's worried...we've worked hard, at first the neighbors--"

Calderone made a quick motion with his hand, telling to Obriega to shut up. Munoz swallowed hard. An atomic bomb? Here? They were mad, insane...Sparrow had never said anything about--

"Where's Kapitonov?" Ramirez asked. He began pacing the room. "I have a question for him."

Calderone disappeared and returned a few minutes later with the Russian. He was a stocky, balding fellow, with pale red-brown eyes and huge wart over his left eyebrow. His hands were greasy, as if he had been fixing something.

Ramirez stopped pacing and glowered at the Russian. "How long would it take you to arm one of the bombs?"

"Now?"

"Tonight."

Kapitonov wet his lips. Ramirez didn't know the full story about the damaged K-12. "The smaller device is damaged. I think the core's cracked. In any case, it's fuzed to arm with electrical inputs from a missile. Both of them are. Air pressure and speed inputs. I'd have to change the relay logic before it could be armed. I don't have the tools."

Ramirez grabbed the Russian by the shirt. "You never told me this before. You said the bombs could be armed! You said it was a simple process."

Kapitonov tore his shirt away from Ramirez's grasp. He had had enough of this Cuban scum. Calderone slid over to stand behind the ruso, in case he tried something stupid.

"It is a simple process, when the device is used the way it's supposed to be used. It fits in a missile nose cone. The relay panel takes data from the flight of the missile. That data is used to fuze and arm the bomb. To make the bomb work without being on a missile, the entire relay panel would have to be re-wired. That would take hours, maybe several days. But I'd need a shop somewhere, voltmeters, wire, relays and switches of the right capacity...."

Ramirez was furious. He slapped the ruso so hard he stumbled back, falling heavily against the side of the coffee table. Only Munoz kept the pot from toppling.

"You lied to me, ruso. I should kill you here, right now!"

Kapitonov's lip had been cut. A stream of blood trickled onto the floor. He glowered up at them. "Why don't you? Kill me and be done with it. That's what you're going to do anyway. Go ahead...are you afraid?...."

Ramirez bit his own lip and clenched his fists, willing himself to stop. No. Now isn't the time. I'll deal with this insect when the time is right. He reached down and jerked the Russian to his feet. Calderone pinned his arms to his side.

"You can fix the wiring? You can wire the bomb to explode?"

Kapitonov was daubing at the cut on his lip, smearing blood further with each wipe. He nodded sullenly. "If I had the tools...."

"Gallegos has been working with him," Calderone mentioned. "Learning about the bombs. We should get rid of this garbage and let Gallegos do the job."

Ramirez gave it some thought but decided against Calderone's suggestion. They had been lucky, damn lucky, to grab the ruso in the first place. He knew the bombs. They needed his knowledge, at least for now. To Obriega:

"Is there an electrical shop around here? A hardware store, something like that?"

Obriega had been momentarily dazed by Ramirez's outburst. He recovered his senses, stammering, "Si, uh, yes, yes, sure. There's a hardware store a few miles away. Not far at all. Ten minutes."

Ramirez went to the basement door and opened it, calling down for Gallegos. In seconds, the corporal had bolted up the stairs.

"Capitan!"

Ramirez told him what needed to be done. "The ruso says the bombs have to be re-wired. One may be damaged. There's a shop nearby. You go with him, and get what he needs. But watch him, Corporal. Watch him very closely. And don't be long." He motioned the cardiologist over. "You have money?"

Obriega nodded. "Si, I'll get some cash. In my safe..." He left to get some money, eventually returning with several hundred dollars. He placed the bills in an envelope, handing it over to Ramirez.

Ramirez gave Gallegos the money. "If he runs, Corporal, and you lose him, don't come back. You know what the DGI does to traitors."

Gallegos grabbed Kapitonov's arm. "He'll be like another leg to me, Capitan. Don't worry. We'll be attached like lovers." He grinned, pulling the Russian closer. Ramirez sent them on their way. Obriega turned over the keys to his own car, a dark blue Cadillac de Ville. Kapitonov and Gallegos piled into the car, getting directions to the hardware store, then backed out and around the truck, onto the street, and headed off.

Munoz wondered how smart he had been deciding to drive up to Atlanta. He figured Moncada was probably running guns at least, but not this. Atomic bombs? It made his skin crawl. Was this what Hector was involved in? Suddenly, he wanted to slip out of the house and drive away, as fast and as far as he could. Fidel was a great man, and he knew what Cuba needed. Munoz was happy to help out, working with the DGI in Miami, fingering traitors among the new immigrants, passing information, watching things, attending meetings. But he had a business to run, and a reputation to protect. He and Rosita hadn't fled Batista's thugs for this. Revolution or no, this was wrong, it was stupid, it was insane....

Abruptly, Munoz stood up. "Are you really going to blow up Atlanta?"

Ramirez snorted. "No. The agreed targets are Washington and New York." He stopped, wondering how much 'Florio' knew. He studied the importer for a moment, sizing him up. Munoz started sweating. "Who's your contact?"

Munoz swallowed hard. "I don't know his real name. He goes by 'Sparrow.'"

Ramirez nodded. He knew the man. In May 1960, Julio de Flores had made his way to the INS Processing Center at Key West, masquerading as a Cuban exile. He was, in reality, an agent of the Direccion General de Intelligencia, the DGI, or Cuban Secret Service. In less than a month, de Flores was running a network of saboteurs and agents in south Florida. With explicit instructions from the MINFAR himself, de Flores set about systematically undermining anti-Castro forces in the area, using every tool and technique the DGI could provide: assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, thefts, slanderous articles in the local press, poisoning meat supplies at carnecerias, whatever worked.

Later that summer, the identity of Miguel Munoz was made known to de Flores, through a mutual contact in the MININT, the Ministry of the Interior. De Flores contacted Munoz in August, and easily recruited the impressionable importer for work to support the Revolution. De Flores convinced Munoz that many of the problems Castro was having getting the Revolution solidified were due to enmity from anti-Castro forces operating out of south Florida. De Flores wanted Miguel to undertake some light political and fact-gathering duties; specifically, he was to provide a monthly update to de Flores on the political tendencies of expatriate Cubans along his street: their political leanings, where their contributions went, who they knew. At first, Munoz objected to this sort of spying but a phone call from his nephew Hector and some appeals to his sense of Cuban patriotism finally won him over. He began soliciting and providing this information, for a small fee, to de Flores in September 1960.

It was Munoz' first foray into the world of espionage operations, though he didn't think of it in those terms. At least, not at the start.

He convinced himself that what he was doing was not treason against his adopted country but rather help for a struggling democratic revolution in Cuba.

Throughout the remainder of 1960 and into 1961, De Flores "ran" Munoz as an operative of the DGI, building him up to bolder and bolder efforts, informing on business colleagues, theft and photocopying documents from the Miami Chamber of Commerce that revealed sources of money and political contributions, and other efforts. In time, he taught Munoz the rudiments of field craft, such as dead drops, spotting and shaking a tail, simple surveillance. Miguel learned to refer to De Flores by his code name of Sparrow. At first, he was glad to help out. As the months wore on and Sparrow's requests for information grew, Miguel began to balk and thought of his contributions to the Revolution as more and more onerous. More troubling was what often happened to the people he was informing on. More than once, he had read of terrible accidents and senseless, unsolved murders befalling those whose names he had turned over to Sparrow. And he became increasingly anxious with the direction Castro was taking the Revolution. The Russians had come calling and their growing presence on the island worried him and many others in the community.

Still, with Rosita's concurrence, he persisted, though he learned to say no to Sparrow's increasingly aggressive requests when he felt it would endanger his business or his standing in the community. Above all else, Miguel Munoz wanted to provide a safe and prosperous home for his family.

Several months ago, in July, Sparrow had requested an unusual and highly risky personal meeting with Munoz. They usually communicated through code words and dead drops. But Munoz would never forget this meeting. They had met in a little coffee shop on Calle Ocho in Little Havana.

At the meeting, Sparrow briefly and somewhat elliptically explained the basics of Operation Moncada, though he did not go into specifics as to what measures Castro would be taking to ensure Cuba's ultimate defense. He made no mention, initially, of Ramirez, Calderone, or nuclear warheads. But Munoz understood that Cuban agents would be entering the United States and they would need his help. He was assigned the code name of Florio and given a list of task assignments to prepare for their arrival. Their safety and security and the completion of their mission were critical to the future defense of Cuba and the success of the Revolution. Munoz, intrigued, indicated that he would cooperate fully. He was pleased that the government would entrust him with supporting such an important mission.

Until now.

"The operation plan says we split the team here in Atlanta," Ramirez told him. "One bomb to New York. One to Washington. The original plan was to have five bombs. One also for Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. But we only got two." Ramirez sat down wearily on the couch, rubbing his eyes. He was tired, exhausted really, but he couldn't rest. "And we lost some good men in the assault."

"Now Fidel wants to detonate one bomb?"

Ramirez nodded. "He thinks he can intimidate Kennedy into pulling out the Marines. But he's wrong. I know Kennedy. I've studied the man ever since the Playa Giron, ever since we chased his bandits into the Zapata Swamps and annihilated them. Kennedy's weak, it's true. But he has strong men around him. They're the ones who are running America. That's why we have to get a bomb into Washington itself. Kennedy's men don't scare easily. They'd trade a city like Atlanta, maybe even Miami, if they could get rid of Castro. But they won't trade New York or Washington." Ramirez was like a coiled spring, ready to fly across the room. "I won't rest, we can't rest, until there's a bomb right under their noses. That's how we pay them back for the Bahia de Cochinos. And for Tomas...."

Calderone was helping himself to Obriega's well-stocked kitchen. He strolled into the living room with a plate full of cold cuts and cheeses. "Capitan, what are we going to do? If Diego can't stop the Marines--"

Ramirez slammed a fist on the coffee table. "Diego has to stop the fucking Marines! He's got the whole 15th Infantry! And the planes, Felix...don't forget the Air Force. We wiped out the bandits at Playa Giron with a couple of old B-26s. Now, look what we've got...MiGs, lots of tanks, better artillery. A few Marines are nothing--"

"But the Commandante's order...a direct order to use one of the bombs here..."

Ramirez shook his head. "Moncada is my child. I created it, I brought it to life, I fought for it. No, Atlanta is not a good target. We're going on, Felix, just like the plan. To Washington, to New York." He leveled a hard gaze at them all. "We're going to place the bait right under the Yanquis' capitalist noses. And when we're done, Fidel can make them squirm like frightened dogs."

"We'd better tell Raul then. Tell him what we're doing. The other truck's not here yet...the one for Miami. And we'll need that third truck, for my team."

"Florio, I'll write out a message for you. Get it to Sparrow as fast as you can. You can ride with Oriente, in the decoy. You did arrange for a truck to stop here and deliver our surprise to Miami, didn't you?"

Munoz's eyebrows went up. "Decoy? What do you mean? I have my own car. And, yes, the rental agency's sending a truck today. It should be here before dark. What's going on?"

Calderone and Ramirez didn't answer. Instead, they left and went downstairs, searching through their gear for maps. They found a well-marked highway map of the eastern United States.

"Look," Ramirez told him, "we take Highway 29 here. It goes east, through Athens. Then north on Highway 441 here." He laid out a route that kept them off the busiest highways. Scaling the miles with his index finger, he made a quick estimate of the time. "About ten to twelve hours, with a stop for gas or two. We can have the larger bomb in Washington by mid-morning tomorrow, if we leave by six."

Calderone studied the map himself. His own target was New York. "We've got a longer route." From memory, he recited the checkpoints. "Knoxville, Cincinnati and Dayton, then we turn east. Pittsburgh and Allentown, into New Jersey, then into Newark. The safe house is near the docks. It'll be Monday or Tuesday morning, at the earliest. Just in time for their Election Day, if we're lucky. But the ruso said one of the bombs was cracked."

Ramirez snorted. "I don't believe him. Russians lie. You take Gallegos with you, as soon as you're sure he knows how to arm and disarm it. I'll take Kapitonov. And the larger bomb. When the decoy truck gets here, I'm sending Florio back to Miami with a message for Sparrow. Fidel's deadline is noon tomorrow. If we can have a bomb in place in Washington, armed and ready to go by then, the Commandante will approve. We stay with our original targets."

Calderone knelt to examine the bomb that was damaged. The outer steel casing had been dinged and scraped through all the rough handling since Bejucal. He soon found the open seam. The powdery residue Kapitonov had warned him about was still there, a faint dab at the edge of the joint. Inside, he knew perfectly well, the core was a spherical mix of plutonium and uranium 238. Something had happened. A manufacturing defect. Damage during handling. They had dropped the thing often enough. Maybe a production flaw, the mixture proportions not quite right. Something was wrong with the bomb and Kapitonov knew it. Capitan didn't want to believe it, but Calderone wasn't so sure.

"Remember the Brigade?" Ramirez asked him, as he rummaged deeper into the crate of gear they had brought along. "Remember when you got your bars, and became a subteniente?"

"Capitan, I never wanted to be an officer. You know that. I'm a soldier. When Batista was in power, officers were pigs. But the 1st Scouts...I liked that unit. We had a feel about us, didn't we? A strong team with a real mission."

"That we did, Felix." The 1st Scouts, elite of the Brigada Rivera that Ramirez had formed with blessings from Raul and Che, had a vital mission in the earliest days of the Revolution: hunting down and exterminating the last rogue bands of Batista holdouts hiding out in the fields and forests of Pinar del Rio. The campaign had gone on for six months, almost to Christmas in 1959. The 1st had done so well by then, killing or capturing several hundred Batista thugs, that Fidel himself had awarded them the Medal of Revolutionary Merit with oak leaves on a drizzly New Year's Day at Camp Columbia. Even Calderone got a medal, and Fidel had called him "Subteniente de Scouts Numero Uno."

"That was when I changed my mind about you," Calderone admitted. "Before the Scouts, I thought you were, you know...pensador, more of an office slug, not a real field officer. But when we were chasing bandits in the forests, I saw you differently."

Indeed, by the beginning of 1960, Calderone knew Ramirez to be a bold and aggressive revolutionary commander, more than eager to get rid of Castro's pests. He began to understand how Ramirez thought; the Capitan had an intuitive strategic sense. He had planned the Pinar campaign that fall, what areas to hit, how to approach the missions, their equipment, their training, he was a natural leader. Calderone had offered a few insights, from his days with Guevara and the 8th Column, but Ramirez's plans were so well thought out, so detailed, that he had little else to do but execute them. Over coffee one day at the Bolivar Barracks, Ramirez told him "You're my right hand, Felix. We think alike. In the field, you act as I would." And it was true.

"This is a bigger mission, Felix. Much bigger. The Revolution depends on us."

Calderone reached across the crate and they clasped arms. They always did that just before an assault. A superstition, perhaps. But their luck had been good. "Just like La Coloma, eh? I know what you're thinking, Capitan. But we'll do it. We've had good training and the men are sharp. They're ready. They want to be on the road. Saguente's so anxious, he can't sit still. I may have to knock him out."

Ramirez laughed. Saguente was the chico, and the men teased him about shaving and girls and what it would be like to be an old man. "Felix, I want a full guard on these weapons, at all times. Rotate the men, one hour on, one hour off. The profesor's determined to feed us a big lunch but two stay down here at all times. After they eat, get them some sleep. We're leaving as soon as Gallegos gets back and your truck shows up."

"Very well, Capitan. I'll take the first watch. You eat with the men. Save some pollo for me, eh?"

While the team ate the huge meal Carmen Obriega had prepared, Luis Gallegos and Dmitri Kapitonov were three miles away, turning into the shopping center the profesor had described. In a corner of the L-shaped strip, red and white neon lights flashed "O'Brien's Hardware Store " Gallegos pulled the Cadillac up and parked.

Inside, Kapitonov tried to describe the gear he needed; he had scribbled out a list on the ride over. Electrical switches and relays--he ticked off the voltages he wanted--, five spools of 20-AWG wire, wire pullers, a voltmeter, stripper, toggles, pushbuttons and mounting brackets, rolls of terminal strip, resistors--again, he checked off the capacities he wanted--several capacitors, tiny lights and lamps for testing and status indication, two small phase inverters and several transformers, a thermostat for its bi-metallic coil, and four plastic tubs of assorted screws and pins. While the ruso dickered with O'Brien over ratings and component qualities, Gallegos begged off the technical discussions and went looking for a telephone, a private one away from Kapitonov.

He found a booth outside on the sidewalk, in front of a small deli called Cheese Villa. A delicious aroma filled the air...ham, lots of it. Gallegos was starving but he had business to take care of. He hoisted the phone book up onto the tiny table and thumbed quickly through, looking for the Atlanta office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He'd make an anonymous tip there, then leave a message at the Marti operational number in Miami, which was just an answering machine. The recorded message said something about the Fernandez Lavadero\--a laundry--but that was just a front. Gallegos knew the General would quickly hear anything he left.

He dialed up the FBI number. After a few rings, he found himself speaking with a Charles Jenkins, assistant agent-in-charge. Gallegos didn't identify himself, but launched into an explanation of what was happening, describing the Palm Breezes truck and its contents, and the planned target cities. He mentioned that his next planned stop was an abandoned farmhouse in Dayton, Ohio. And he added that two stolen Soviet atomic bombs were in Atlanta.

"Whoa, whoa," Jenkins said, dropping his shoes off his desk. He'd been pawing his way through a Milky Way candy bar when the phone rang. Now, trying to get a pad to write on, he dropped the rest of the bar and swore out loud. "Who the hell is this? I didn't get your name, sir."

"My name isn't important. Just the facts I gave you. Believe me, your capital and your largest city are in great danger. Very great danger. The deadline is Tuesday, your election day. Look on the highways for this truck. And there will be another truck too--"

Jenkins figured the guy was a genuine nutcase. He figured he took about two dozen crank calls a day. Still, he scribbled out as much as he could. Lately, there had been a lot of sightings of Cuban and Soviet "agents," what with the Missile Crisis and all. That was to be expected. Next week, it would be UFOs.

"You got some evidence, I suppose, mister. Something to corroborate all this?"

Gallegos gave him the address of the Obriega house. "Send your men there. I think you will also find there is an investigation underway in Mobile. If not, there soon will be. A man has been murdered at the Palm Breezes warehouse."

"I'll do that," Jenkins promised. He was about to ask another question when the line went dead. The son of a bitch had hung up.

The assistant SAIC read over his hasty scribbling, which didn't make a whole lot of sense. Somebody with nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon, Jenkins figured. High school kids. At least, they hadn't asked him if he had Prince Albert in a can.

Jenkins wrote up a brief call report, then filed it in the Daily Incident Log. He rang up Marge and had her drop it in the SAIC's in-basket. Kevin Cunningham was out of town, on a case chasing down a car theft ring in Florida, and wouldn't be back until Monday. He sighed and picked up the remains of the candy bar. Damn asshole crackpot. He hadn't even gotten a good bite of the almonds.

Jenkins extracted the novel he had been reading. Seven Days in May. He plunged back into Chapter 3 again, then put the paperback down on his desk. He got up and went looking for that vending machine again. He really did want that Milky Way bad.
CHAPTER 10

11-2-62, Friday

Mobile, Alabama

3:00 p.m.

Mike French bent down to examine the exit wound in the front of Red Lynch's skull. The purplish hole was just below the scalp line, what was left of it, and matted down with hair and dried flesh. Two more exit wounds speckled Lynch's throat and cheeks. The assailant had fired from behind. Powder residue was all over the poor man's hair.

Detective Captain Joe Warren, Badge # 211 of the Alabama State Police, out of Post 50 in Pritchard, passed a brown Ballistics Lab envelope to the FBI agent. "Found these on the floor over there by the wall," Warren told him. French took the envelope and examined the spent shells.

"High-velocity," he noted.

"Military assault rifle, seven-six-two millimeters, from what our lab guys say. They'll put 'em under the scope to be sure, of course. What's your take?"

French examined one of the shells in the envelope more closely, looking at the peculiar striations on the shells. "Offhand, Captain, I'd say Russian make. Maybe AK or PK. The weight's about right."

"Cuban, maybe?"

French conceded the point. "Very likely. The Russians are dumping a lot of guns and ammo on the island. Where's that residue you found?"

Warren shone his flashlight on a faint smear on the victim's right pants leg. Near the knee. French bent down to examine it, careful not to extend his hand beyond the yellow and black Radiological Control tape put around the body by the Atomic Energy Commission inspectors. To the naked eye, it might have passed for closet dust or dried mortar. There was a slight silvery tinge to it.

"One of our evidence techs was suspicious," Warren explained. "Mark Breit...that fellow over there." He pointed out a young guy, crewcut blond, with black glasses. Breit was bent over a folding table the FBI had brought in, deep in animated discussion about some pieces of evidence they had laid out, talking with Rudy Tyler, a forensic chemist out of Lab Division's Physics and Chem Section. "He took a sample and we rushed it up to Montgomery, State Crime Lab. At first, they couldn't ID it. Lab guys called up the University and they sent a physicist over. Two minutes after the University guy saw the sample, they put a Geiger counter on it. From what I heard, the thing went clean off the scale. That's when we called the Army, up in Huntsville. Watch yourself...that stuff's hotter than hell."

French backed away and stood up. Where was Torburg? He left the concrete storage bay, slipped under the yellow Crime Scene rope and tracked the physicist down outside, poring over some graphs with two other men. The Russians, Maximov and Kudinov, were there too, looking on, and looking decidedly out of place in the middle of an American crime scene investigation. He wondered what they thought. Jesus, the place is crawling with cops: French mentally ticked off the agencies: the Bureau itself, Alabama State Police, Baldwin County PD, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, Baldwin County Medical Examiner's Office, Atomic Energy Commission. Captain Warren was nominally in charge. French figured if he didn't set up some discipline pretty quick, the rest of the evidence would soon be trampled and scattered halfway to Mobile Bay.

Baldwin County police had secured the entire Palm Breezes lot and Sheriff's Deputies were directing curious traffic away from the scene. Captain Warren had set up his command post in the warehouse's office. Already the locals had done a walk-through of the crime scene, examining the ground around the storage bays, then the interior cement floors and walls. Bags and envelopes of evidence had been collected and labeled, some through the side-lighting technique, where a strong light was lowered to the floor and items of interest shadowed for easier detection. Several police photographers were setting up their tripods around Lynch's body, preparing to take 35mm still shots from every angle. Nearby, a police artist from Montgomery was sketching in depths and angles on grid paper.

The fingerprint team was already hard at work, led by an inspector French knew from Identification Division's fifth-floor lab at the Bureau. Another team had already made casts of truck tire prints out in front of the office

French took a stroll outside, stopping by the FBI van, where Torburg was holding class on long-lived radionuclides.

"We got a definite leaker here, gentlemen," Torburg was saying. "I just got the coroner's preliminary report: cause of death was multiple gunshot trauma to the head and neck. The residue on the victim's leg is plutonium 239, half-life of twenty-four thousand years. This graph shows the energy level, in millions of electron volts, of residual neutrons, from the sample. I ran my neutron flux detector over it. You can see for yourself--right about four point two to four point three MeV. Mike," he noticed French listening in, "that's the same range as I found on the tanker. My read is it's the same or a very similar source of neutrons."

"A bomb, in another words?"

Torburg shrugged. "Probably. Can't say for sure. But a definite quantity of fissionable plutonium."

"It's weapons-grade, for real," said one of the men Torburg had been talking to. He stuck out his hand. "Karl Capers, Oak Ridge. We mostly do uranium at the Ridge but I been to Pantex and the build sites. If this ain't weapons-grade signature, I'm a Crimson Tide fan." Capers shook his head, adding, "and I hate the Tide worse than my mother-in-law."

"Then the bombs had to have been here," French said.

"Jeff's got one piece of evidence," Capers went on. "I've got another. Right after the Bureau called me, I got on the phone to a buddy of mine at AFTAC, over at Kirtland in New Mexico. That's the Air Force Technical Applications Center. They got a device called a B/20-4. Real slick too. Air Force uses it for long-range detection of atomic bomb tests. I had the thing flown into Mobile. It's in the van now."

Torburg picked up the story. "It's s gas sniffer, Mike. Looks for Krypton-85, a real rare gas that only builds up in atomic explosions or concentrations of fissionable material, like plutonium."

"And?"

"And we got a bingo here just a few minutes ago." He snatched up another graph from the folder on the table and showed him. "See the parts per million? The air around here positively reeks of Krypton-85. I got spikes at 26 and 34 ppm. Mike, that's not natural. We got us a serious problem. At least one, probably two bombs, and one of 'em's leaking like a sieve. Plus, you want to hear some more good news?"

French was getting a headache. Maybe it was the long flight from Portugal. "I can hardly wait."

"I can make a decent estimate on the quantity and probable yield of the fissionable material. Once I had Karl's krypton data, it was easy. Piece of cake, just like when I was in England in '58, analyzing U-2 air samples. See, the neutron flux and the Krypton-85 levels puts an upper bound on the amount of fissionable material involved. At J-Division, we always used a rule of thumb: a one-megaton thermonuclear multistage device typically contains a few kilograms of lithium deuteride and tritium, a couple of kilograms of plutonium and about a hundred kilograms of uranium 238. From what I'm seeing here, I'd say we're dealing with about half a megaton probable yields, maybe two to four hundred kilotons. If there are two devices, like I suspect from the two spikes in the data, they may be about...say, six to eight hundred pounds apiece, depending on casing and construction details. We know a good bit about Russian nukes, but--" he stopped, realizing Maximov and Kudinov were taking in every word. "In any case, that's my estimate."

French decided he might as well introduce the Russians to everybody. They were on the same case, by order of the President. After handshakes and smiles all around, he asked the obvious question of Alexei Maximov.

"Are we on the right track or not? I'm sure you can add something here."

Maximov wet his lips nervously. Kudinov looked like he would rather be at a funeral. "Your figures seem accurate, Mr. Torburg. Of course, the specifics I cannot reveal...in fact, I myself don't know all these details--"

Bullshit, thought Mike French.

"--however, your analysis seems sound. As to the way our nuclear devices are made, I will have to refer to experts assigned by our Embassy. The casing is a steel alloy. I can tell you that much. I don't know the exact composition. There have been problems with embrittlement at Chelyabinsk however--" he stopped, realizing that Kudinov was staring daggers right through the side of his head. "Perhaps, if we could examine your instruments, see how they are calibrated--"

Torburg and Capers looked confused, not knowing what was allowed and what wasn't. French realized they were making up the rules as they went along. If they're on the case, they're on the case.

"Let 'em see," French said, assuming responsibility he wasn't sure was his. Hell, nobody else was taking charge. Torburg and Capers motioned the Russians to step up into the van and see the B/20-4. French peered in after them, figuring he might as well violate all known rules of handling top secret equipment while he could. The device was about the size of a refrigerator, with a drop-down control panel and a bank of dials at eye-height. A row of trash-can size caps sat on top of the panel. Sniffers, Torburg indicated. Each "can" had a mesh plate in its side. Ground filter units, the physicist added.

Captain Warren came by the van, looking for French. The agent stepped out while the detective explained what was going on.

"Photo's on the scene now. He'll be about half an hour, he says. The ETs have good blood and flesh samples. Plus we got the shells. I got men scouring every one of these storage bays, circling and marking evidence. Coroner's going to move the body to the morgue in about an hour."

"Looks like we got every angle covered, for now," French told him. "Good work. The scientists tell me the bombs were here, and not long ago. And one of them's public health hazard number one. But how's Lynch figure into all this? That's what I don't understand"

"He must have seen something," Warren surmised. "You mentioned that oil tanker turned up nothing."

French explained the evidence the Navy had turned over to the Bureau. "Somehow, the bombs got from that tanker to this warehouse. And they were moved before we intercepted her Wednesday. The tanker didn't drop them off here; Navy guys had her under surveillance for several days. And they didn't just fly in. How's the victim figure into this? Was he just unlucky, wrong place at the wrong time?"

Warren's walkie-talkie crackled. He answered. "Post One, go."

The speaker was a lieutenant in the State Police, handling the crime scene detail at the warehouse office. Norwood, something, French seemed to recall. "Better get up here, Captain. We got some real live evidence just walked in."

French and Warren were there in seconds. Norwood was a heavy balding kid, with a face flushed red from exertion. To French, he looked the way he imagined the Russian Maximov might have looked as a teenager. Norwood indicated a middle-aged brunette, slim figure, sitting in a chair beside the desk, nervously smoking a cigarette.

"Meet Sara Hollins," Norwood told them. "Apparently she knew the victim. Or her husband did."

Sara Hollins had been crying. Her eyes were red and her makeup had run down her cheeks. "Jerome's missing, officer. I ain't seen him in two days. I know he talked with Red couple of nights ago. I was at the police station, filing a missing person report. Sergeant Skiles drove me over here right away, said there might be a connection." She indicated a Baldwin County police officer standing on the other side of the desk. "What's going on? Is Jerome here? Is he--"

French sat down at the desk beside her. "We don't know exactly what's going on, ma'am. Maybe you can help. There has been a fatality here, a homicide we think. A Mr. Red Lynch. You know him?"

Sara Hollins's eyes welled up in tears. Her mouth quivered. She croaked out: "Yes.s.s...Jerome knew him. Not me, so much. We...we met once or twice."

French found a pad for Captain Warren to take some notes. "How well did your husband know Mr. Lynch?"

Sara Hollins dabbed at her eyes, a hopeless cause French saw, then folded her arms in her lap. "Kind of like business partners, I guess. It was funny, you know. Jerome talked to that Mexican guy the other night, I guess it was Tuesday--"

Instantly, French was alert. "What Mexican guy? Do you have a name?"

"Not really...wait, Rodriguez something, that might be it...something like that."

"What did they talk about?"

Sara Hollins looked around the room, seeing for the first time all the law enforcement officers. "Should I ask for an attorney or something? I mean--"

"Mrs. Hollins, please, this is vitally important. Just a few questions. What did your husband talk about with this Mexican guy?"

"Well, I don't exactly know for sure. Jerome didn't say. But he had a little job he was supposed to do. He had to use his boat, pick up something, I guess."

"What boat?"

"The Jenny Ann, of course. Jerome loved that boat."

French looked at the Captain. "Your men know anything about this?"

Warren shook his head. He was already on the walkie-talkie.

French asked, "Where is this boat, ma'am?"

"Spivey's Marina."

Warren was already organizing a detail to get over to the marina and impound the boat as evidence.

French pulled his seat a little closer. Alexei Maximov had just walked in too. The Russian stood impassively in the corner, scribbling some notes, not sure what to make of American police procedure. "Explain what happened, Mrs. Hollins."

"Am I under arrest?"

"Not at this point. But we have some questions."

Sara Hollins wiped a tear-streaked face, further smearing makeup. "Well, Jerome got this call from the Mexican, see. He didn't tell me much, just that the Mexican had some stuff he wanted to bring into the country and could he use Jerome's boat. He had already worked out a deal, so Jerome said, to store his stuff with Red Lynch."

"The 'stuff' was what exactly?"

Sara Hollins shook her head. "Jerome never said. He may not have known."

"And it was to be stored here, at the warehouse?"

"I suppose so. Anyway, Jerome left late Wednesday night. They were supposed to meet somewhere in the Gulf real early in the morning. I know he was mad 'cause he had to leave so early to get there. And that--" she was starting to cry again--"was the last time I saw him..."

"He hasn't called you? You haven't spoken to him?"

She shook her head, sobbing, "I went down to the police station this morning, right before lunch. Filed a missing persons report. That's when they said I should come here. Sergeant Skiles drove me."

"You've checked the marina?"

She nodded, "That's the first place I went. Right about dinner time last night. Nobody had seen him. And the Jenny was back at the dock. Not ours, though. She was tied up at somebody else's slip."

"Could be significant," Warren observed. "Nobody saw your husband?"

"Nobody. I couldn't find anybody who had seen the boat come back either."

French was thinking. "Ten to one, your husband didn't come back with that boat. We better notify the Coast Guard."

"What do you mean? Is Jerome--"

"We don't know, Mrs. Hollins. But I want to see that boat. Lieutenant, anything in the records?"

Lieutenant Norwood, Baldwin County PD, had been thumbing through paperwork from the warehouse filing cabinets while French and Warren questioned Mrs. Hollins. He shoved a couple of receipts across the desk. "Just these."

French studied the papers. They were vehicle loan payments. And a vehicle title form, issued by the State of Alabama, complete with the Vehicle Identification Number.

"Bingo," French said. "Good work, Lieutenant. Mr. Lynch seems to have a truck. Or had one."

"No truck on the grounds now," Warren told them. "Who ever killed him must have taken it."

"And we've got the VIN," French said. "Nice of them to leave that behind. He gave the title card to Warren. "I'm sure your Motor Vehicles people can do something with this."

French and Warren questioned Sara Hollins for another half an hour. When they were through, Warren ordered her taken into protective custody. Sergeant Skiles drove her back to the stationhouse on Murphy Road, a few miles away.

Alexei Maximov had observed the interrogation with fascination. "Your methods are not very efficient, Michael. This woman knows a great deal more than she admits."

"You're sure of that, are you?" French asked. "I thought we did pretty well. New lead on the boat. VIN on a stolen truck. Torburg's got physical evidence that the bombs were here. We got the makings of a good case."

"But no bomb. The weapons aren't here. This woman may know where they are."

"So what you want me to do...torture her? I'm not the Gestapo, you know. The woman's got rights."

Maximov smiled thinly. "And her rights are more important than the safety of the people? Where is the collective need greatest, Michael? In my country, the security of the people is the greatest right of all. That's my job, to protect the security of all the people. My oath is to serve as the sword and shield of the people."

French wasn't so sure he appreciated a Communist troglodyte like Maximov second-guessing everything he did. "Well, I didn't lose a couple of atomic bombs, now did I? Have you got anything constructive to add to this investigation?"

Maximov smiled a crooked smile, revealing a few gold-capped teeth. "I suggest we concentrate on looking for this truck that seems to be missing. It's likely that's where the bombs are."

French snorted. "Well that's about the most fucking brilliant observation I've heard today. Any ideas where we might look?"

Maximov ignored the FBI agent and started rummaging through the piles of papers on the desk. At length, he produced a map, actually an atlas of the southeastern United States. He spread the atlas wide and began studying the road system.

"All Soviet atomic weapons have a unique signature. Your Jeff Torburg already knows that. Like a fingerprint, each weapon emits neutrons from decay of the plutonium and uranium in the core, at known rates and energy levels. Your Geiger counters detect these emission products."

"Yeah, so? I'm with you so far."

"I propose collecting as many Geiger counters as possible. The problem with this instrument is that its detection range is so short, a few hundred meters at most. However, with enough Geiger counters, it may be possible to detect which of these many roads our bombs have taken, if we hurry. Otherwise, the radiation will rapidly dissipate and be undetectable over the natural background radiation of the area."

French thought that sounded reasonable. He'd have to check with Torburg on the availability of Geiger counters. It was a sure bet local PDs like Baldwin County didn't stock such gear. Maybe the Army guys could help out.

Captain Warren studied the roadways of the southeast alongside the Russian. "No telling where those nutcases have taken the bombs. By now, they could be hundreds of miles away."

"First thing we do," French told them, "is get this VIN called in. Alert every State Police in the whole Southeast. We'll put out a nationwide alert with the Bureau, as well. My guess is that they have to be heading for a major city."

"Miami, perhaps? Or Atlanta. Houston. New Orleans. Tampa. Look at the timing, Mike. From what Mrs. Hollins said, that boat couldn't have been at the dock before dawn yesterday. Say 8 a.m. for round figures. That's more than thirty hours ago. If they left immediately in Lynch's truck, how far could they reasonably get? Thirty times sixty minutes, maybe a stop for gas or two." Warren took a pen and drew an arc, from Arizona to New England. "Fifteen, maybe sixteen hundred miles."

French stood up and looked at Warren and Maximov. "That puts a helluva lot more places at risk. Now you're talking Chicago, Washington, New York"

"And," Maximov reminded them, "there are many military bases in this arc. Don't forget that."

"You Russians work with the Cubans. Where would they be likely to take a couple of atomic bombs?"

Maximov pushed an errant lock of blond hair back from his eyes. "The Cubantsy are like children. Very emotional, very hard to predict, hard to deal with. Castro is a romantic fool. He would want to make the biggest statement he could make. A daring, heroic mission...that's how he would see this. He was furious, so I am told, when Nikita Sergeyevich agreed to withdraw the missiles. Castro is a master of symbolism. He imagines himself a twentieth century Jose Marti, liberating oppressed peoples everywhere. He would want to strike at the very heart of American imperialism."

French's fingers went right to it. "New York, then. Maybe Washington or Chicago. Some place big, significant, lots of important people. Is that what you're saying?"

Maximov shrugged. "I'm a socialist worker. We liberators of the oppressed tend to think alike."

For a moment, French didn't know whether to punch the Russian or laugh out loud. He did neither, seeing the faintest tug of a smile at the corner of Maximov's mouth. "I guess I deserve that," he said. Indicating the atlas, he added, "We got a lot of ground to cover and not much time to do it. Alexei, check with Jeff Torburg. See about those Geiger counters. Maybe your country could fly some in and help out."

"And you?"

"I'm calling in. Hostetler needs to know what's going in." He snatched up the phone and dialed the long-distance operator. He gave the girl his Bureau code number and was patched through in a few minutes. Maximov left the office to find the Los Alamos physicist.

Mike French was already frustrated with the case and he'd only been assigned for three days. Too many fingers in this pie, he told himself. Working a high-profile case was like being a ballerina in a hurricane; you spent a lot of time picking yourself up and starting over again. Hostetler finally came on the line. French filled him on the specifics as he knew them.

"It's your call, Mike," said the Deputy Director.

Right, French thought, and my neck in the noose too. "Cliff, I think we ought to consider notifying Civil Defense. Actually, one of the Russians suggested that. We got solid evidence the bombs came this way. They're in the U.S. I don't know where they are and I don't know where they're going. And one of them leaks like the dickens."

"Notifying Civil Defense pushes a few more buttons, Mike. We're talking panic if we let this get out of hand."

"It's already out of hand. This whole operation appears to be well-thought out and professionally executed. We're not dealing with your average fanatics or thieves here."

Hostetler was quiet for a moment. "You figure the Cubans are alone in this?"

French understood perfectly well what the Deputy Director was saying. He checked to make sure neither Maximov nor Kudinov was nearby. "Hard to say. It's possible our Russian friends are working both sides of the street. I can't discount that but I can't prove it either. Maximov seems straight enough. But I can't read Kudinov. I hate to say this but we ought to get a couple of Counterintel guys down here just to keep an eye on them. This whole case could be one massive diversion, you know. Khrushchev takes out the missiles publicly and then slips a few into the U.S. through the back door."

"Mike, you haven't been in the Washington office long enough to be that paranoid but I'm not going to argue with you. I'll call McDermott and see if we can get an audience with the President. J. Edgar's going to think we've both flipped our Red-baiting minds. What's your next step?"

"We need to take a look at that boat, Cliff. See what her records show...speed, course, that sort of thing. If the bombs came in on the boat, we'll know soon enough. She's probably radioactive as hell. Plus there's this Mexican guy Mrs. Hollins mentioned. Rodriguez or something. Ten to one he's no Mexican. I've already got one of the State guys looking into logs of calls at the phone company. We can backtrace the source of the call. That'll give us something."

"Mike, I don't mind telling you the big shots around here are getting nervous. The Director has several conferences a day with the Attorney General. J Edgar doesn't look happy when he comes out. Washington's the OO for this case, so all the paperwork is supposed to pass through the Field Office. I'll get a desk going to manage communications round the clock. Any local cop sees that truck, I want to know about it here first, understand? I don't want some Barney Fife deputy taking down a vehicle with a couple of atomic bombs aboard. Any sighting at all and we get the word. No one approaches or apprehends that vehicle without direct permission from me."

"Agreed," French said. He didn't agree but that was another story. For as long as he'd been in the Bureau, he'd fought headquarters on giving the field offices and agents more autonomy. Hell, he'd never have taken down that Marti bomber in south Florida last year if he'd had to clear every head scratch with Washington. But that was another battle, for another time.

"Mike, on your say-so, I'll advise the Director that we're recommending basic civil defense procedures be implemented in all cities over one hundred thousand population, all along the Gulf Coast, south Atlantic and mid-Atlantic states. His eyes'll probably bug out but at least we'll be on record, if anything happens. You'll--"

Captain Warren came by, waving some papers, trying to get Mike's attention. "Hold on a sec, Cliff....what have you got?"

Warren laid out some receipts. "Norwood found them in the safe in Lynch's office. We just got in. They're Western Union vouchers. See the name?"

French saw it. Rodriguez. The Mexican Mrs. Hollins had mentioned. French scanned the paper.

"Originated in Miami. Western Union office, 16600 Southwest 22nd Street. Date looks like the twentieth-seventh, that's last Saturday."

"Yes, sir," Warren said. "I figure it's how Mr. Lynch got his money. It was wired from Miami."

"Cliff," French got back to the Deputy Director, "something new. Looks like there's a Miami connection. State cop just turned up a Western Union voucher, sent from Miami, apparently wiring the victim money to rent his warehouse. Jim Bledsoe's still the SAIC there, isn't he?"

"I believe so."

"Tell him what we just found. We need a Bureau team at that Western Union office right away: times, descriptions, anything they can get. This 'Rodriguez' guy's a key man, maybe the money man for the whole operation. We nab him and we may have our ticket to the really big show."

11-2-62, Friday

Camp David

6:15 p.m.

Marine Colonel Kelly Donnegan scanned the autumn horizon of the Catoctin Mountains, momentarily appreciating the sea of rust and yellow leaf cover quilting the hills, then quickly spied the radio tower that marked the south helipad at Camp David. He cranked in some more collective and the big VH-3 of Executive Flight Detachment Two eased over into a slight left bank. The 1250-hp General Electric turboshafts vibrated a little as Marine One flared up, slowing for a textbook approach through the pine and birch trees to the tiny concrete ramp, marked by a large red "H." Forty-two minutes after the big Sikorsky chopper, neatly piped in Marine Corps green and white markings, lifted off the South Lawn of the White House, Colonel Donnegan set her gently down on the concrete with a feathery touch and chopped the engines back to idle. Overhead, their twin escorts, both also Sikorsky SH-3A Sea Kings in Marine livery, peeled off for the ride back to Detachment headquarters at Andrews.

Donnegan's two passengers appeared at the top of the ramp and waited a moment, for the four First Marines sergeants of Baker Company, Fifth Regiment, to lower the stairs and secure the rails in the locked-upright position. Attorney General Robert Kennedy was clutching a battered black leather organizer as he stepped gingerly down the stairs and pushed back a windblown lock of hair. He waited for the second passenger, General Maxwell Taylor, United States Army and CJCS, to come down the stairs after him. The two of them walked briskly to a small golf cart, driven by agent Howard Raines, United States Secret Service, and climbed in. A minute later, agent Raines was speeding along an asphalt path back of Aspen Lodge, braking as he negotiated the beginnings of a rather steep hill. The narrow path twisted and turned, passing several more cabins and lodges, before levelling out to a straight stretch flanked by bare sweetgum and birch trees, dense mats of wet leaves carpeting the forest floor like so much heavy blanketing. Here and there, as Raines negotiated the twists and turns of the road, isolated mounds of recent snow shone white in the dark green gloom of the forest.

Presently, they saw a single man, bundled in a leather jacket, walking along a side path, clutching the hands of two children, a small boy and a small girl. A tiny cabin flashed by. The sign over the front screen door said DOGWOOD. Agent Raines stopped the cart at the beginning of a footpath leading up to the cabin.

Robert Kennedy and Maxwell Taylor climbed out and made their way onto the side path. They hustled to catch up with the President of the United States.

John Kennedy stopped, hearing the golf cart's motor, and waited, John Jr. and Caroline in attendance. John Jr. was well bundled in a woolen sweater and cap, Caroline in a bright blue coat and sneakers. She wore a baseball cap with the insignia of the Boston Red Sox.

"I thought we'd take a walk," the President said. He shook hands with his brother and the CJCS. The men smiled at the children. "Supper's cooking and the air's so fresh, a little stroll really works up an appetite. Beef stew tonight. An ice cream later, if you behave."

Robert Kennedy messed up John Jr.'s hair, squeezing the child's shoulders. He had plenty of kids of his own--Ethel had taken to threatening to station an armed guard beside their bed if he got her pregnant again--but there was always something special about being a kid in the White House. The Attorney General exchanged a momentary glance with the President and in that moment, a lifetime's understanding passed between them. Though they said nothing more, the Attorney General knew Jack hadn't brought the kids out for a stroll to work up an appetite. More like submerging his fears in the minutiae of domestic routine, he thought. It was understandable.

"Run along now," the President instructed them. "And wash up when you get back to the cabin. Otherwise, your Mother will skin all of us alive. Tell her I'll be along." He gave both in turn a hug and dispatched them on their way. A pair of Secret Service agents detached from the "walking detail" to shadow them all the way back to Aspen Lodge.

Without another word, the President resumed his stroll along the trail. Fifty yards to each side, "the walking detail" assigned from the Protective Division, kept easy pace. The Attorney General and the CJCS followed.

"I assume you're not here to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving," the President said. He wondered if any of them would live to see it.

"No, Mr. President," said Robert Kennedy. He briefly explained the results of the FBI's investigation at the crime scene in Mobile. The President said nothing, grimly staring at the dirt on the ground, head down, hands jammed in his coat pockets.

"Bobby," he said at last, "I think my worst nightmare is coming true." He halted suddenly, reaching out for a withered old red oak, testing its bark, snapping off a low hanging branch and smelling the last forlorn leaves. The President was angry, furious really, with Khrushchev and the Soviets. "It was their carelessness, Khrushchev's recklessness, that got us into this damn mess. Now we're going to have to work with the Soviets to fix it. If we don't blow each other up in the process." The President tossed the dead limb aside and resumed walking. "Last week, we were both set to launch World War Three over Cuba. This week, we're in bed together. The question is: can I really trust them?"

"Mr. President," said General Taylor, "I have no answer for you on that. But I do have revised deployments on all Task Force 136 and 135 ships, plus the sitreps from Homestead and Guantanamo you asked for. We ran some more low-level aerial recon today, just like yesterday. No problems on the run, nobody got shot at today. Art Lundahl thought you might like to see this." He handed the President an enlarged aerial photo processed overnight by NPIC. "It's the San Cristobal site. NPIC's attached pointers to equipment that's been moved...you can see the trucks and transporters are being marshaled in one general area. NPIC calls it 'convoy' formation. Looks like they're getting ready to move the missiles."

Kennedy examined the photo very carefully, his lips tight. "That's the best news I've heard all day, General." He handed the photo back. "Thanks. Bobby, what about the bombs? What are we doing in precautionary moves? What can we do?"

The Attorney General said, "A lot, actually. I talked with Mr. Hoover just an hour ago, in my office. The Bureau investigators are sure the Russian bombs came in through Mobile. They're definitely in the country, somewhere. We don't know where. There's evidence of a Miami connection."

"Miami? Is Miami a possible target?"

"Could be, Mr. President. Castro's got a helluva lot enemies there, what with the immigrants and all. Alpha-54, Marti, there's a lot of groups that are itching to get their fingers around Castro's throat. A lot of the Bay of Pigs recruits came from this group."

"Jesus, don't remind me. I presume Hoover's got his boys chasing down every lead, Miami or wherever?"

"Correct. The biggest problem is we don't know...hell, we don't have even a hint of what the Cuban commandos have in mind for a target. Hoover wants us to start implementing basic Civil Defense procedures. Just to be safe."

The President smiled ruefully. "The critics really me roasted me last year on this Civil Defense thing. 'Waste of time,' they said. 'Taxpayer boondoggle.' Kennedy's Folly. They may change their tune now."

"I've worked up a draft of an Executive Order." He gave the sheet to the President, who read it nodding, mumbling a little.

"Okay, Bobby. Give it to Evelyn when you get back. But I want to keep this low key, if we can. Basic preparatory steps--checking supplies, alerting key government people on the Relocation List, checking out communications, that sort of thing. The press gets wind of this and they'll have a field day. Mass hysteria. We don't need any more of that right now. The supermarkets are just getting restocked as it is."

"I'll let Bundy know what you decided. He'll have to get the legal side squared away."

"Call Ed McDermott when you get back, too." Edward McDermott was national director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness. "He needs to be in on the next ExComm meeting. You too. Plus I want Hoover, the Atomic Energy Commission, let's see--"

"Interior," Robert Kennedy suggested. "In case the Cubans go for some monument, like the Statue of Liberty."

"--good idea. And the Public Health Service. General Taylor, your Army Chemical Corps up to speed on plutonium leaks?"

The CJCS said, "Yes, sir, they are. I've already contacted Fort McLellan, told them to get a detachment ready to move on two hours' notice."

"Good. Excellent."

"Why don't you call a full cabinet meeting?" Robert Kennedy suggested.

The President considered it but rejected the idea. "Too risky. Lot of blabbermouths in that bunch. Let's try to keep this under wraps as long as we can. There's still a chance we can get these guys before anything happens. I do want the full ExComm there though, tonight. Let's make it for 9 p.m. That'll screw up everybody's Friday night plans."

"I'll set it up with Mac Bundy and Evelyn."

The President stopped for a moment, staring off into the russet hills of the Catoctin Mountains in the distance. Long shadows presaged the coming of sundown and the air was distinctly chillier than it had been only a few moments before. Thirty miles north, beyond those very hills, lay the town of Gettysburg. There were times, the President thought, when I'd really like to walk up there, just to visit Ike and see the cemetery. How many tens of thousands of Americans had died in that bucolic valley a century ago?

"Gentlemen, I think the Second Cuban Missile Crisis has now begun," he announced glumly. He turned back to head along the footpath to Aspen Lodge, and dinner. "How the hell am I ever going to explain this to Caroline and John Jr.?"

11-2-62, Friday

Atlanta

7:30 p.m.

It was after dark when Felix Calderone bolted the door of the truck shut. The truck, a rented Ford delivery vehicle, had been backed up to Obriega's garage entrance when the driver showed up, just after 5 pm. Munoz signed the paperwork, then drove the agency driver back to the local office, returning a little after 6 pm. Ramirez checked his watch constantly; they needed to be on the road. The team now had three trucks, one each for the bombs and one decoy, heading on to Miami. Oscar Oriente would drive the decoy.

After some discussions with Calderone, Ramirez had decided to split the team almost in half. They had trained that way in and around Libertad. He saw no reason to change now. They would need every bit of their training and fieldcraft skills in the days to come. Calderone would take the 200 KT bomb--Kapitonov called it a K-5--to New York and situate the device on Wall Street, in the very heart of norteamericano capitalism. Gallegos would go with him; Luis claimed he could arm and disarm the bomb in less than an hour, as soon as the Russian taught him how to modify the relays and wiring to allow ground detonation. Ortega and Aleman would also ride with this team.

Ramirez would take Kapitonov himself and the 700 KT device, the K-12. Barracoa, Arrantes and Saguente would go with them. The target location was Washington and Ramirez had often dreamed of setting up the truck on Pennsylvania Avenue, at Lafayette Park, directly across from the White House. In his field pack, he had a brochure about Washington, the White House and the Federal Triangle. It was a matter of professional pride, of doing the mission the right way, working their weapons in close enough for a sure kill, just like they had always done with the Brigada Rivera, chasing down Batista's goons. Only this time, the goon wasn't Cuban. Ramirez found the prospect of obliterating twenty square miles of the Yanqui capital both challenging and satisfying. It wouldn't bring Tomas back but it would help Cuba, help the Revolution and, most importantly, it would finally bring him some peace, stilling the voices that kept him awake night after sweaty night.

The third truck would be the decoy. Raul Castro's smile, when Ramirez had explained this part of the Moncada plan, was proof enough that even farm boys from Oriente province had their creative and inspired moments. Ramirez had decided to use Red Lynch's truck, since this was the vehicle the American police would be looking for. Obriega had done a good job, following Florio's instructions, and the empty crates were ready and waiting to be loaded. With any luck, the Americans would pick up the trail of this truck and follow it all the way back to Miami. In that way, Ramirez had explained to the MINFAR, "our real targets will remain unknown, until we're in place." Raul Castro had smiled broadly at the planned deception. And just to add a special touch, Ramirez had worked with DGI's Escuadra Tactico Especial to machine a fake bomb casing, somewhat resembling in exterior shape and dimensions an atomic warhead. From Obriega's backyard, Ramirez directed fill dirt be dug up and shoveled into the casing, which had been disassembled and carried in their mission crates all the way from Cuba. The casing was reassembled and filled, then fastened together and placed in one of the empty crates. Next to it, Jorge Aleman had wired up a small satchel of trinitrotoluene, TNT, about twenty-five pounds. A small radar warning receiver requisitioned from the MiG base at Santa Clara and a proximity sensor were wired in series and plugged into the detonation circuit, but not hooked up with the six-volt battery. Oscar Oriente would finish the final connections in Miami.

When the Yanqui policemen came within about ten feet of the radar unit, the proximity sensor would close a circuit and allow current from the battery to flow into the detonator. The crate contained enough explosive to level a city block. A message from Fidel, Ramirez had told them. For good measure, each man donated one grenade from his own field pack as well, then signed it and stuffed the grenade in the crate.

Ramirez was supervising loading of the last crates when Manual Obriega came down the stairs to the garage, excited and out of breath.

"Come see! On the television...come see...there's a special news about a manhunt--" He waved all the men into the garage, but Ramirez gruffly ordered them to return to their posts and finish loading. He followed the profesor upstairs and stood before the set in the den. Chet Huntley was on the screen.

"--for some escaped fugitives," Huntley was saying, "the exact nature and extent of the manhunt has not been released by authorities but we do know this much: sources say the escapees are Cuban exiles, considered armed and dangerous, possibly from Miami. It's thought they entered the U.S. through the Immigration and Naturalization Service processing center in Key West, then somehow eluded authorities. The volume of Cuban immigrants in recent weeks has nearly overwhelmed the center. Our sources tell us the station is processing over two hundred a day, sometimes more. Authorities have told NBC News that the manhunt is concentrating efforts in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida for the time being. We have no descriptions or identities as yet, nor the exact nature of their crimes. But we can confirm that there is a massive law enforcement operation underway this Friday evening across the southeastern U.S."

Ramirez watched for a few more minutes but the anchorman said nothing else. He returned to the garage and motioned Calderone over. He told the subteniente about the newscast.

"The police know we are in America, Felix. It was on the news."

Calderone was thoughtful. "We expected that, Capitan. We planned and trained for this. It's good to know what we're up against."

"The enemy is strong and we're in his territory. I hope we trained enough. From now on, no mistakes. Follow the plan. Operational discipline is essential. Every man knows his duty. Fidel's counting on us."

Calderone extracted a map from his back pocket and laid it out on Obriega's workbench. "You really think you can make Washington by noon tomorrow?"

"We have to. Fidel's going to tell the world about us. I'm heading north--" his finger traced the route--"into North Carolina. Stay off the main highways. Travel at night, as much as you can. Don't leave any paper behind, nothing for the police. And watch your fingerprints in public places. We got a safe house in Roanoke--Florio arranged it--but we won't have time now. I'll have our little present to Kennedy in place somewhere in the Federal Triangle by lunchtime tomorrow."

"That ruso has a lot of work to do, Capitan. He told me it might take several days. You trust him?"

"No. Do you? But I have no choice. The bombs have to be re-wired." Ramirez smiled, patting the holster at his side. "I can motivate the ruso properly. And Barracoa's watching everything he does. Angel's got training as an electracista, radios and radars with the 11th Interceptors, DAAFAR. He learned from the rusos himself on a MiG-15. He'll know if Kapitonov tries anything."

For his part, Felix Calderone was to head north as well, northwest out of Atlanta, again keeping to lesser traveled highways. Head north, the plan said, through Knoxville, then on to Dayton, Ohio. Florio had rented them an abandoned farm as a safe house there. Calderone already had directions. From that point, he would turn east, traveling through southern Ohio and Pennsylvania, across New Jersey and into Newark, where another safe house had been arranged.

"I won't be in New York until Monday at the earliest," he said. "By about midday, I'm figuring. We'll find a good spot right on Wall Street."

"In front of the Stock Exchange," Ramirez suggested. They both laughed, then clasped arms, as they had often done before a mission. Their eyes met and they said nothing for a moment.

"Felix, the Yanquis will be looking for us. Go fast but be careful. Check surveillance. And don't let them steer you into a roadblock or a trap. You've got to get through. We both do. For the Revolution."

"Si, and for Tomas, no?" Calderone released the Capitan. "I wish I had known your brother."

Ramirez nodded. He patted his own heart. "Tomas is here with me. We go together, everywhere."

"Adios, Capitan. I'll be with you all the way. And...afterward, too." In the lost mists of the Sierra Madre, he had always imagined it. Death didn't frighten him nor Ramirez, he was sure. Failure was the real enemy, the greatest fear. Failure to complete the mission would be a disgrace he could never live with. So it had been with Felix Calderone since his days at the General Maximo Gomez Academy in Havana. So it had been since his boxing coach, Juan Socorro, taught him in that dim, smelly gymnasium that a true fighter never quit, but picked himself up, and fought on to victory. It was a lesson Calderone had learned well.

They embraced, then Calderone stepped back and saluted. Ramirez returned the salute.

The Capitan gathered the men together for a final briefing. They were anxious, he could see that. Saguente could hardly stand still; on the drill field, Ramirez would have called him out for extra hours at close-order practice. Ramirez reminded them to be alert.

"The enemy is ruthless. He's got his hands on Cuba's throat now. It's our job to loosen the grip a little, make him think twice about interfering. We're the lucky ones, hombres. We meet the enemy head on in battle. And we've got a sting the Yanquis won't soon forget." He dismissed them to load up and get going, shaking hands, embracing, slapping each one on the shoulder.

"Patria o muerte!" he told each one of them, in turn.

Oscar Oriente came up and shook his hands, then hugged him. "Capitan, I'd like to stay, go with the team."

Oriente was a good sargento, one of Diego's boys from the 15th Infantry. "I understand that, Oscar. But the decoy mission is vital. We trained for it, you trained for it. You go to Miami and make your way back to Cuba. That'll pull surveillance off me and the subteniente. And when you get back, go find Raul Castro. Find Luis de la Madrigo too. My old boss from G-3. Tell them we died as heroes."

Discouraged, Oriente went away, and climbed back into the Palm Breezes truck. He waited until Miguel Munoz got into his own car, then fired up the motor and saluted from the cab. He followed right on Munoz' rear bumper as the two of them headed down the street, eventually disappearing over a hill.

At ten minute intervals, the two remaining trucks left as well. Manual Obriega and Carmen stood silently in the doorway while the Moncada teams boarded their trucks. Calderone drove out first, Ortega up in the cab with him. In the back, Aleman was helping Luis Gallegos complete some of the same re-wiring Kapitonov would have to do with the other bomb. Ramirez pulled out last, Saguente riding with him. He nodded gravely to the profesor as they backed out. From the cab, "Gracias, Senior. Cuba thanks you."

Obriega wasn't so sure about that. He pulled Carmen tighter, as they watched the last truck disappear, and realized she was shaking. Perhaps Cuba will thank me, he thought. But they were no longer in Cuba, were they? The real question was...what would America think? What would America do?

11-2-62, Friday

Consolacion del Norte, Cuba

9:30 p.m.

The fire fight had been going on all day and it was dark now, but the tamale infantry wasn't letting up. Sam Fields shone a tiny flashlight on the tattered map and judged they had made about three miles, maybe four, in the last six hours. The problem was they were cut off from any hope of making it back to the LZs. Worse, just getting to Site Bravo or any of the pickup points was dicey. And the airfield, Campo Justicia, was several miles southeast.

Captain Sam Fields knew just how a fly felt when it was trapped in a spider's web.

For the last few hours, they'd engaged T-54s with Soviet unit markings in a running duel along the ridge line, playing hide and seek with an armored column that had damn near blasted them to kingdom come back in the cane fields. At least, this terrain was better, more wooded, though not densely, and draped in shallow ravines and passes that afforded them a little protection, a chance anyway. That and the dark. Only when the sun went down and the soggy ground gave up its day's moisture in little floating banks of fog had the damned MiGs broken off and given them some peace. Fields chewed angrily on a cigar. Charlie Two-Five was down to half strength, maybe less and the corpsmen were exhausted. He'd have given his left arm to get a good grip on the neck of the shithead who dreamed up this stupid operation.

Lieutenant Jacobs, Third Platoon, came by, out of breath from a little recon patrol he'd just brought back. His jacket and helmet were covered in black mud. Fields had sent them north, then east, scouting enemy strength. The report wasn't very encouraging.

"At least a battalion," Jacobs had reported, ducking for the tenth time as another round of 88-mm shells chewed up dirt and tree limbs nearby. "Strung out on both sides of Highway 3 and for several hundred yards on either side. Mechanized, I'd say. They got some '54s, and a few APCs as well. Infantry's dismounted for now."

"Which way are they headed?"

"Southwest, along the highway, Captain. We didn't stick around long. They were sending recon into the woods and we had a couple of squads right on our asses. I gave the fallback order and we made tracks."

Jacobs' report fit in with earlier scouting from Bryers' Second Platoon. Fields was beginning to form a mental picture of the tactical situation and it wasn't pretty. Battalion of mechanized infantry to the east and south of them. Several armored columns north, maybe a regiment crossing the highway, probably trying to sweep in behind the LZs and cut off their escape. If he didn't know better, he'd say the tamales were driving them southwest, but toward what? A trap probably. In any case, Objective Alpha was east. With the coming of night and some nice fog, their movements would be harder to see. For now, the Cubans were holding off, content to lob 88-mm and the odd Willie Pete--white phosphorous--shells into the sector. Come first light, Fields figured, they'd close the vise and move in. And without more air support, Charlie Two-Five was as good as dead.

The op plan called for the company to swing south in platoon order to Sites Bravo or George if they couldn't make the objective. If he was reading the map right, Bravo was only a few miles away, but they'd have to cross in front of the armored column to reach it. He hated to abandon Objective Alpha. Charlie Two-Five was practically a legend in the phibriglex exercises every year and he was proud of it. Haley had picked them on their reputation. Every spring, Charlie Two-Five racked up a few more unit citations for tactical excellence. Amphibious landings or small-unit tactics, it didn't seem to matter. Any OPFOR with the misfortune to face Charlie Two-Five was as good as dead meat.

Not this time, Fields muttered. Shit. The whole fucking operation had died at the LZ. Command just hadn't done their homework.

"Coles! Bring the radio!"

Fields summoned the corporal with the squad radio, the specially modified SCR-300 with the Pyramid circuit in it. He needed to raise the LFOC in the worst way, get some air set up for a morning strike or get a lift out of this mudhole. Fields cranked the handle and talked.

"Dugout, this is Charlie Six. Dugout, Charlie Six., over."

After a few seconds of chirps and static, Dugout came on the line. It was Colonel Stephen Bruns, the LANCOM or Landing Force Commander, back at Iwo. Bruns' voice was tinny and distant, like he was speaking out of a barrel.

"Charlie Six, Dugout. Go."

Fields lowered his voice, realizing at that moment the shelling had stopped for awhile. They were hunkered down in a field of tobacco, wedged in between some dilapidated curing sheds. The air was rich with soggy tobacco aroma. The field bordered a thick pine stand. By the edge of the pines stood a whitewashed wood-frame granja, or farmhouse. It was dark.

"Dugout, we need air cover bad. Can you set up a strike for first light in the morning? We're trapped on three sides. Heavy armor, mostly '54s north of us. Battalion strength mechanized infantry east and south. If those damn MiGs come back, we're gonna be chopped liver. Over."

A long pause. Fields fidgeted with a cigarette and lighter. The tobacco smell was overpoweringly rich and delicious. And a soft rain had started up.

A hundred and twenty miles northwest of the tobacco fields, Colonel Stephen Bruns squeezed the radio handset so hard his hands hurt. Bruns was in the LFOC, Level 02 aboard the Iwo Jima. He was angry, actually pissed as hell was a better description. But he was determined his emotions weren't going to show to Captain Fields.

"Charlie Six, Dugout. Be advised we have no air cover for you at this time. All available assets are out of theater."

Fields looked at the handset peculiarly, as if he had heard wrong. "Say again, Dugout."

Bruns repeated the bad news, biting off each word. "Charlie Six, our air assets are moving to Strike Stations Yankee and Delta at this time." Op Plan 322, you knucklehead. Remember? Fields should know that. Target Package One required a coordinated air assault of A-4 Skyhawks and A-7 Crusaders, about thirty five in all, staging off the Enterprise and the Independence. The plan was to shift operations south-southwest, along a slightly different axis, after the air strikes. Iwo would cruise about northwest of Cayo Levisa, standing off two hundred miles, ready to launch the Battalion Landing Teams. But that was Phase Three. First things first, Bruns thought. First, the flyboys had to blast the SAMs and AA batteries into the hereafter. Then, they'd duke it out with any MiGs brave enough to get off the ground. Once air defenses were quiet, and the airfields secure, the Marines would head out. It all depended on getting good intel on key airfields in northwest Cuba. Intel and fire control for the strikes to come. And that was Charlie Two-Five's job.

"Dugout, Charlie Six. Repeat, I need Hueys. I need '4s, '7s, anything I can get. We're cut off from Objective Alpha, and Site Bravo and the pickup points look dicey. Dugout, if I don't get some air at dawn, we're dogmeat. I got me four chewed-up platoons, not one better than half strength. Second's on point now and they're exposed as hell. The tamales start moving this way and we're gonna get cut to ribbons down here. Over."

Bruns willed himself to stop squeezing the damn handset. It was infuriating, wasn't it? Good Marines, hell the best in the battalion, dropped like ducks in a big pond, without adequate support, little air cover, less firepower and no room in the Op Plan for anything else. It was a crime, wasn't it? What the hell was going on here?

"Charlie Six, Dugout. Hold on a sec. Hold the line. I'm getting on the horn to Ops right now."

Fields again held the squad radio handset out as if it were an alien thing. I must have landed on another planet, he muttered. Just then, several men from Second came hustling across the field. Two corporals, Wilcox and Murphy, dove headfirst into the mud. Behind them, all along the woodline surrounding the tobacco field, small arms fire crackled. Muzzle flashes popped and the air was thick with whining bullets, ricocheting off the curing sheds, gouging little spouts of mud.

"Captain! Captain, they're fucking right on top of us--"

"--ten, twenty, I don't know--tamales everywhere! How the hell did they--"

The report ended when an 88-mm mortar shell detonated at the very top of the nearer shed. Shell and wood fragments shredded the command post. Fields felt his left leg on fire and reached down. A bloody mass was pooling where his boot had been. Then came the pain.... And another shell exploding twenty yards away, ripping the air like heavy canvas being torn. Debris and mud splatter rained down on everything.

Fuckin' perfect registration on those damn mortars, Fields grimaced, as he crawled away from the burning shed. The Cubans had been doing that all night, laying in rounds to get the distance and correct. Now they were bracketed....

Fields dragged himself, sideways, pulling at the mud. The whole left side of his body was numb. No feeling at all. There was an aid station fifty yards away, set up next to an old well. If he could just reach it....

"Corpsman! Corrrrrrrrpsmannnn!...."

Colonel Bruns had heard some of the action on his end of the radio. He kept trying to get Charlie Six back on the line. "Charlie Six, Dugout. Charlie Six, Dugout." All he heard was staccato bursts of static. "Small arms fire," he told the corporal at the comm station. "Maybe mortars too. Raise Dearborn. I want to talk to Admiral Stone. We gotta get some choppers over there, get those bastards the hell out of there now."

Dearborn was thirty miles south and west of the Iwo. Jack Stone was pacing the hard linoleum of the CIC when Colonel Bruns' call came through on the secure Pyramid line. He snatched up the handset.

"Stone here."

"Admiral, this is Colonel Bruns, in the LFOC. I'm on the line to Charlie Two-Five, sir. Right now. They're under fire, surrounded and getting cut to pieces. Request permission to launch a strike package now. We've got three Hueys we can load with ordnance in twenty minutes. GBU-20s and a few Walleyes. Charlie Two-Five could sure as hell use it. sir. Otherwise, we ought to go ahead and launch recovery, while we still have men to recover."

Stone stopped pacing. On the tactical plot, he saw a flickering green graphic of the northwest Cuban coastline. North and west of the island, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico were thick with flashing dots and short tracks, the assembled might of Task Force 132, the Peanut Line. Over thirty ships in all, including two carriers and their battle groups. A few of the dots, totaling five ships in all, were dedicated to something called Operation Sierra, Op Plan 322. Stone was one of only two men in the CIC who knew that fact.

"Negative, Colonel. We're maneuvering now for the Phase Two. Have you got any intel from Charlie Two-Five yet? SAM coverage, order of battle at that airfield?"

Bruns silently cursed at the thickheaded stupidity of senior command. "No, sir, not yet. The mission was blown almost right at the LZ. Opposition was heavier than expected. Enemy moved in faster and with greater force than we expected. And the Sovs are in the fight now, too. We got reports of Russian armor in the area. One platoon's already been under fire from '54s. That changes the equation, doesn't it, sir?"

Not necessarily, Stone thought. He knew he had to be extremely careful at this point. Olin Haley or not, all they'd done so far was to commit a company for Force Recon. Deniable? Probably not, but excuses could be made. Cuban AAA had been taking shots at their recon aircraft for several days now. It was self-defense. Re-deploying for surveillance of the missile withdrawal. The Cubans had fired first. Stone tried out several more explanations. He was sure Haley had a briefcase full of them. Whether CINCLANT would buy them was another question.

One thing was for sure. The more forces they committed now, the more aircraft and men they assigned to missions not fully explainable, the more questions would be asked. Haley was right about that: if he jumped the gun now, Sierra could be blown sky-high. The trick was in the timing. They had to keep the whole deal low-key enough to keep it under CINCLANT's radar screen for another day. By then, they'd have the Cubans and the Russians so stirred up, you could land a corps on the beach and claim it was their fault. He hoped to God Haley was right about that.

"Colonel, operational security is paramount in this mission. Get on the radio to Charlie Two-Five and tell them to hold on. I'll contact Enterprise and see if I can get a few Crusaders over the area at dawn."

"Very well, sir. Can we get some Hueys too? Enemy's in close contact and we'll need the choppers to lay down suppressive fire almost on top of our boys."

"I'll see what I can do, Colonel. Okinawa may have a few to spare. Dearborn, out."

Bruns shook his head sadly, but hung up and swung around to get back to Fields. The duty corporal handed him the handset, a grim look on his face.

"Charlie Six, Dugout. Charlie Six, Dugout. Report."

At the very moment Colonel Stephen Bruns ended his conversation with Admiral Stone and took the handset from the corporal, Charlie Six lay dead in the wreckage of the command post, face-down in a bloody froth of tobacco leaves, mud and wood splinters. A trio of T-54 main battle tanks, bearing the unit markings of the 74th Motorized Rifle Regiment, Fifth Kursk Battalion, had opened up on the command post with their D-10 100-mm cannon. Seven rounds impacted the curing sheds and Charlie Two-Five's CP at nearly fifteen hundred feet per second, their high-explosive, impact-fuzed warheads detonating with enough blast overpressure to blow apart the flimsy structures and send flaming wreckage seventy feet into the air, much of it landing about a hundred yards away in a deadly arc of sodden earth, blackened wood and body parts.

Minutes later, dismounted infantry from Commandante de Division Angel Somoza's 30th Cavalry, overran the field post in company strength, raking the tobacco fields and any remaining stragglers with 7.62 AK fire. Two young cabos from the 30th's Fifth Platoon, their unit known throughout the regiment as los Buitres (The Vultures), stumbled upon the remains of several Marines at what was left of the enemy command post. One of the corporals spied something shiny among all the wreckage. He bent down and retrieved it, holding up a Marine captain's twin bar insignia, for the others to see. The men laughed at the sight, not fully realizing what they had stumbled upon. Also buried under the stumps of wooden posts and severed arms lay what was left of Captain Field's field kit, including a map of the area, with LZ and recovery sites marked. This, the cabos never found. Soon, their attentions were diverted by their own sargento, shouting for the unit to form up on the tanks, now snorting diesel fumes in the middle of the clearing.

A few bloodied Marines had survived the attack. They had been stripped of their M-14s and lined up, hands on their heads, in front on one of the tanks. In all, seven riflemen from Charlie Two-Five, mostly Second Platoon, and a handful of mortarmen and BAR men had survived the onslaught to surrender. As the Cubans patted them down, feeling for knives, other weapons, or identifying papers, a Jeep came bouncing across the tobacco field, bearing the Commandante de Division himself. Two yellow stars on a red field adorned the tag at the Jeep's front. Angel Somoza himself stood up even as the Jeep was slowing down and hopped out. He was a short, stout man, dark green fatigues, and a black beard and field cap. He hitched up his belt and holster and came over to apprise their new captives. He squinted through thick glasses, in the Jeep's headlights, at the forlorn American Marines.

At the far end of the line of captives, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Burns spat in the dirt. "Look at that scumsucker," he told Eddie Gillies, a mortarman from First Platoon standing nearby. "Thinks he's a real big shot. I'd give my right eye for a nice Colt .45 to pop that pig but good."

Gillies wasn't paying much attention to the Gunny at that moment. He was still in shock. It had only been a year and a half since Gillies had watched helplessly from aboard the Essex while Castro's goons chewed up the Zapatistas at the Bahia de Cochinos. That had been a real stomach-turner and it had left the mortarmen with a distinctly brassy taste in his mouth, that and an overwhelming sense of disgust with the spineless worms who called themselves "Commanders."

"Sure thing, Gunny, whatever you say." Gillies swallowed his shame and anger hard. It's just like the fucking Bay of Pigs all over again.

11-2-62, Friday

Over the Gulf of Mexico

10:00 p.m.

Lieutenant Vic Blevins, HMLA-269 out of MCAS New River, twisted the collective a notch and the UH-1D banked a few degrees to starboard, settling in on a heading of 135 degrees, south-southeast. Cobra One was dialed in at an altitude of seven thousand feet, just tickling a hundred and twenty knots IAS and Blevins had his head up and out, scanning the dark horizon ahead. The Cuban coastline was only fifteen minutes away and he sure as hell didn't want a SAM running up his ass without some kind of warning.

"Cobra One to Cobra Flight," he barked into his lip mike. "Heads up, gentlemen. We'll be feet dry in about fifteen. On my mark, we go down on the deck. Make your altitude five hundred feet. We'll slide in under the tamales' radar and see what's cooking around Esperanza." And if we're lucky, get the hell out of town before some itchy-fingered Cuban AAA gunner smokes our behinds.

"Five, four, three, two, one....go for it, Cobras!" Blevins eased the collective forward, chopping back the big Lycoming turboshaft back a hair. Cobra One nosed over and began sliding down toward the black waters of the Gulf. On either side of Blevins, Cobra Two, Three and Four did the same. At five hundred feet AGL, Blevins eased back and prepped his cockpit for the show to come. He unlocked the 7.62-mm M60 cannon the crew chief had hard-mounted on the forward nose cap and checked travel. Nice and easy. Good, he thought. Then he powered up the S.S. 11 wire-guided missiles on the side pylons. The radar was sleepy and he massaged the gain for a moment, until the image settled down. The scope was clean and green, for the moment. Nobody painting them with tracking or targeting radar but that would soon change, he was sure. He'd gone over the characteristics of the SA-2's Spoon Rest radar in the wardroom of the Guadalcanal just before they had left. He made sure all the Cobra pilots did the same. "I don't want anybody getting their tails licked because they didn't recognize the threat," he had told them. So they studied prints of just what their screens would look like when a Spoon Rest radar lit up the night.

For Lieutenant Blevins, the whole mission was nuts. Even the air boss on the Guadalcanal, Colonel Preston, had said that. Somebody had called somebody and threatened something and the result was Cobra One and her sisters were hurtling toward the northwest coast of Cuba in the middle of the night, armed to the teeth, and expecting God knew what. The way Prescott had put it, the Marines had a Force Recon on the ground, near a place called Consolacion del Norte. And the grunts were in some kind of trouble. Scuttlebutt had it the Task Force Commander himself, Admiral Stone, had called over to the Guadalcanal, looking for a few more Hueys to put over the target. Blevins wondered about the Iwo; what had happened to her complement of Hueys? Apparently, they were off somewhere else and couldn't be easily recalled. Preston took the request direct from the 'Canal's Captain Roemer, and the briefing half an hour later was a model of uninformed speculation and hearsay.

"All we know, gentlemen, is that a company of Marines went in last night on a Force Recon mission," Preston told them. "Charlie Two-Five, Second Marines. Sam Fields is the company commander. Something went wrong--I don't know what exactly and the Task Force is pretty tight-lipped at the moment--but Charlie Two-Five's in deep kimche. Cubans had a full infantry regiment nearby and got them organized to encircle our guys. Plus, the Russkies have gotten into the act. Armor and artillery and some air support. Admiral Stone wants some ground support to hold off the enemy while the extraction force goes in. That means you."

"We got authority to violate Cuban airspace, Colonel?" asked Cobra Four, a dark crew-cutted lieutenant named Whitley.

"Full," Preston told them. "You're going in for ground support. Enterprise's launching some Crusaders for CAP over the battle area, just in case a few MiGs get crazy. So you'll be covered overhead."

"Comforting thought," said Blevins. "What's this Force Recon for? I didn't see anything on the ops board yesterday. Scuttlebutt said we were pulling back, standing down in a day or so."

"Secret mission," was all the air boss would tell them. "But off the record, I'd say

the Big Guys need a little more intel on the missile withdrawal. Tamales keep shooting at our aerial recon guys. Somebody wised up, I guess. Sent in the ground boys to get some real information. And the Cubans took exception. Now we have to pull their nuts out of the fire."

Indeed, thought Blevins. Sending in a company-sized bunch of armed Marines to go hiking cross country in enemy territory was bound to make somebody mad. He briefly wondered who the wise guy was who had thought up such a screwed-up operation.

"Cobra One, coastline ahead, gentlemen. Look sharp. Let's drop down to two hundred. Arm all weapons."

Almost as one, the four Hueys descended to two hundred feet AGL. Blevins' throat always went a little dry with this maneuver, especially at night. It was a cloudy, drizzly and windy evening over western Cuba. The ground was mostly dark, a few woods, interspersed with tobacco and sugar cane fields, and the odd limestone hump of rock. Blevins had plotted their route in to avoid the larger towns...the lights of what should have been La Palma lit up the horizon to their left, while off the right, the sleepy village of Minas de Matahambre dozed dark and quiet this Friday evening.

Good, thought Blevins. Siesta time for the locals. That was just fine with Cobra One. He concentrated on his compass and airspeed indicator, holding steady on course 135. Last intel from Charlie Two-Five placed the main force about twelve miles south-southeast of Puerta Esperanza, across Highway 3 and midway to Vinales. Blevins had scribbled out a rough time and distance calculation on a scrap of paper. He examined it now. If he was right, they'd be over the battlefield in about three minutes.

Where the hell was their CAP coverage? Blevins scanned the sky around them. Should have been a few Crusaders nosing around a few thousand feet overhead, he thought. But the radio had been silent. What gives?

"Cobra One, Cobra Four. Look ahead, skipper. Two o'clock..."

Blevins squinted through the windscreen, barely making out a clearing up ahead. At his present airspeed of one hundred twenty knots, the clearing rolled up and flashed past in less than five seconds. He was about to key the mike and see if Cobra Four had seen what he had seen, when the night sky came alive with red and white tracers from anti-aircraft artillery. Somewhere below and behind him, a flash erupted. Blevins' gut contracted; he knew what was coming.

"Cobra One, break, break, break! Missiles in the air! Break, break, break!"

He leaned on the cyclic stick and stood Cobra One on her side, spinning her right away from the clearing. Bursts of AAA shells rocked the windscreen, shuddering the Huey as she slid sideways. He yanked the stick back over and straightened up, just in time to see Cobra Three disappear in a red and orange fireball. The missile had found home. Flaming wreckage cartwheeled through the air, then headed to earth, gouging out a good-sized crater in the explosion.

Blevins horsed the Huey around a bit more and lined up the muzzle flashes on the ground in his sighting reticule. Over the clearing, he pressed the button on the cyclic and the 7.62-mm M60 spat fire, a deadly stream of cannon shells. Blevins triggered short bursts, walking the rounds right across the clearing. Even in the dazzling flash of gunfire, he could see the mud and dirt spouting as the cannon swept over the enemy position. He let the Huey's speed carry his fire to the opposite side, then pulled back and brought Cobra One around for another pass.

Cobras Two and Four were engaged in their own battles, peppering the edge of the clearing with cannon fire. "I see tanks," yelled Four, "right along the edge of the woods. I got dibs on the front one." Cobra Four nosed over and let off a snap shot of an S.S.-11, holding position just long enough for the guidance wire to stream out. A deadly shot, as one T-54 tank was struck on its vulnerable topside, exploding in a starburst of red flame and smoke, her shredded fuel tank cooking off 100-mm shells from the magazine just inside the hull. The tank vanished in a staccato burst of fireworks, as her ordnance detonated into the night sky.

The next few minutes were a chaos of muzzle flashes and blinding explosions on the ground. Cobra One took a few AAA fragments in her windscreen, but Blevins checked instruments and nothing was amiss. It was a cinch Charlie Two-Five wasn't down there, at least not in strength, not with the kind of firepower the tamales were throwing at them. He wasn't even sure they'd found the right spot, but he figured they had to be close. Blevins held off to let Cobras Two and Four make another pass over the clearing. Another explosion ripped the air and a red and yellow geyser streamed skyward. Another tank, he figured. But the AAA was something fierce.

Must have run smack into a fuckin' regiment, he said to himself. They'd lost Cobra Three but somebody had pulverized that SAM launcher. There had been no more missiles streaking around, looking for hot targets. Blevins thumbed sweat from his eyes. Jesus Christ, we should have had CAP by now. He'd coordinated time over target with the air boss himself, just to make sure the Navy's A-7 Crusaders would be there when Cobra needed them. Otherwise, they'd be ducks on a pond for Russian or Cuban MiGs. Blevins had a bad feeling about the whole thing. They'd never be able to find Charlie Two-Five in this kind of firefight. He figured they'd better clear the area and back off to wait for some reinforcements.

"Home Plate, Cobra One. Home Plate, Cobra One." Come on, you greasy bastards, get on the horn....

Blevins' radio crackled with static, then: "Cobra One, this is Home Plate. Go."

Blevins waited until Two and Four had formed up on him. "Home Plate, we're under AAA fire here, at the target site. Enemy has SAMs too. We need backup. I'm bugging out until we get CAP. No sign of the Navy either."

"Any sign of Charlie Two-Five? Radio contacts?"

"Negative, Home Plate. Radio's quiet on the mission frequency. If they're here, we'll never find them at night. Tamales got tanks and some serious air defense here. I need more firepower. Permission to return and re-arm."

"Permission granted, Cobra One."

"Home Plate, any chance we can get some more Hueys over the target zone at dawn? Combat search and rescue's what we need."

"Negative, Cobra One. All assets dedicated."

Dedicated to what? Blevins asked himself. What the hell was going on? Only a nutcase would send a company of Marines into enemy territory without adequate fire support.

"Understood, Home Plate. We're pulling out. Have the ordnance guys ready. We need to get back here in a hurry." Blevins dialed his radio once more around the mission frequency of 255 megacycles. Nothing but static. "Charlie Six, Cobra One. Do you read, over? Charlie Six, Cobra One...."

Lieutenant Blevins fiddled with the radio but got nothing. If Charlie Two-Five was down there, their radio was dead. Or worse. He didn't want to speculate about that. A few more perfunctory bursts of AAA shells lit up the sky, but Blevins had pulled them out of range, over the treetops a mile or so away. His own ammo load was about gone.

"Cobra One, to all Cobra. Your ammo pretty low?"

"Roger that, One."

"Same with me. I got one missile left, though."

"No dice, guys. We're bugging out, for now. I'm trying to get us some help. Head back to the 'Canal. We'll load up, get some gas and come back. Maybe the tamales'll invite us for breakfast."

Cobra Flight had just crossed the coastline at two thousand feet AGL, course 288 degrees, when the MiGs appeared.

"Cobra One, we got company. Bad guys at four o'clock."

Blevins craned his head around and caught the flash of two MiG-21s against the moonlit clouds. They were already turning for a diving pass. Blevins knew the '21s sported a couple of missiles and one hell of a 23-mm twin-barrel cannon.

"Cobra One to all Cobra. Get lost, guys! Break, break! Head for the deck!" Blevins eased the cyclic forward and put the Huey almost in the Gulf, pulling out just a hundred feet above the wavetops. Behind him, Cobra Two and Four did likewise, skimming the sea surface at a hundred and ten knots IAS. One wrong move, a twitch and Blevins knew he'd be swimming back to the 'canal.

The MiGs nosed over and made a gun pass, apparently too close for missiles. Blevins heard shrapnel slamming into his own aft fuselage and the controls became instantly mushy. He checked the panel....sure enough. Shit! His hydraulic pressure dial was spinning down to zero. The MiG blasted by just overhead and Blevins struggled with the cyclic to keep the Huey's nose up and stable. He chanced a peek over his shoulder just in time to catch Cobra Four, several thousand yards to starboard, spurt flame and lose it.

The second MiG's Gsh-23 guns had found their mark. Lieutenant Stiles' UH-1A crabbed sideways, its tail rotor mangled, then the chopper flipped nose over and slammed into the ocean, in a spray of flaming wreckage. Cobra Four was down and Blevins knew he'd never made it out. Too low. He gripped his own cyclic with both hands; the stick was kicking and bucking like a pony. Blevins saw he'd just about dumped his hydraulic fluid completely. Gingerly, he tested the stick. It was like trying to move a house. If he couldn't pull the Huey up, he'd be tickling the water in no time. He didn't particularly relish the prospect of ditching at night in the middle of the Gulf with two tamale MiGs stalking nearby.

"Cobra Two, Cobra One. Four's down. I didn't see him jump. Where's our friends?"

Cobra Two \- Lieutenant Bud Simmons - crackled over Blevins' headset. "Guess they bugged out, Skipper. We're twenty or thirty miles out to sea by now. Maybe they saw something on radar."

"Yeah, like maybe some Crusaders or something," Blevins snorted. "Look, Two, I got hydraulic problems. Damn little cyclic. Slide over and see what you can see."

Cobra Two materialized out of the night, right on Blevins starboard side. Simmons eased her in close and studied the damaged tail assembly of Blevins' Huey. It wasn't pretty.

"Cobra One, your tail rotor's wobbling like a top. Bearing and hub's shot up pretty good. You got an extra zipper open all along the boom, right up to the engine. You got collective?"

"Barely. I can yaw, but I can't pitch. No altitude control at all. We need some altitude to make it back to the 'canal."

"Roger that. How's fuel?"

"Two thousand pounds, give or take a few. Okay there. But I don't know if I can hold her up. It's forty minutes back to the ship."

"I'll ride shotgun," Two told him. "We get close enough to home and you can ditch there. I'll call Ops and tell 'em to get the SAR guys ready. They can fish you out quick if you go in."

The ride back to the Guadalcanal was a sweaty and bumpy forty-minute ordeal for Cobra One. Blevins could see his altimeter dropping steadily; by the time they had the Air Boss on the radio, the Huey was just nosing under seventy feet AGL. For the entire flight, he'd pulled back on the cyclic with all his strength, fighting each gust and eddy in the air with a dry-throated terror that left him limp and drained, with a severe cramp in his neck and shoulders. More than once, just to give his arms a break, he wrapped both legs around the stick, and tried flexing his shoulders. It didn't really help.

Guadalcanal was lit up like a Christmas party and ready to receive returning flights, when Cobra One and Two first saw her, through light early morning fog. Blevins was on the radio to the Air Boss, explaining the current situation.

"No way I can get into any approach pattern, Air. I don't even think I can get her high enough to clear the deck. No altitude control, virtually no directional control."

The Air Boss, Colonel Preston, was nervously chewing a cigarette. He'd paced the CIC for hours, waiting for Cobra Flight to make it back. When he heard Cobra Three and Four were down, he'd notified the Search and Rescue Boss to get his Sikorskys airborne. Then he let fly a five-minute stream of invective that raised the temperature in the Combat Information Center from merely sweltering to just shy of unbearable.

Preston knew the Huey. He'd flown one of the first operational models right out of the Bell factory in Fort Worth a year or so ago. It was a good bird, if you knew what you were doing. There was one trick he remembered from his Test and Eval days down at Fort Rucker.

"Cobra One, crank up your engines. A hundred percent. You got those stubby little wings on your tail boom. If you got any directional control left, bank her a bit and see if you can't generate some lift on those wings. Maybe it'll be just enough to get you up to a couple hundred feet."

"No dice, Air," Blevins told him. "My tail's shot up pretty good."

Cobra Two confirmed that. "He's only got one wing anyway, Colonel. And that's half gone."

Shit! Preston bit the cigarette clean in two. The butt end fell to the linoleum floor. "All right, Cobra One. I guess we're running out of options. Looks like it's time for you to take a swim."

Blevins throat couldn't get any drier. He'd done the bailout drills a hundred times at Rucker. But never from a sick bird less than a hundred feet above the ocean. He wasn't real sure his chute would have time to open.

"Understood, Air. Let me get squared away here in the cockpit."

For Lieutenant Blevins, it would be a race against time and the laws of physics. Cobra One was steadily sinking. Unstrapping himself, he saw the altimeter pass fifty feet. Maybe he wouldn't even bother with the parachute. The way things were going, he'd never have time to get the pack on and secured. Blevins squeezed aft and unlocked the portside door, shoving it hard against the windstream. The chopper rocked as the effect of the door disturbed the airflow and began heeling over to starboard. Blevins swallowed hard, staring down at the Gulf waters streaking by at eighty knots. To his left, shot-up metal paneling flapped like a pennant in the wind, slapping the stub of the tail boom with loud staccato bangs. Jesus H. Christ, he muttered. There wasn't much of the tail assembly left. And the tail rotor itself was teetering like a child's top about to flop over. He wasn't real sure he'd clear the rotor when he jumped....

Blevins took a deep breath, lowered the visor of his helmet, and stepped out into the thick night air.

11-3-62, Saturday

Aboard the U.S.S. Dearborn (DD-915)

1:15 a.m.

Admiral Jack Stone was wide awake when a shaft of light crept across the bed and his face. The yeoman peered into his sea cabin and spoke softly.

"Admiral, you wanted to be awakened if there were any messages."

Stone sat up and rubbed the heavy stubble on his chin. "What is it?"

"Message, sir. From the Guadalcanal. Colonel Preston."

Stone reached over to the nightstand and flipped on the light. He took the telex sheet, thanked the yeoman, and fumbled with his glasses. With one hand massaging an aching neck, he read.

Preston's message described the results of the Cobra mission...four UH-1As...all top notch pilots with hundreds of hours in the Hueys...no CAP coverage ever appeared, despite Navy agreements...ran into heavy AAA over the target zone...one Huey down there, pilot probably lost...no sign of Charlie Two-Five...no response to radio challenges...evidence of heavy fighting...definite enemy armor in the area...MiGs appeared and Cobra bugged out, still no CAP overhead...another Huey jumped by MiGs off the coastline...no sign of the pilot...Cobra One severely damaged...pilot had to ditch....

Jack Stone wadded the sheet into a ball and squeezed it hard. So now it was for real. They'd put Sierra into motion--this little training exercise cum miniature war--and men had died. A lot of men. Stone slung the wadded-up ball of paper against the bulkhead. He got dressed, shaved and went up to the CIC. Preston's message implied a need for further explanations about the mission, about the overall objectives of OpPlan 322. Hell, the man deserved that much, didn't he?

Stone appeared in the CIC and went to the duty officer's desk. He ordered OOTW to raise Guadalcanal and get the Air Boss on the ship-to-ship.

"Colonel Preston, this is Stone. You get that pilot who ditched back onboard?"

Preston's voice was hoarse and weary. "Yes, sir. The Lieutenant has a broken arm from the water impact, but not too bad. He'll be okay. We lost three birds out of Cobra Flight, though. I've already got my search and rescue guys heading for the coastline, see if we can pick up Cobra Four. He may be alive. And I got a couple more Hueys being armed. Pilots are briefing now. We'll have a follow-on mission air--"

"Belay that order, Colonel" Stone cut in. "There'll be no follow-ups until I say."

"Admiral, what about Charlie Two-Five? There may be--"

"Colonel Preston, I just looked over LANCOM's report on the landing operation. The LFOC lost contact with Charlie Six at 2200 hours. There's been no word since."

"Admiral, are we just going to leave 'em in there?"

Stone didn't really have an answer for that. Sierra needed their intel for the next phase. Without order of battle intelligence on defenses in and around Campo Justicia, the strike package dedicated to that part of Cuba might well be walking into the teeth of a bear. A Russian bear, Stone thought ruefully. They had to know what they were facing.

"Colonel, Task Force is meeting at 0500 hours to go over the operation plan." That was a lie, since he needed to talk with Haley first. "General Haley will be aboard the Iwo then." I hope, Stone thought. "Expect changes. Stand by until then. Task Force out."

"Understood," the Air Boss lied.

Now, Jack Stone told himself, it was way past time to get a hold of the General. Stone went over to the Task Force Commander's office, just off the CIC and shut the door. The naked truth was that Phase One of Operation Sierra, OpPlan 322, had been a thoroughly nasty and bloody failure. Stone sat down to compose an Eyes Only message for Haley, for routing to Homestead Combat Ops and the Iwo. He wasn't sure exactly what he wanted to say. But, as he scribbled some notes, his mind was telling him shut this baby down for good. Call off Sierra before the whole affair gets completely out hand. Before we all get sucked into something we can't get out of.

11-3-62, Saturday

Homestead Air Force Base, Florida

2:20 a.m.

Olin Haley studied Stone's dispatch from the Dearborn with a growing sense of fury. He had just arrived back from Lejeune, a snap inspection of the 3rd and the 5th Regiments, making sure the troops were ready to fill in behind the air strikes and airborne assaults when Phase IV of Sierra rolled around in about five days. Haley cringed at Stone's language in the message..."before we all get sucked into something we can't get out of"...what the hell did that mean?

Haley crammed the message into his pocket and studied a crumpled tactical map of Cuba he kept in his attache case. Reading Stone's dispatch, Haley knew the Admiral was having second thoughts, maybe third and fourth thoughts as well. That was the trouble with Jack Stone. Like too many flag officers in America's armed forces, he thought too much. Sure, there were grounds for concern, no commander worth his belt buckle wouldn't be worried a bit. War was like that. But you had to be objective about it.

Haley had spent so much time studying maps of Cuba--tactical, topographic, meteorological, drainage, demographic, and historical, he figured he might as well have lived there all his life. He knew, he felt instinctively, that the next step in Operation Sierra should be advanced a few days. The Force Recon phase wasn't going to work the way he had planned it. But the air strike package was vital to gaining air superiority over the battlefields and the drop zones. Phase Two - Strategic Bombardment and Tactical Neutralization - needed to pop right away, no later than Saturday night. Without the intelligence that Force Recon could have provided, there was greater risk. But Haley figured it was acceptable. Just about any risk was okay if it meant the end of that bearded smartass Castro.

Once Phase Two was done, and Haley had figured about two days, the next step would be air assault with Bill Cox's 101st boys. While he was at Lejeune, Haley had called Cox. The crusty old paratrooper was basically onboard, Haley thought, with a few misgivings. As far as Cox knew, Op Plan 322 was a training exercise, albeit in rather close proximity to Cuba. Cox was okay with that; he told Haley the missile crisis seemed to be winding down and what better time to exercise the troops a bit? He had looked over the Op Plan and pronounced himself satisfied the 101st would acquit themselves very nicely, thank you.

Phase Four, the final step, was programmed for about five days after completing Phase Two. Amphibious assault with elements of the 2nd Marines, 3rd and 5th Regiments, out of Lejeune. The idea was to create a beachhead between La Esperanza and Mariel, then move west and inland, making for Havana, eventually linking up with the lodgment carved out by the 101st in their air drops. Haley had personally checked out these units on his quick trip to Lejeune. They'd be ready.

The question was: would the Navy?

Haley knew he should consult with Jack Stone. The Navy's air support over the beachhead and in conjunction with Cox's airborne assault was vital. The skies would have to be swept clear of MiGs before the Marines and the Army would be able to establish a proper axis for advance. Timing for the linkup was essential. The 101st had pushed for drop zones south and west of Havana proper. The terrain was more favorable, being level and open farm country. If the operation worked as sketched, the Marines would be advancing along a front parallel to the Army just four to six hours after the LSTs hit the beaches of Pinar del Rio. The line of demarkation was Highway 7, the coast road running along a few miles inland from the shore, all the way from Esperanza to east of the capital.

Haley scribbled out a brief dispatch to send to the Dearborn, advising Stone of his plans. You had to word things carefully with the Admiral, Haley had learned. It was plain enough that Stone was getting cold feet. Haley reminded him of their shared concerns with Castro's mischief-making in the Caribbean, and the great benefits that would ensue from dispatching el Lider Maximo to his proper rewards in the hereafter. Moreover, Haley reminded the Admiral that Op Plan 322 was well advanced, men and machines were in position, and a certain momentum had been achieved. If CINCLANT issued any more orders in the days ahead, the forces they intended to use for Sierra would surely be ordered to pull back. And that would effectively end any realistic chances for Sierra to succeed, leaving the Bearded One free to make trouble for years to come.

To stall now, Haley ended the letter, would be a grave mistake and one that History would not soon forgive. When the pitcher pitches, the batter has to swing. Haley signed the message form and rang up Lieutenant Cedars.

"Lieutenant, come in here. I've got a dispatch to send ASAP."

The Lieutenant was a lanky crew-cutted fellow, with rather prominent ears and a hint of a scar along his jaw. Haley didn't know how old the boy was but he'd had a severe case of acne as a teen-ager,that much was certain. Cedars' black glasses added to a generally effete look. The Lieutenant came in and stood at attention.

"Roy, I want to send this to Admiral Stone right away. Put it out as a PURPLE message...commander's eyes only." He handed the paper to Cedars, who turned and went to the communications shack. It would take him about ten minutes to transcribe and code the message for transmission.

When he was done, Haley dropped by the secure room. Air Force contractors had put up plywood walls to partition off the comm shack, and a pair of MPs saluted briskly as Haley went inside. The room was really little more than a large closet, with benches of radio gear and cable trunk lines taped down to the floor. An antenna farm received hourly traffic from within a fenced enclosure on the other side of Homestead's Runway 16 Right. Teletype machines and coding gear clattered all hours of the day and night, feeding unit disposition and movements from throughout the area of operations. If any single space on the Eastern Seaboard could be said to be the heart and brains of the quarantine, Homestead's Combat Operations Center and its plywood comm shack were it.

"Message sent PURPLE, General. Just a few minutes ago. Dearborn acknowledges."

"Very well." Through the thin walls of the shack, Haley heard the low grumble of another transport revving up out on the flight line. The runways had seen frenzied traffic day and night for several weeks and it hadn't let up. Probably cargo for Guantanamo or Panama, he surmised. He decided he needed some air. The atmosphere in the COC got stale and stuffy this time of night.

"Lieutenant, let's take a walk. I want to get some air"

"Yes, sir." Cedars nodded to the Navy Ensign who was co-manning the shack on this watch. "Watch the board for me, Eddie, will you?"

Ensign Eddie West pulled back his earphones and nodded. "Sure thing." He was scribbling something fast on a pad, traffic from a distant ship, probably one of Corky Ward's quarantine units.

Haley and Cedars headed out of the COC, and started walking along the flight line. The air was mild and humid, heavy with salt breezes. Haley lit a cigar.

They walked for about ten minutes, stopping at each Globemaster or Herky Bird parked on the apron, as the General clucked and inspected, making idle comments on loose hatches, gear not squared away, carts and pallets not lined up right. Cedars knew the drill. Hellacious Haley was a Marine and he loved to walk the line, inspecting the troops. The fact that the troops were Air Force transports not raw boots from Parris Island made no difference. Something about the walk, Cedars figured. Haley's brain dropped into a higher gear when his legs were in motion.

"Roy, we got us a little impromptu exercise going on. Remember Op Plan 322, that training exercise you did the logistics figures for me last year?"

"I remember it, General. Sierra, wasn't it? A Cuba assault."

"Exactly. We got command authorization to go ahead a day ago. Modified plan, actually. Navy supports us in the air, 101st does a drop and the Second Marines hit the beach. I convinced NCA and CINCLANT we could use the current situation to run the boys through some nice training."

Cedars' eyebrows went up at that. He hadn't seen any paper on such authorization. And no supply orders or unit requisitions had come across his desk lately, at least nothing beyond normal operational stuff.

"That's odd, General. I don't remember seeing any paperwork on it. Did CINCLANT just approve?"

Haley smiled in the dark, his cigar tip glowing red. "That's what I wanted to tell you. There won't be any paperwork. This exercise is kind of special."

Cedars frowned. General Haley had never been one to let regulations get in the way of a mission. "What about supplies: ammo, fuel, rations, spares....?"

Haley walked directly underneath the wing of a huge C-124 and stopped, looking up. The aircraft was bathed in floodlights, being loaded out with boxes of cartridges and shells. Army Ordnance Corps troops were checking each case off a list as it was rolled up into the belly of the transport.

"See these transports, this one and the four others down there? Everyone of 'em is being filled with supplies right now." He checked his watch. "It's just now 0300 hours. At 0400 hours, these babies will be airborne, headed for Guantanamo. At 0430, about six Navy C-2 Greyhounds will be lined up here in their place. More supplies. Headed to sea, Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal. Able, Baker and Charlie One/Five and One and Two/Three. Three companies, Lieutenant, and more on the way from Lejeune. I wanted you to see this."

Cedars was uneasy. What the hell was the General trying to say? It wasn't like Haley to be subtle.

"Pardon me, sir, but am I understanding you correctly: six C-124s and six Navy C-2s are being loaded with supplies to support this training exercise? Begging the General's pardon, but who handled the logistics on this?"

Haley looked Cedars square in the eye. "I did, Lieutenant. Planning and logistics for Op Plan 322 is to be handled out of my office, not the regular channels. There's a special dedicated warehouse at Lejeune just for this exercise. Until I say otherwise, this Op Plan is to be considered Top Secret. Message traffic coded PURPLE and routed through the Dearborn, Command Authority Only. Do you understand?"

Cedars replied, "Perfectly, sir. It's just that...well--"

Haley set off walking again, leaving Cedars behind in a puff of cigar smoke. Ahead of them, a C-124 was just starting to rotate props, firing sharp puffs of oil smoke into the air. Cedars hustled to catch up.

"I'm handling the details because CINCLANT wants to keep this baby quiet. We're negotiating with the Russkies in New York right now. They get wind of what's happening, they may just decide to stop pulling their missiles out. I'm telling you so the spares lists and inventory figures can be updated. I want you to wait one week before revising the lists. Then we'll send the paperwork to Washington."

"General, I would think if we announced the exercise, the Russians would be more comfortable with all the maneuvers right on their front door step. You know: fewer surprises."

"Lieutenant, that's why you're a lieutenant. CINCLANT wants to put the screws to the Russkies a little tighter. We got us here a little training exercise that'll look like something more to your average Ivan commander. CINCLANT wants to send a little message."

Damn peculiar, if you ask me, thought Cedars. They walked on, observing loading operations at each aircraft. MATS Twentieth Airlift Wing was working overtime tonight. While they watched, a steady stream of one-ton trucks pulled up along the apron, each in turn signaled into position by the loadmaster, there to disgorge its cargo of ammo boxes, ration kits, spare parts, and field kits. Haley chomped and puffed, seeing everything, as the crews sweated to get the aircraft loaded and airborne. One by one, each plane's huge rear doors were cranked shut, and the Globemasters started up, taxiing out in line for an early morning takeoff. Haley loved every minute of it.

They headed back to the COC. Haley ordered Cedars to follow him to his office. The General handed his staff aide a small sheaf of papers. Handwritten figures covered each page.

"That's the stock issue for the exercise. Some's from Lejeune, some from Pendleton, plus there's bits and pieces from New River, El Toro, Cherry Point. It's all written down there."

"General, regs say this has to be subtracted and signed off by the DCOS before any equipment's issued."

"Damn it, Cedars, I know what the regs say. The paperwork will get done in time. Op Plan 322 is special. Don't get your nose out of joint. You've seen the list I've just shown you, correct? You've seen that there is an accounting of the equipment draw."

"Well, sir, normally, I'd have a detail from Supply do a quick count--"

"But you've seen the list, haven't you, Lieutenant?" Haley asked, a little more firmly.

"Yes, sir."

"Good. I'm keeping this list in my office. Any questions come up, it's right here--"he placed the list in the top drawer of his desk, then locked the drawer, pocketing the key. "That'll be all, Lieutenant."

Cedars looked like he had just lost his best friend. "Yes, sir." He saluted, then wheeled about and headed back to the comm shack.

Haley let out a deep breath. That, at least, was done. Cedars was an unknown quantity. A good kid, but a bit of a bureaucrat. Haley had given some thought to how to explain Sierra to his S-4, how to slide the unusual troop movements and non-reg equipment issues past his all-seeing eye. Cedars was highly efficient in the dispatch of his duties as Plans and Logistics Officer on Haley's staff. The boy had already been listed and approved for his Captain's bars a few months ago. But Haley intended to take no chances. He had known from the beginning that he would have to carefully dot his I's and cross his t's to keep the Lieutenant from probing too far. It just wouldn't do to have his staff S-4 asking embarrassing questions around the COC. Such things tended to drift upward, toward Washington and Headquarters USMC in time, pulled higher by some kind of reverse gravity. Haley intended to prevent that.

One thing about bean-counters, he had told himself. You give 'em an exact count of the beans and they're happy as lambs.

There was one more item of business. He and Jack Stone needed to meet in the worst way, fast. Haley knew that what Stone really needed was a slap in the face. If he didn't corner the Admiral and press his case in the flesh, the Navy would bug out for sure and his Marines would be left to die in the fields under a Communist onslaught.

No way is that going to happen. Haley scribbled out another message to send to the Dearborn. It was just now 3 a.m. Iwo was already sending a COD aircraft to pick him. The C-2 Greyhound would be arriving shortly after 5 a.m. The flight to the assault carrier would take about two hours. And Dearborn was about two hours' west of the Iwo, as well, parked in the eastern Gulf to run Task Force 132 and the Florida Straits portion of the quarantine. Haley did some quick figuring, then finished his message.

I'll meet you on the Iwo Jima at 0800 hours, Saturday. Bring your homework.

Haley dropped the message off with Cedars at the comm shack and headed out of the COC. He figured he'd try to get a little shuteye at the Officers' Quarters. The OQ was a collection of trailers and Quonset huts parked a few hundred yards away from the COC. Haley entered his quarters, unbuttoned his jacket and dropped heavily into the bed. But he was too keyed up to rest.

He was furious and anxious to learn more about the failed Force Recon mission of Charlie Two-Five. Damn, he muttered in the darkness, I should have been there. Lejeune could have waited. But could it really? If the next part of Sierra was to go forward, he needed to make sure the follow-on elements were ready. Battalion Landing Teams 2/3 and 2/5 were critical. They'd be making the first amphib assault at Esperanza to link up with Bill Cox's 101st. No, he was right to have made the short trip up to Lejeune. He'd been able to explain the mission a little better to the battalion commanders, answer some of their questions. And, most likely, short circuit a few questions for which he knew there were no believable answers. Better to meet the staff in person than trust to misinterpreting the OpOrd. Haley smiled ruefully. The less that document circulated, the better. In another day or so, after the meat part of the operation was well underway, he'd quietly alter the original OpOrd and replace the existing one in the files.

By then, the National Command Authority wouldn't have much choice but to go ahead. Events in the field had a way of forcing politicians to make decisions when all the discussions in the world couldn't.

11-3-62, Saturday

The White House

3:00 a.m.

The Oval Room on the second floor of the Executive Mansion was brightly lit and sweltering with the heat of too many bodies jammed into the small room. Kennedy had ordered several other lights turned on at the opposite end of the same floor. No sense in giving the news media anymore reason for alarm than necessary, the President had told the Secret Service watch commander. If the West Wing itself had been lit up this early in the morning, the correspondents and pool reporters stationed in and around the White House would have been instantly alerted that something serious was going on. Several times during the missile crisis, the President had held meetings on the second floor, usually in the small Oval Room crammed with folding chairs around the cherrywood table that had once been used by Jefferson to review the Lewis and Clark mission.

This meeting of the ExComm had been in session since 10:00 o'clock the night before.

At the start of the meeting, the President had asked Robert Kennedy, nominally in charge of the investigation into the missing Soviet warheads, to present the details of the case. The Attorney General, with notes from Hoover sitting next to him, had gone over all the salient points, describing what was known and what was suspected, detailing the course of the investigation and its present status. When Kennedy was done, he summarized the situation succinctly.

"Gentlemen, the bottom line is this: there are two stolen Soviet atomic bombs in the U.S., in the hands of an elite Cuban commando unit, and their whereabouts and intentions and targets are unknown."

The President listened to nearly ten minutes of questions about specific points of the investigation. He studied the ExComm as discussions and arguments swirled about the room. Rusk and McNamara, as usual, advocated caution, continuing negotiations with the Cubans and the Russians. Dillon, Ball, and Taylor, for their part, took the opposite hardline tack, arguing forcefully for confronting the Russians publicly, minimizing Khrushchev's offer to help and the contributions that KGB officers assigned to the case could make. The President jotted a few notes on a legal pad, while Robert Kennedy picked up the thread of the argument.

"As I see it," the Attorney General offered, "we have to deal in facts, not suppositions. It seems to me, gentlemen, given all the evidence, that Miami is the most likely target. We ought to concentrate our efforts there."

George Ball, Under Secretary of State, spoke up. "I agree with you, Bobby. The evidence points that way. If they came in through Mobile, Miami's nearby. Quick and easy to get to. They could be there now."

"Not only that," General Taylor agreed, "there's a strong anti-Castro Cuban exile community there. Lots of reasons for Castro to go after that community."

"Don't forget all the military bases in the region," said McNamara, the SecDef. "We've pretty well been running the quarantine out of Homestead. If Castro wants to make a big statement, Miami could be it."

"Maybe so," said Robert Kennedy, "but don't forget all the other military bases around the South and East. The Cubans left Mobile somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-four to thirty hours ago. Assuming normal driving speeds, they could easily be twelve to fourteen hundred miles away by now. That brings most of the eastern half of the country under risk."

The President interjected a thought, wincing from back pain as he sat upright in his padded chair. "Do we consider evacuating Miami, then? Is that realistic?"

Ed McDermott was the head of Civil Defense. He was sitting at a corner of the table, and he opened a thick notebook of charts and graphs as he answered. "Not really, Mr. President. A city as large as Miami, even the whole of south Florida, contains several million people. Any formal evacuation plan would take several weeks, just to organize and conduct. The area's highways are loaded up now at normal rush hour. Magnify that a hundred-fold and you see the problem."

"We have to do something."

McDermott explained normal Civil Defense procedures. "In any kind of national emergency, Mr. President, we have to work with the local authorities. My office stays in regular contact with the State of Florida Civil Defense people. Governor Bryant's office has done yeoman duty during the missile crisis, helping us get the shelters identified and stocked up, emergency communications activated, that sort of thing. In this sort of emergency, the first thing we do is locate and provision shelters for the population. Schools, government buildings, fire stations, we're doing this round the clock right now. We estimate we can theoretically shelter about a fourth of the population today."

The President was skeptical. "Theoretically? I asked Congress for a lot of money, Mr. McDermott. We're all hoping you're spending it wisely."

McDermott smiled wanly. "Yes, sir, we're trying to do just that, following the Civil Defense Act. The basic thing to remember about evacuation is that it's a lot simpler and cheaper than building millions of fallout shelters. It's just that implementing it in a timely way is a bear. The logistics problem for even a medium-sized city is staggering. You have to assign specific relocation areas, set up traffic control, mobilize all the transportation network. All that takes time. We can get some warning out through the Emergency Broadcast System. Then, you've got the problem of sheltering the people you evacuate. You can use existing public shelters; we're working on that now. Plus there's a larger question of compliance. Are we really sure, given the current situation, that people will obey evacuation orders? We don't know. They might not. What do we do if they don't? The success of any evacuation will probably vary from region to region. In any case, as the shelters are being provisioned, we're also getting our medical support together...registering hospitals, their facilities, their supplies, their staff specialties, and keeping that information current and accessible. I have some of that in this notebook, if you'd like to see."

"Please."

McDermott brought the notebook to the President and opened it to the registry of south Florida emergency facilities. "As you can, Mr. President, we have lists, addresses and phone numbers of just about every hospital and clinic. We go in there, talk with the directors and staff, show 'em our procedures and sign them up. We do the same with our procedures for reconstituting communications and transportation networks. The phone company, the Florida Highway Department, the Dade County Department of Roads and Drainage, it's all here."

Kennedy thumbed through the notebook. "'Reconstituting Civil Administration'", he read aloud. He scanned a few paragraphs, a wry smile on his face. "The Governor will find this interesting, I'm sure. 'Designated Chain of Command for Delegation of Authority.' Reading down this list, Mr. McDermott, I see it's entirely possible that one day the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation may be running the State of Florida." Several snickers erupted around the room.

McDermott was sweating and nervous. He returned to his seat and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. "Unlikely, sir, but we want to have a plan in place, just in case."

"I see. What about warning times? What about casualties? Is that in here?"

McDermott seemed reluctant to leave the safety of his seat. "In the front, Mr. President. 'Projections and Scenarios.'" He let Kennedy find the section, then went on. "You see the charts and maps. Fallout protection is the key to avoiding mass casualties, after the initial blast effects. It's really a matter of the materials and construction of the shelters. What you want to do is drop the gamma radiation levels down a factor of ten. Concrete's good, wood and earth are better, as you can see. Your typical home fallout shelter still allows almost four hundred rems accumulated dose after seven days. You could cut that to forty rems, with a layer of eighteen inches of dirt. Even lower, say four rems, with thirty-six inches. It's just a matter of design. And time. We have casualty estimates for various weapons detonations--"

"--surface burst..." Kennedy traced his finger to the appropriate key, "one-megaton...looks like about seven hundred thousand. Is that right?"

"That sounds in the ball park," the SecDef admitted. "Our own projections are similar."

"And air burst...eight thousand feet," Kennedy went on, studying the charts, "overpressure of twenty psi to...looks like one mile from ground zero...four hundred seventy mile an hour winds...concrete structures leveled...Christ Almighty--within three miles, four hundred and fifty thousand casualties. Is that fatalities?'

"Not necessarily, sir," said McDermott. "We've figured fatalities in with radiation and fallout exposures over four hundred fifty rems. That's the fifty percent death rate: at that level of exposure, fifty percent of all exposed will die within two weeks. If you follow the curve there, you'll see the survival rate increases as we get exposures down to two hundred rems. At that level, only about five percent will die. That's why the shelters are so important."

The President was slowly shaking his head. "This is madness. Every scenario leads to hundreds of thousand of casualties. Last report I had was that the fallout shelter program was going poorly."

"We are working on that now, Mr. President. Since the GAO report in July, we've made a lot of progress."

The President pushed the book away and looked angrily around the room. "Probably not enough. What do we do, gentlemen? What do you recommend?"

"We've got to catch those commandos," Robert Kennedy said. "It's a law enforcement problem now. We've got to catch 'em and neutralize 'em before they set up in south Florida, if that's really the target. I'm not convinced it is."

Discussions flew about the room. As the President listened, a consensus developed to focus every resource on the investigation, and keep the FBI as the lead agency. The President ordered the full support of all agencies in the Federal Government with investigative powers and nuclear expertise. Atomic Energy Commission would work with Civil Defense to prepare south Florida and all East Coast states for the worst.

"Ed, I want all fallout shelters and other civil defense shelters opened and inspected, now. I want them inspected for provisions and properly equipped and stocked immediately. I don't care what it takes. We have a responsibility to protect people as much as we can."

"Understood, Mr. President. I can put out a General Emergency Alert, if you'll authorize it. That'll help get the ball rolling, help all the area hospitals, clinics and medical facilities to prepare for mass casualties. Plus we'll need Presidential authority to requisition extra buses and trucks, helicopters and aircraft. Those need to be identified and alerted right away, so they can be staged and made ready to help if needed. It's in the emergency transportation plan."

The President was thoughtful. "I want to be discreet about this. Can you put out the word without creating mass panic? If reporters get wind of this, we'll have a real disaster on our hands."

McDermott looked pained. "I can try, Mr. President. But it'll be awfully hard to keep an alert like this quiet for very long."

"We can work on a statement from this end," suggested Robert Kennedy. "An exercise of some kind, testing the system, that sort of thing."

"Good idea, Bobby. Work with the Mac Bundy on that, will you?" The President got sorely to his feet, flexing his back a little. He checked his watch. "It's awfully late, gentlemen. But maybe not too late. We may well be facing the apocalypse we thought we avoided last week." He spied J. Edgar Hoover packing up his briefcase. "Mr. Hoover, it's all up to the FBI now. I want those Cubans caught and those bombs disarmed."

Hoover's jaw hardened and his eyes steeled at the job ahead. "Mr. President, the Bureau won't let the country down."
Personally Top Secret

Memorandum

To Commander, Soviet Group of Forces

Cuba

8 September 1962

The temporary deployment of Soviet Armed Forces on the island of Cuba is necessary to ensure joint defense against possible aggression toward the Union of SSR and the Republic of Cuba

The decision to use Soviet Armed Forces for defensive actions in order to repel aggression and reinstatement of counterrevolutionary elements is undertaken by the Soviet Government.

1. The task of the Soviet Armed Forces group on the island of Cuba is not to allow an enemy landing on Cuban territory, either from the sea or from the air. The island of Cuba must be turned into an impenetrable fortress. Forces and means: Soviet troops together with Cuban Armed Forces.

2. In carrying out this task, the Commander of the Group of Soviet Forces on the island of Cuba must use the following considerations:

a) The missile forces that form the backbone for the defense of the Soviet Union and the island of Cuba, must be prepared, upon signal from Moscow, to deal a nuclear missile strike to the most important targets in the United States of America (list of targets included in attachment #1.

b) Regarding the Naval Fleet:

The Naval Fleet Group must not allow ships and transport vessels of the enemy to approach the island of Cuba and carry out naval landings on the coast. They must be prepared to blockade from the sea the US naval base at Guantanamo and provide cover for their transport ships along lines of communication in close proximity to the island. Nuclear missile-equipped submarines should be prepared to launch, upon signal from Moscow, a nuclear missile strike on the most important coastal targets in the USA.

The main forces of the fleet should be based in the region around Havana and in ports to the west of Havana. One divisional brigade of high-speed cruisers should be located around Banes.

3. The operational uses of the Soviet Military Group in Cuba should be formulated by 01 November 1962.

Attachments:

1. List of targets for missile forces and nuclear missile submarines for working out flight paths--attached separately.

2. List of the battle composition of the Soviet Military Group in Cuba

3. List of launching mechanisms, missiles, and nuclear warheads possessed by the Military Group.

USSR Minister of Defense (signature)

Marshal of the Soviet Union

R. Malinovskii

Chief of the General Staff (signature)

Marshal of the Soviet Union

M. Zakharov

(Send in cipher)
CHAPTER 11

11-3-62, Saturday

Miami

7:15 a.m.

Miguel Munoz finally found the abandoned warehouse Sparrow had told him about, the one that would have its side doors unlocked. A nondescript white stucco and brick structure, with five truck loading bays on a side alley, the faded red lettering on the front read Mosley Transfer and Storage. Located at the corner of Granada and Valencia, a block east of Salvadore Park, the warehouse was an unremarkable building in a low-rise commercial district that had seen better times.

Signaling with his hand, Munoz pulled into the side drive. Oscar Oriente, driving Red Lynch's stolen truck, backed in after him and maneuvered up to the last loading bay. This was the entrance Sparrow had forced a few days ago and described to Munoz, before he'd driven up to Atlanta. Both men stayed in their vehicles for a few minutes, waiting. Presently, the object of their waiting came gliding slowly down Valencia Avenue in the form of a blue and white Metro-Dade Police cruiser.

Sixty five feet away, Sergeant Joe Valdez, Doral Station, District Three, slowed his Ford Galaxy nearly to a stop, peering in the dawn half-light up into the alley. He was fairly sure he had seen a large truck make the turn up there, but it was dark and he had to take a leak and he wasn't absolutely sure it was Valencia he'd seen the truck turn onto. He stopped momentarily, thought about getting out for a foot investigation but Mimi's Café was only a few blocks away and that jailbait teenaged waitress Lisa was probably there this Saturday morning. Valdez shrugged, and accelerated on down Valencia. He made the turn back onto Granada and shrugged, putting his fuzzy thoughts behind him. It had been a sleepy third shift in the District overnight and he was sure looking forward to having Lisa serve him a pot of hot coffee, about half a dozen doughnuts and that delicious smile of hers.

When they were sure the MPD cruiser was gone for good, Munoz got out of his Cadillac and Oriente jumped down from the truck cab. They had work to do and not much time to do it. The truck carried the decoy devices: five empty crates, a few stuffed with junk and miscellaneous items lifted on the drive down to Miami, plus the phony bomb casing the DGI had put together in Cuba. Now stuffed with a satchel charge of TNT and a proximity-fused detonator, the fake bomb would go in last.

Their instructions were to get the decoy gear into the warehouse and situate them in various rooms around the structure. When that was done, they would carefully move the bomb itself inside and Oriente would finish the connections, joining the proximity sensor with his radar warning receiver adapted from a MiG fighter to the six-volt battery. That would take some care, as once the sensor was powered up and active, any movement within about ten feet would close the detonator circuit. Oriente had discussed the setup with Ramirez before leaving. His plan was to site the bomb so that he could leave the premises from behind the sensor face. Thus they would have to pick their location carefully.

Munoz and Oriente worked diligently for half an hour, keeping a close eye on the street for that nosy MPD cop but he didn't return. They found a pair of hand trucks and quickly got the wooden crates into the building. The crates were individually dispersed to several vault-like rooms. For good measure, Oriente ripped out some electrical cord from the front office and draped it over the top and sides of several crates. To the untrained it, the wire might just suggest an active bomb, requiring careful approach and analysis.

It was all part of the original Moncada plan, this decoy operation. Oriente would leave Red Lynch's stolen truck parked on a side street a few blocks away, knowing full well that it wouldn't be long before the Yanqui police located the truck. Finding such a large piece of evidence, combined with the crates in the warehouse, would send the investigation down a new and basically worthless road. Capitan Ramirez was a clever devil, thought Oriente, as he removed the cabling and connectors to finish wiring up the satchel charge. If the norteamericanos had half a mind at all, they'd soon be lured into the Capitan's trap and the investigation would bog down with search and investigations and bomb disposal in Miami. While they snooped and sniffed around the warehouse and surrounding streets, the real bombs would be on their way to Washington and New York. And to add to the confusion, the phony bomb casing the DGI had made was designed to resemble a nuclear device in overall dimensions.

Si, the dogs will get a real surprise when they come to investigate that.

Munoz left the warehouse to keep an eye on the street. It was early Saturday morning and traffic was light, but building along Valencia. Munoz fished out a Marlboro and lit up, sucking hard on the cigarette. He was nervous, keyed up and his eyes burned. It had been a long fourteen hour drive from Atlanta but he told himself it would be worth it. The boldness and sheer audacity of Moncada, once he had learned the full details from Ramirez, had shaken him. He hoped Fidel knew what he was doing, but realized what a stupid thought that was. Hadn't the Commandante en Jefe fought Batista and won against all odds? Hadn't the man somehow made it back to Cuba on that fleatrap of a boat, the Granma? And hadn't the guerillas built an invincible army out of nothing but peasants and pistols in the Sierra Madre, marching triumphantly into Havana two years later?

Munoz shook his head and breathed the morning air in, trying to wake himself up. No, it was a privilege, in fact an honor, to work with such warriors. The Revolution wasn't finished, wouldn't be finished until Fidel's enemies were obliterated forever. Common sense and logic were devoutly to be hoped but people weren't always reasonable. They didn't always have the sense to know what was best for them. It was just a fact of life that people like Rafael Ramirez and the Moncada team were sometimes necessary to persuade them.

Munoz tossed the cigarette away and went back inside. Even the simplest labrador knew you sometimes had to kick an ass to steer him the right way.

Oscar Oriente was working on the satchel charge when Munoz found him, huddled in a small storage vault near the rear of the warehouse. Munoz watched, waved back by the soldier, as he twisted wires together to complete the circuit from the battery to the proximity sensor.

When he was done, Oriente carefully inserted the wiring bundle and detonator back into a side panel in the bomb casing. Then he closed and secured the panel with four screws. Inside, twenty-five pounds of TNT sat primed and fuzed in series with a radar-driven proximity sensor. Oriente got to his feet and backed away, taking care to follow the wall behind the bomb, staying well clear of the field of view of the radar transmitter, which beamed a fan of electromagnetic energy approximately 120 degrees wide. At the door, Oriente pushed Munoz ahead of him and slipped out onto the concrete ramp of the loading dock. Nervous and sweating, he bummed a cigarette off the importer and lit up.

"That should do it, compadre," Oriente breathed. "You seen the policia again?"

Munoz shook his head. "He hasn't returned. I guess he was just curious. What's next?"

Oriente flicked the cigarette away. "We get lost. I want to leave this truck a few blocks from here. Along with this...." He handed a scrap of paper to Munoz. It had the Mosley Transfer and Storage letterhead and address on it. "It's an invitation...to the big blast we're going to have." He laughed, then closed up the truck's cargo doors and latched them. "You follow me."

Munoz got into his DeVille and followed the truck several blocks, eventually pulling in behind Oriente. He had chosen an empty parking lot behind a small shopping center, along Valencia at Cardena, dominated by a Winn-Dixie store. Oriente left the warehouse letterhead in the truck's glove compartment.

"That should keep the policia occupied for awhile," he said, climbing into the DeVille. "There's enough explosive in that casing, with the grenades I left and the TNT, to level several blocks. A little message from Fidel."

"Where to?"

Oriente thought for a moment. His orders were to blend into the Cuban community for a week or so, then make his way back to Havana. Ramirez had given him funds to buy an airline ticket to Mexico City. From there, he could catch a flight back to the capital.

"Drop me off at the corner of Calle Ocho and West Flagler. I know a little hotel near there. The owner's from Cienfuegos, just like mi padre. I can stay there for a few days. He'll be surprised to see me."

Munoz drove over to the bustling area of town known locally as Little Havana and dropped Oriente off. Then he headed back for the shop. He had business to attend to. Ramirez had given him a mission: contact Sparrow and tell him of the change in plans. The DGI officer would see that the information got back to Cuba, to Raul and the General Staff.

Munoz negotiated light Saturday morning traffic, heading back through Coral Gables in brilliant, clean early November sunshine. It was surely a glorious day to be alive, he thought. He practiced the wording of the message Ramirez had given him, trying different nuances and inflections. He wanted to get it just right for Sparrow. He had but to make a phone call to the special number, then leave an empty Cuervo bottle with a Number Two pencil inside beside the next to the last lamppost behind the carneceria. Sparrow checked the location every other day. He would see Munoz needed to talk. They'd arrange to meet that evening, probably at the Café Loco near the airport.

A glorious day, indeed, he thought. One bomb would soon be in place and ready to detonate in Washington, D.C. by noon today. The other bomb would be in place in New York and armed for use by dawn Monday.

No doubt Raul Castro would inform Fidel of the excellent field work his troops were doing here in Miami.

11-3-62, Saturday

Homestead Air Force Base, Florida

7:30 a.m.

Fifty-four miles south of Munoz Gift Ship in Coral Gables, the weather was anything but clear. First Lieutenant Roy Cedars lay quietly in his bunk in the "Q", after the checking the time. He needed to get up and get shaved and going. The chow line would be thinning out by now and he might still be able to grab some eggs and bacon at the field kitchen. But the soft muggy drizzle pattering on the roof and windows of the Bachelor Office Quarters made him drowsy. He closed his eyes again, silently willing away the troubling thoughts that had awakened him.

His watch at the COC didn't start for another seven hours, at 1430 hours to be exact. But Cedars knew he'd be going back to the COC a little early today, if for no other reason than curiosity. For as long as he had known the man, Cedars had figured General Olin Haley for the last of a dying breed in the Corps. Truly a man who despised inaction, Haley was at his best in the field, usually right at the front. Even back in Lebanon in '58, he'd been in the first LST to hit the beaches of Beirut.

Cedars was troubled by the little exercise Haley had going, this thing called Sierra. The documentation was all screwed up. Nothing like the normal mess-ups that always plagued any bureaucratic organization. These were different. Last night, after Haley had left to get a little shut-eye, after his watch was over, Cedars had done a little prowling. Like any good S-4, Cedars always had a hand in logistical planning for exercises. Whether bullets, bombs, or bedding, if the battalion needed it and the pick list was authorized and signed off, he saw to it the grunts in the field got what they required. And that was the problem. It had kept Cedars up most of the night, wondering.

Routine procedure for any exercise, like the annual Phibriglexes the Marines participated in--the Amphibious Brigade Landing Exercises--usually run around Viecques Island near Puerto Rico, was to generate a standard draw list for equipment, weapons, supplies, and rations to serve as an attachment to the exercise plan. That plan, with all attachments detailing TOEs and supporting elements, was forwarded up the chain of command, eventually landing on the Commandant's desk in Washington. When the Commandant authorized the plan, the whole machinery of the Corps swung into motion. And it was normal for staff personnel--whether ops, intel, logistics, or communications--to get their little piece of the puzzle for action. That's what bothered Cedars most.

For some reason he couldn't yet fathom, Haley had bypassed a good portion of that machinery for Sierra.

Cedars' nocturnal prowling had turned up several surprises. For starters, the General had shown him a handwritten list of the TOE equipment draw. Should've been on a 1550 with the DCOS countersigning. Cedars poked in and around the General's desk; Haley had probably forgotten he'd issued keys to his S-4 right after they'd flown in from Lejeune, in the first days of the missile crisis mobilization. So it wasn't like he was prying where he wasn't supposed to. Haley himself had said the staff ought to be able to put their hands on any piece of information they needed in five minutes or less.

He'd found the handwritten sheets the General had waved by his face last night, in effect ordering him to "see them and forget them." He had just wanted to get the paperwork straight, keep Haley out of trouble with Washington. You couldn't get away with faulty paperwork in the Corps nowadays, not if you wanted to stay on the list for command promotion. Haley liked to scoff about it but even the General knew how important good staff work was.

The papers had been tucked in a folder. With some other papers, charts, maps, and a few OpOrds he had never seen before. Cedars wasn't really a snoop, but goddamn it! the S-4 had a job to do. After quickly rifling through all the memoranda and stuff, he had come to realize he was looking at a barebones exercise plan, the TOE and order of battle for OpPlan 322, Operation Sierra.

So this was what Haley was talking about.

Thirty minutes of reading and scanning had given Lieutenant Roy Cedars a major case of heartburn. And it wasn't from the field kitchen's mashed potatoes, either. The most puzzling piece of paper was the operations order itself, OpOrd 6291. Cedars saw the ELITE COSMOS circulation, and knew he was handling paper beyond his need to know. Yet this was the training exercise plan, it had to be. At least part of it. His eyes were quickly drawn to the Statement of Commander's Intent:

The purpose of this action shall be to scout air defense installations, troop concentrations, armor and artillery marshalling areas and provide fire-control/strike targeting for follow-on reference actions. Fire teams will not engage targets except where required for effective unit defense or to achieve mission objectives.

For Roy Cedars, the realization came slowly, even painfully, like a headache on a rainy day. The OpOrd had all the requisite signatures, yet he was certain he'd never seen or known any of it, until the transports started dropping into Homestead two days ago and Haley had waved the stock issue in front of him last night. What the hell was going on?

Even General Olin Haley had to follow procedures.

Something called Sierra. Ostensibly a training exercise, the planning and preparations seemed to have all been done outside normal channels, miles outside normal procedure, Cedars realized. There was plenty here, he thought, to suggest that OpPlan 322 was something more than just a training exercise.

Cedars got up and got himself in order. He shaved quickly, nicking himself in several places. Then he trotted through the light drizzle to the field kitchen at the south end of the ramp. Hauled in by truck, the kitchen was a trailer with tents attached on either side. Cedars went up to the window, had a plate made up of eggs, grits, bacon, and coffee. He found a table near a corner tentpole and ate a desultory breakfast, turning over the facts he'd found in Haley's office last night.

When he was done, he went over to the COC, intending to work on a presentation he had to help out with. A Florida congressman was coming to Homestead Monday, a political photo-op if ever there was one. Scuttlebutt from the base C/O's office had it that Congressmen Jenkins was fighting for his political life in next Tuesday's election. Someone somewhere had figured the esteemed legislator's chances could be marginally improved if he could be photographed kibitzing with the troops as the missile crisis seemed to be winding down. Cedars had drawn the duty of shepherding some of the Congressman's advance staff around that afternoon. He figured a few overheads on how Marine logistics was supporting the Nation's efforts in the Caribbean would help out. And while he was there, he'd take a harder look at the folder in Haley's desk.

"Hi, Pete," Cedars waved to the duty officer at the Marine Corps liaison office. Lieutenant Kowalski nodded back. He was on the phone to somewhere. Cedars brushed by the comm shack and slipped into his own cubicle.

The duty staff at the COC was light this morning. The President hadn't officially ended the quarantine yet, though it was widely expected in a week or so. Soon as the Russians got their missiles out of Cuba. And the mobilization was still in effect. Cedars could see out the window across from the comm shack that a steady stream of transports still occupied Homestead's ramps and aprons. For the last several weeks, the old base had seen more activity than she had seen in half a century.

After a few minutes re-arranging papers on his own desk, checking the in-basket for last minute memos from the General and scanning the message board in the hall, he headed back toward Haley's office. Kowalski was still on the phone. Good. Cedars went in and shut the door.

He found the folder readily enough. This time, he was going to do some serious checking. Every operation order from the Commandant's office was supposed to be posted by number and date in the General's dutybook of current orders. The DCO book was on a table behind the desk. Cedars ran his finger down the list. Nothing. No mention of OpOrd 6291.

That's one paperwork mistake, right there, he told himself. The DCO book was a staff bible, pointing the way to references, attachments, and other materials to flesh out the orders. Each staff member got his relevant part and went to work. But Cedars knew he'd seen nothing on 6291, except for the handwritten notes the General had waved in front of him.

An hour later, the Lieutenant had satisfied himself. Operation Sierra had one helluva serious paperwork vacuum. In every place he looked, save the folder in the General's desk, there was no other official on-the-record authorization or information on Op Plan 322. It was like the exercise was someone's hallucination.

Yet Second Battalion, Charlie Company had somebody's approval to enter Cuban territory and conduct an armed intelligence mission. The question now was: had that happened? Had Charlie Two-Five departed?

Cedars quickly realized there was one way to find out.

He went up to the liaison desk. "Hey, Pete, got a sec?"

Kowalski was reading the comic section of the Miami Herald. "Sure. What's up?"

"Anything on the dispatch board lately? Task Force activity, that sort of thing?"

Kowalski checked the sheaf of routings and action reports. "Looks like routine stuff. Redeployments, mostly. You looking for anything specific?"

Cedars shrugged. "Any traffic from Marine units forward deployed? Exercises, Second Battalion stuff, anything like that?"

Kowalski read and then showed the open ring binder to the Lieutenant. "Housekeeping traffic. Supply shipments, spares, personnel rotations. Here...."

Cedars studied the board. "I'm looking for the latest sitreps from one unit. Charlie Two-Five. They're on the Iwo." He ran his finger down columns of shipments and status reports. Charlie Two-Five was cited last in a 1200 hours daily sitrep, dated 2 November, posted to General Haley's attention through the Task Force Commander and Homestead COC. Cedars scanned the routine messages: 88-mm mortars still in the shop...Soviet armored vehicle recognition exercise...two hours PT on the flight deck...all M-60s field-stripped and cleaned...Nothing out of the ordinary, Cedars realized. From every indication, Charlie Two-Five will still aboard ship.

"Thanks, Pete."

"Sure thing."

Cedars went to his own cubicle, more puzzled than ever. Am I seeing things? he wondered. Maybe it's just an overactive imagination? Or a simple clerical error in reporting?

There was another way to check things, he realized. As Haley's division S-4, Cedars was responsible for just about anything logistical having to do with the Second Marines: supply, maintenance, embarkation readiness, medical care, passenger and freight transport, landing support, materials handling, financial management, even food service. If any unit of the Second Marines were involved in a major exercise or deployment, it was his job to know and get the supply chain ready.

Cedars checked his division phone directory. The Battalion Supply Office at Lejeune might have records he could check. Assuming, there was a major exercise underway and someone, maybe Haley, had wanted to bypass normal procedures. Two big assumptions, for sure. Cedars dialed up Lieutenant Homer Rice, Second Battalion S-4, on the secure phone.

"Supply, Lieutenant Rice."

"Rice, this is Cedars. I got a request for you."

"Anything for the front lines, Roy. What do you need?"

"We're hosting a Congressman's advance team on post this afternoon. I'm trying to scare up some facts and figures on how Marine logistics is supporting the Nation's efforts in the Caribbean. That sort of thing. Can you check the Battalion's requisition log for me? Wire me activity sheets for the last, oh, say, the last two weeks? I mean, like right now?"

"Well, it'll take an hour or so to dig it out. Eleven hundred hours okay?"

"Perfect. Send it to my attention. And thanks."

Cedars hung up, then decided to take a walk out on the flight line to clear the cobwebs from his head.

The hour passed slowly enough. Exactly sixty minutes later, Cedars popped back into the COC and wound his way back to the liaison office. Kowalski snagged him.

"Couple of sheets for you on the teleprinter, Roy. I put 'em in the basket."

"Thanks." Cedars took the sheets, rifled through them quickly, and closeted himself in his own cubicle.

A few minutes' study produced several items of logistical activity that would raise any S-4's eyebrows preparing for an exercise. On page three, halfway down, Cedars noted several entries for C-rations and ration kits, in quantities much greater than normal usage would dictate in a battalion exercise. Jesus, almost twenty-five thousand units. That was enough for several battalions and several weeks in the field. Even the Phibriglex games didn't draw half of that. The next page produced another surprise.

Item entry 505: M-2000 Personal Remains Containment Device. Qty: 200

Cedars could hardly believe his eyes. Fucking body bags. Two hundred of them On a field exercise?

Several lines below: Item Entry 520: Whole Blood Units, Type O, A, B, B+. Qtys: 100 ea.

Cedars put the sheets down and realized sweat had dribbled into his eyes. The air conditioning was working fine. He sucked in a deep breath.

Whatever OpPlan 322, Operation Sierra was, it was no ordinary field exericse. That was for sure.

Cedars carefully folded the requisition sheets and stuffed them in his shirt pocket. He was in a real quandary now. What could he do?

Should he confront the General with these paperwork screw-ups when he returned? When would be return anyway? You didn't just walk up to the Commanding General of the U.S. Second Marines and demand an explanation. Not if you valued your health and well-being.

Or should he pass this stuff up the chain of command, to the Deputy Chief's office at HQ USMC in Washington? Cedars snorted. He could well imagine the look on Haley's face when he found that out.

And just how does a lowly First Lieutenant bypass the normal chain of command yet still seem to stay within the scope of his duties? Answer me that.

Cedars pondered that thought for awhile. Was there a logistics-related question he could go to Washington with? And why should he even bother with it?

Lieutenant Roy Cedars was not a superstitious man, nor did he place a lot of stock in feelings, intuitions, and premonitions. But there was something definitely squirrelly about OpPlan 322. Any self-respecting by-the-book staff officer would have chalked the paperwork problem up to clerical error and lack of staff oversight by the commanding officer. Problems sure, but not a catastrophe. Then again, the commanding officer was Olin Haley. For as long as he had been assigned to Haley's staff, and that was going on two years now, he had never known Hellacious Haley to take a whit's interest in staff paperwork. He was a field man, through and through.

So why did he insist on handling OpPlan 322 logistics himself, Cedars kept asking himself? It didn't add up. Haley was no paper jockey. Cedars had always prided himself on doing whatever it took to dot the I's and cross the T's behind the General. That's what a good staff officer did.

That's what he would do now, too. Cedars well knew what monumental storms could shower down from HQS USMC if the division's paperwork wasn't kept in order. No doubt, the General had a lot on his mind.

He figured he'd type up a staff memo, all nice and neat, requesting clarification on the body bags and whole blood. Then, he'd send the memo back to Division and telex a copy to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Installations and Logistics in D.C. As Division S-4, he had a right to know why any item was on the draw list for an exercise. And any S-4 would question the need for two hundred body bags and enough whole blood to run the Red Cross for a year, just for a field exercise.

That should raise some eyebrows, Cedars told himself. Then he wondered if he was doing the right thing after all. He inserted a Form 1122 in the Remington by his desk and pecked out a decent memo, changing the wording several times along the way. Wouldn't do to sound too accusing, he told himself. Just the proper tone of needing further clarification would do.

When he was done, he went up to the comm shack, nodded to Kowalski, who had graduated to the comic section of another paper, and dialed up the Marine wire on the telex unit, listening for the dial tone. He sent the memo twice, once to Lejeune and once to Washington, taking care to highlight the Distribution differently on each transmittal page. For both telexes, he checked off the box marked EXTREMELY URGENT. If anybody asked, he reasoned he'd say that if OpPlan 322 really did have high-level approval, they might well need those body bags fast.

When he was done, he carefully stowed the memos in his desk. Then he stepped outside the COC for a moment, lighting up a Pell Mell. He decided he'd take a quick smoke and coffee break, then spread out the rest of the requisition logs Rice had sent down from Division, and try to concoct some kind of presentation for Congressman Jenkins' staff when they came by that afternoon.

It would be a welcome break indeed.
CHAPTER 12

11-3-62, Saturday

Miami

11:00 a.m.

The Miami Public Safety Department looked like some kind of tropical resort, Mike French thought, as he pulled the squad car up into the garage. White stucco and glass, with rows of poinsettias and royal palms gracing the street face, the Department was a modern air-conditioned ten-story edifice that would have fit in nicely on Collins Boulevard in Miami Beach. Just add a few pools and girls in bikinis sipping mai-tais and there you'd have it. French got out, with Alexei Maximov and Valery Kudinov right behind him. They found their way into the patrol lobby and checked in at the desk. Five minutes later, MPSD's Chief of Police came flying out of the elevator, hands extended.

"Welcome to Miami, men," William Parkes boomed. French winced as the

Chief nearly broke several bones in his hand. Parkes was a rumpled mountain of a man. His khaki uniform was about three sizes too small, and enough belly for a ski slope protruded over a huge brass belt buckle embossed with the emblem of the city of Miami. "Just got off the phone with Mr. Hostetler. Said you'd be here, and you'd be heading up this investigation. I don't mind telling you this bugger's got us all worried sick, what with the Cubans and all."

Another man accompanied Parkes. "Winslow Kelly," the Florida Civil Defense Director said. "Pleased....." He shook hands all around.

"Men," Parkes said, "I've already got a command center set up. Third floor, just down from the cafeteria."

Where you've spent far too much time, looks like, Mike French thought sourly. They got in the elevator and went up.

The command center was a windowless room, dominated in the center by a large conference table. Coffee cup stains decorated the wooden surface of the table. A steel government-issue desk stood in the corner, home to a bank of telephones. The walls were covered with maps pinned to the paneling.

Chief Parkes gave them the rundown. "I've got an all-points bulletin out for that truck. Your agent here, Jack Conners, gave me the details early this morning. We'll find it, if it's here. It's just a matter of time."

"Connors'll be along after awhile," French told him. "He's picking up an atomic bomb expert at the airport." He went on to explain how Jeff Torburg had dropped by Eglin Air Force Base up in Florida's panhandle, to consult with members of the Air Force's Explosive Ordnance Disposal team. Special Agent Connors had detailed himself to meet up with Torburg at Miami International.

Parkes indicated the two Russians. "They cleared for everything?"

"Fully," French told him. "They're both part of the case team. Alexei Maximov here's got experience in Soviet nuclear security and transport."

Parkes scowled. He didn't much like having a couple of Communist agents running loose in his department. "From what I hear, Russian nuclear security ain't worth squat."

Kudinov started to reply but Maximov cut him off. "Your own President Kennedy asked us to help. We have certain, shall we say, special knowledge."

"Yeah, well I figure this whole deal's probably his fault anyway."

Mike French decided to change the subject. "They're fully briefed, Chief. How are your men deployed?"

Parkes indicated the map of Greater Miami. It was covered with red and blue push pins. "Since we don't know their real targets, we had to make some guesses. I got a couple of squads at the airport. Couple more down by the port. I detailed me a spotter squad along U.S. 1, up around Hollywood, looking for that truck there. Coast Guard commander advised me about an hour ago that he'd have five or six boats in the harbor, checking out suspicious traffic, in case the Cubans come in that way. The rest of my force is on the streets, just circulating. Mr. Kelly here gave me some ideas too. This other map--" Parkes indicated a second map alongside Greater Miami--" shows how a bomb might affect the city if it went off. I kinda use it for thinking purposes. You know...if I was one of the Cubans, where would I put a bomb? We figure Castro's after the exiles mostly. Coral Gables and Little Havana and that area, south and east of the airport."

Winslow Kelly got up and explained, standing by the map. The city of Miami was centered in the bullseye of several concentric rings. "It's just a projection, see. Assuming a one-megaton surface burst, I superimposed blast overpressures at twelve psi, and then at eight, five, and one psi. Plus, this oval footprint is the probable fallout pattern with statistically average prevailing winds. For argument's sake, we centered the detonation at Miami International Airport."

Alexei Maximov studied the map carefully, speaking to Kudinov in inaudible Russian for a moment. He asked for a marker pen from Kelly, who provided one. Maximov proceeded to draw in some additional rings.

"You underestimate Soviet atomic weapons," he told them. "The stolen bombs are less than a megaton explosive yield. We know one is about seven hundred kilotons. They are fission-fusion-fission devices. Three stages. Our tests show that fifteen to twenty pounds of overpressure is felt at a distance of seven kilometers from ground zero. The blast effects are greater and broader than your calculations."

Kelly listened soberly. "My calculations are taken from Atomic Energy Commission tables."

"Yes," Maximov told him. "Based on your American bomb tests. My data is from Soviet tests."

Chief Parkes pulled out a piece of poster paper and hung it on the wall. "Can you sketch for me what your bomb looks like?"

Kudinov shifted uneasily but Maximov quickly penned in the rough outlines of the warhead casing itself and its missile carrier bus. His artwork took several minutes, eventually yielding a crude diagram.

"Key elements," Maximov said, "are the pit here and the tamper, the uranium jacket, and the explosive sphere around the fizik package. The pit contains a mixture of plutonium and uranium, with a beryllium initiator at the very center, as a neutron source. Beyond the basic fusion part, is another fission part outside here...." He sketched in a separate sphere, still inside the outlines of the casing. "This is a ball of uranium, with a charge at one end. This fires first, driving the explosive force toward the main fusion device. The explosion of the fission part compresses the fusion part, eventually initiating a chain reaction of the fusion type, which releases enough energy to then trigger the final fission part, contained in the uranium jacket. A three-stage device, with about two-thirds of the explosive yield coming from the fusion part."

The Florida Civil Defense director quickly copied Maximov's drawing down on a pad. "Chief, we may have to revise our casualty estimates. If he's right."

"I don't want you putting out that evacuation plan just yet," Parkes groused. "We'll have us a class-A disaster for sure if that gets out. Give my men a chance to find these jokers first."

"I have orders from the White House--"

Parkes stood up and started pacing the room, a dancing bear with a cigar slung from his mouth. "I don't give a shit what the White House wants. I'm responsible for public order and safety. You got problems, go see the Mayor."

"What about your shelters?" Mike French asked.

Kelly shrugged. "We're checking all the facilities now, moving supplies in, stocking up. I was in touch with Reed Memorial, Mount Sinai, and several other hospitals an hour ago. They're short of blood, seriously short. We got the Red Cross rounding more up for us. But they're asking questions. I can't keep them in the dark much longer."

The door to the command post opened and in came Jeff Torburg and two other men. French recognized one as Jack Connors, SAIC of Miami's FBI office.

Torburg introduced himself around the table, then introduced the third man.

"Captain Carl Capers, United States Air Force. Explosive Ordnance Detachment Eight, out of Eglin."

Capers was young and thin, dark-haired and intense. His glasses made him look like a high school chemistry teacher.

"The Captain and I went over some of his bomb disposal expertise on the flight down," Torburg told them. "He's rendered safe two nuclear weapons in the last couple of years. Accidents, I'm told"

"That right?" Chief Parkes asked. "Where exactly?"

"Can't say exactly, sir," Capers replied. "It's classified. But they were American devices."

Maximov said, "Perhaps we can trade secrets sometime, Captain. Our Soviet bombs are not so easily 'safed,' as you would say."

Capers grinned like a Boy Scout. "Yes, sir, so I've heard. I'm looking forward to giving your Soviet devices a real good look-see. You familiar with their arming circuitry?"

"Quite familiar, Captain. It will be a challenge to keep our secrets from such an experienced eye as yours."

The phone rang and Chief Parkes answered it. He grunted a few words, then smiled tightly and hung up. "That's it, gentlemen. That's the call I was waiting for. Unit from District Three found your truck. Down near Granada Boulevard. Smack in the middle of Coral Gables."

"Tell 'em not to approach it under any circumstances," Torburg reminded him. "We need to get everyone out of that area."

"Just how far out?" Parkes asked.

"Several miles, if you can, Chief."

Parkes got up, pulling up his holster belt. "Let's go."

MPSD had marshaled several dozen squad cars and vans by the time Parkes, French, Torburg and the command post staff arrived on the scene. Chiefs of North and South Operations Divisions and the Crime Scene Investigations Bureau occupied a tiny corner laundry at Valencia and Segovia, a block east of the Winn-Dixie. Valencia was blocked off east and west and officers from Doral Station had secured the northern and southern approaches to the intersection from Granada and Sevilla east to Lejeune and Sevilla. Traffic two blocks north along Coral Way was re-routed further north, toward Southwest 8th.

Parkes led the staff into the laundry. Chief Wesley, South Division, was nominally in charge. He briefed them.

"It's a late Fifties Ford two-tonner, looks like. License Alabama DX One Niner Two Five Two Niner. I got the parking lot roped off now, details at all four corners of the intersection with Cardena."

Parkes nodded. "Crime scene procedures?"

Chief Dallman spoke up. "In place, sir. No one's actually touched the truck at all. I got controlled access at one point--you see it right there--" he pointed through the laundry's plate glass window at a corner of the crime scene rope. "Sergeant Royce is access control. Nobody gets in without permission."

"Civilians?"

"Being Saturday morning, we're a little lucky. Some four or five in that warehouse across the street. Workers at the sign shop. A man and a women inside the rope were apprehended and are being held in the van. Said they were walking to the coffee shop across the street. We got the Winn-Dixie clear just a few minutes ago. And we elected not to rope through those apartments for now. Lots of people there, you can see 'em looking out their windows."

Winslow Kelly had seen the apartments too. "Chief, we need to get those apartments evacuated."

Parkes mulled it over. "You're right. Probably take about an hour. Wesley, get a detail from your perimeter and roust all those people out of bed. I'll call the Beach and see if we can't get some more men over here."

"Yes, sir. What'll I tell 'em?"

"Hell if I know. Make something up. Gas leak or whatever."

Wesley left the laundry. Parkes studied a hastily posted tactical map of the neighborhood. "Captain Capers, after those people are removed, I'd like to have you move in with my Bomb Squad. Lieutenant Neese here's in charge of the squad."

Roy Neese was already dressed in his fatigues and armor. He shook hands with the Air Force officer. "Sorry, Captain, I was Army for eight years. Did my nuke EOD training at Indianhead Gap, up in Maryland."

Capers nodded. "Good school, for groundpounders. You up on transistors and relay logic?"

"Fairly, but I could use some help. I spend most of my time here on civilian stuff. Did see a mercury switch on a device a few years ago. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Turned out the perp was ex-Army. Had a Cuban bank he was using but the fellow kinda took exception to their interest charges. We got him though."

"This is Mr. Maximov, and that's Mr. Kudinov. They're from Russia. Supposed to be experts on this device."

"No shit?" Neese shook their hands. "You guys KGB or something?"

Maximov smiled. "In a manner of speaking. My background is nuclear weapons transport and security."

The evacuation of the Lincoln Gables Apartments took nearly an hour. Mike French found himself amused, in spite of the situation, at the varying states of undress the occupants displayed as Third District officers herded them down the street, past the perimeter ropes. Some even carried small bundles and hastily packed suitcases. It looked like a stream of refugees, something Miami had seen a lot of recently.

"Let's walk," French suggested, when the detail commander came by with the all clear. Torburg, Neese, Capers, French and the Russians left the command post and headed west toward the Winn-Dixie parking lot.

Red Lynch's truck was parked in the back of the parking lot behind the store. An extra cordon of rope and barriers had been erected by MPSD, separating the parking lot and the store itself from the remainder of the crime scene. Capers extracted a pair of field binoculars and studied the exterior of the truck from a distance of about a hundred yards.

"No signs of any external wiring or tape," he said. "Door's closed fully, best I can see. Windows and windshield's intact."

"How much can you really tell from this distance?" Mike French asked.

"I can look for obvious signs of bomb setup. A door slightly ajar is a dead giveaway. If I saw that, my first thought is: bomb's rigged into the overhead light circuit. There's lot's of ways to initiate a bomb. All you need is an electrical signal of some type. Could be the ignition circuit, cigarette lighter, radio, any of 'em would work."

Alexei Maximov was fascinated with this American bomb expert. "In the Soviet Union, we try to detonate bombs from a distance."

"Sometimes, we do too," Capers admitted. "But that destroys evidence. We like to get the physical bomb intact if we can. Helps with the case."

"Alexei here doesn't care as much about evidence as we do," French reminded him. "Making up evidence is a KGB specialty."

"You still have to go by the book, up to a point," Capers said. "Sometimes you run across something that isn't in the book." He opened the black case he was carrying and extracted a pair of pliers and several screwdrivers. All had black insulated handles. He hung the tools in a web belt around his waist. "Whenever I go up on a bomb, I always remember what an instructor told us in bomb school. He said, 'One day you're the windshield and one day you're the bug.' Jeff?"

Torburg had brought along his neutron flux detector, set down on the asphalt next to the corner of the store. He knelt down to study the graph. "No spikes, Lieutenant. Seems clean from this distance. Just normal background neutrons."

"Roger that." Capers looked over at French inquisitively.

"Your call, Lieutenant."

Capers nodded grimly. "There's one thing we kind of work by in EOD: it is a bomb until it is not a bomb. You're got a real bomb until you know it isn't. That's Rule Number One in Rendering Safe Procedures. Let's go. Stay behind me."

In single file, the men approached the truck from the driver's door side. Within ten feet, Capers called a halt. He motioned for the others to lie face down on the asphalt for a moment, covering their heads. He hoisted up his binocs again, adjusting the sensitivity. He studied the door handle, the engine hood, looking for anything out of the ordinary: a telltale pattern of scrapes, something hanging underneath the car, anything.

"Can't be complacent in this business," Neese told them. "You've always got the pucker factor going. Every device you go up on is a bomb. Whether you're taking apart a real nuclear device or some kid's hoax, with flares and an old alarm clock, you have to feel the same way."

Capers went to the driver's door and felt carefully around the seam of the metal, fingering the handle. Satisfied, he gently lifted the door open. Nothing happened.

Mike French realized he had stopped breathing. He let out a gentle sigh. "Okay?"

"For now," Capers muttered. The men got up and brushed themselves off. Capers shined a flashlight around the compartment, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. He made sure the ignition switch was in the OFF position, radios OFF, cigarette lighter pulled out fully. Carefully, he tested the driver's seat cushion, feeling for any projection or resistance. "Pressure switch," he explained. "But I don't feel anything." He climbed partly into the cab, peering under the seats. "Don't see anything either." Then he backed out of the cab and dropped to his stomach on the asphalt, shining the flashlight up under the belly of the truck. He wriggled a bit further underneath, grunting with the effort. "So far so good," he called out.

Alexei Maximov squatted down next to Capers. "Lieutenant, a bomb could be triggered by more than electricity. Heat would do nicely."

Capers' voice issued from under the truck. "You're right about that. But we go for the obvious and easiest ways first."

"My organization has a department called Seventh Directorate. Department S, actually. The technicians in Department S have quite a few tricks they've devised. You would be surprised how easily an explosive device can be hidden in ordinary objects, like a walking cane, or a wall painting or a flower vase."

"I worked Counterintel before going to Washington," Mike French reminded him. "I've seen some of your tricks right here in Miami. Worked the tamale squad in '59 and '60, investigating some bombings in the Cuban community here. Looks like your guys taught the Cubans some sweet techniques."

"Indeed," said Maximov. "We found the Cubans too emotional for good work. They are careless. They want to try things before they understand them. A dangerous delusion, don't you think? To think you understand a device before you really do..."

"Bombs aren't very forgiving," Roy Neese admitted.

Capers wriggled out from under the truck. His face was smeared with grease, which he wiped off with a rag given him by Neese. He sat up. "Nothing unusual gentlemen. Let's open up the hood and the trunk and take a look."

Capers did that, cautiously, an inch at a time, peering in to the engine compartment, checking dark corners with his flashlight, following wiring with his fingers. Neese leaned in beside him, feeling along the sides of the engine blocks, anywhere a charge could have been placed.

"A bomb is just an exploding device that's initiated by something," Capers said, half buried under the hood. Must be an instructor, French thought. He likes to talk. Capers continued.

"Anything can initiate--mechanical, chemical, heat like Mr. Maximov says, electrical. You know those tape recorders that work with slide projectors--they narrate and then you hear a beep and the slide projector moves to the next slide? All that beep does is activate a circuit to make something happen. It's just an electrical signal." Capers pulled himself out of the truck, wiped his hands again, and lowered the hood. He went around to the trunk, and began feeling carefully around the seam of the trunk lid. French realized he was systematically rendering each area of the vehicle safe and clear. A lot of experience in those hands and eyes.

"Take away the projector," he went on. "Put a switch in there that'll initiate a bomb. You can do this with anything. A doorbell. Anything. Something that initiates. Even a--" he paused, peering under the partially raised trunk lid--"trunk lid light." He let out an audible sigh, then raised the trunk fully up. "But not today. You have those new recording devices that answer your telephone--you can set up a system like this: you call the number, the device comes on, it closes an electrical circuit, and the bomb goes off." Capers shined his flashlight all around the truck, then pronounced himself satisfied. "Men, I believe we got a clean vehicle here."

Mike French realized he was sweating. He dabbed beads from his forehead. "Can I get into the cab?"

"Should be okay," Capers said.

"Alexei, you want to get MPSD over here, help me secure the truck for the Evidence Techs?"

Maximov was glad to be of some use. He went back to the side of the grocery store, motioning to Chiefs Parkes and Wesley to secure the area. A detail from Crimes Scenes came after them, hustling up to the truck with their bags of gear. In minutes, they had roped the truck off and started setting up a grid measuring system. One of the ETs began erecting a tripod for the unit's camera, fitting a 28mm wide angle lens to capture establishing and perspective shots. Maximov returned carrying a bag himself, which he handed to the lead ET.

The Russian found Lieutenant Capers toweling off sweat and grease, outside the crime scene tape. He rapped with a knuckle on Capers' body armor.

"What's the ballistic velocity of the armor?"

Capers smiled. "Quite classified, I can tell you, sir. It is a laminate, that much I can say. Sort of like what we use in our fighter aircraft cockpits. Heavy too. And hot as hell."

"You don't trust me," Maximov observed. "I don't blame you."

Capers shrugged. "Not a matter of trust, really. We just don't go blabbing our procedures to potential bombmakers."

"I see. Have you lost any men, recently?"

Capers shook his head. "We've been lucky lately. Have lost some civilians though. We had a guy killed driving in his Mercedes in from the suburbs to work. Up in Chicago. This was a Mob hit. See, I was with CPD Bomb Squad before going into the Air Force."

"Can you explain? I'm fascinated with your American police work."

"Some guys put dynamite under the front seat of his Mercedes. Then they took an electric garage door opener, fixed it to the sun visor of a stolen car, and taped it in the ON position. This guy went to work the same way every day, same route, times and everything. They had it timed perfectly."

"And the bomb?"

"Fishing for ideas, eh?" Capers laughed. "It was a radio-controlled device. The guy drove along the road right past this stolen car, right into the range of the radio transmitter of the door opener. When he was close enough--remember the door opener is taped in the ON position, blasting out this signal everywhere--the signal goes to the dynamite and blam! Car and driver go flying practically to the moon, with him in it. He was a mess. The biggest chunk they found of him was these little pieces about six inches square."

"Hey, guys, look at this!" Mike French was sitting in the cab, examining a piece of paper. "Letterhead of some kind." He passed it down to one of the Evidence Techs, holding the paper by the edge.

Chief Parkes looked on, reading the emblem at the top. Quickly, the ET dropped the paper in a plastic bag and secured it for evidence.

"Mosley Transfer and Storage. Granada Avenue address. That should be just a few blocks away."

"Yes, sir," said the ET. "West. That way. About two blocks."

Mike French hopped down from the cab. "That's all I found so far. Almost too good to be true." He held up his hands, showing the ET he hadn't touched the steering wheel and gears. The tech climbed in after him, scouring the floorboard for obvious fiber or hair evidence.

"You think it's a plant?" Parkes asked.

"Could be. We can walk there in about five minutes."

"Is this warehouse inside your perimeter, Chief?"

"I don't know. I'll have to check." A quick radio call back to the laundry room-command post returned the answer. "Warehouse is the western boundary right now, Mike. You think we need to expand?"

"Let's see what we find."

Mosley Transfer and Storage was a brick low-rise, half hidden with palm trees and bushes. Rusting metal frames filled the windows, most of the glass long broken or shot out. Chief Parkes redirected his perimeter detail to suspend traffic along Granada completely, north and southbound.

"We go in?"

French studied the front entrance for a moment. "Give me a forcible-entry detail, Chief. Five or six should do. I want to force that door and get all fire zones covered in one motion. This could be a trap. Plus we need to make sure all windows and exits are secured. There's probably loading docks in the back."

Parkes was already radioing instructions to the command post to re-deploy west some ten squads from North Division. Meanwhile, Miami Beach and Hollywood had sent backup, in the form of a dozen more patrol units. Parkes directed the re-forming of a new perimeter around the warehouse, centered on the front entrance. Every corner and every entrance was soon covered. A free-fire zone was established along the south sidewalk directly in front of the Mosley Transfer and Storage sign. The re-deployment took about fifteen minutes. By then, Jeff Torburg, Roy Neese, Lieutenant Capers and the Russians had arrived.

"Let's go," Mike French ordered. He motioned three officers in the assault squad to the left, forming up at the wrought iron railing at the base of the front steps. Two more to the right, shadowing him. In seconds, everybody was in place.

French tried the door handle. Locked. He hoisted his leg up and kicked the door in. It splintered and tore away from the jamb as the assault squad slipped inside, one after the other in a coordinated ballet of force, into the dark of the building.

"Clear left!" came a call.

"Clear right!" came another.

"Center clear!" yelled the squad pivot man, a sergeant from Fifth District named Harrelson.

"Get the lights!" French commanded. In seconds, the front office was bathed in dim fluorescents, revealing abandoned desks and file cabinets, with papers strewn everywhere. A glass door in the back led to the warehouse itself.

"Through that door!" French yelled. One by one, the assault squad slipped through into the cavernous space, lit with faint red emergency lighting on the walls. Daylight streamed in from off to their right, around the edges of loading dock doors. The warehouse was a vast clear space, filled with columns and scattered crates and boxes. French realized they needed light quickly. Shadows were deep everywhere. From long experience with assault type entries, he knew shadows were bad news. "Get one of those doors up. We need light."

Harrelson sprinted to the nearest loading dock. He wrestled with the door latch, and it lifted with a groan, then sprung upward with a loud roar. Daylight flooded into the warehouse.

French motioned to the other two officers. To the walls...and check the corners! Cautiously, French himself padded deeper into the warehouse, kicking at several boxes as he came to them. Wooden crates were lined along the rear wall, stacked in no order. French approached, then saw electrical cabling draped over the top of one. He froze.

He pulled a flashlight out and shone the beam into the area of the crates, studying the situation. There was a shape behind the crates, dimly lit even in the flashlight beam. A dull black object, partially blocked from view by a crate. He swung left, still fifty feet away, crunching on broken glass littering the concrete floor. A little further...he stopped when the blunt nose of the bomb gleamed back at him in the beam.

Jesus H. Christ.

Mike French felt his throat go dry. "Bingo!" he yelled to the assault squad. French backed away from the device carefully. In eleven years with the Bureau, he had never come face to face with a nuclear bomb. He didn't plan on starting now.

Harrelson and the other officers came over. French aimed his beam at the device. "Looks like our baby, boys. Let's evacuate the premises and get the experts in here, pronto!" The assault squad hustled back into the front office and emerged in brilliant morning sunshine on the front steps of the building. French waved Torburg and the Chiefs up.

Jeff Torburg listened to French's account. "Overall dimensions, Mike. Tell me what you saw."

French shrugged. "Maybe ten feet, twelve feet long, I'd say. About three to four feet wide. Kind of a cylinder, rounded at the ends. I didn't get any closer. It's hidden behind some crates."

Alexei Maximov wasn't so sure they had a real bomb. "That sounds too large for a K-12 or a K-5. You are certain of the dimensions?"

"No, not at all. It was dark and shadowy back there. Could have been some other stuff next to it."

"Did you see anything on the surface of the bomb? Any boxes, wiring, any plating? Could you see riveting or was the surface smooth and flush?"

"I saw nothing but smooth metal. At least, it looked like metal, dull black finish."

"And the nose was rounded?"

"Seemed like it. Kind of like a big nose, you know."

Maximov said something in Russian to Kudinov, then nodded. "Mike, the K-series warheads are shaped like sausages. They're thicker at the base than the nose, to fit in the missile nose cone. And they have a gray finish, the alloy is steel and nickel. What you describe doesn't sound like a K-series bomb."

"It sure as hell looked like a bomb to me," French said.

"I need to get my detector in there," Torburg told them. He looked around, seeing scores of people gathering outside the yellow crime scene tape across Granada Boulevard, curious onlookers talking and gesturing among themselves. "Chief, we better start evacuating this area too. Fast as you can."

Chief Parkes was rubbing his eyes tiredly. "That's gonna take time, gentlemen. You got apartments and boarding houses galore west of here. How far do we need to evacuate?"

Torburg was doing mental calculations. "How about two to four miles?"

Parkes almost laughed out loud. "It ain't going to happen, mister. Not in the next week. Mayor would have my hide, for creating a panic like that."

"Chief, pick your poison. Create a panic or accept the risk of mass casualties. How many people you reckon live and work in this part of Miami?"

Chief Parkes squinted thoughtfully at the physicist. He jammed his hands in his jacket pocket. "Couple of hundred thousand, easily."

"You prepared to handle that many casualties, right now?"

Winslow Kelly shook his head emphatically. "No, we're not. Absolutely not. Chief, we got to do something."

Parkes wanted to crawl in a hole. He sighed. "I'll do the best I can, Mr. Torburg. That's all I can promise."

An hour later, Parkes' stomach was growling and he wished to hell he was sitting in the Gaines Diner on West Flagler, chowing down his favorite lunch. You could see the Orange Bowl from the front booths and the grilled cheese was awfully good. Instead, he was stuck in the middle of a man-made hurricane in Coral Gables, fending off angry and confused apartment dwellers and reporters, trying to explain what was going on without really explaining anything. The Mayor had laid down the law: you mention anything about a bomb and your retirement won't be worth shit.

Like I'd retire in this hellhole dump of city anyway, Chief Parkes thought.

He watched the residents of one apartment house streaming out of their building, bundles and suitcases in hand, small children in tow, gesticulating at the officers trying to herd them down the street, westward, like sheep. He had had to call the Mayor's office and get several dozen more officers loaned over from West Palm and Opa Locka and the Beach, plus a contingent from the Florida Highway Patrol, doing speed checks along U.S. 1. The Mayor had issued a statement to the press only a few minutes ago, a lame one Parkes figured, stating that the City of Miami was cooperating with Florida Civil Defense in an exercise to test the emergency response system. Shit, my five-year old daughter wouldn't buy that. Then again, Shelley wasn't all that far away. Parkes swallowed hard, realizing his own family was less than five miles from this very spot.

"Boys, you about ready?" the Chief asked Jeff Torburg. The physicist was calibrating his equipment on the tailgate of an MPSD Crime Scene van, plugged into the van's heavy-duty battery for extra juice. Mike French stood nearby, going over a sketchy diagram of the warehouse floor with the Russians. Capers and Neese were helping each other into their armored vests and stashing gear in web belts and pockets.

"I think so, Chief. Jeff--?"

Torburg switched off the detector apparatus and folded it inside the carry case. "Just making sure we have a good reading on background neutrons here. This baby needs to be within about fifty feet for good results."

"After the Lieutenant gives us the all-clear," French reminded him. The plan was for the bomb squad to lead in, examine the device and render it safe. After Capers and Neese said it was clear, Torburg and the Russians would move in. Then, they would know for sure what they had.

It was just past noon when Lieutenant Capers and Sergeant Neese slipped inside the warehouse office. Mike French steered them verbally across the floor of the warehouse, toward the crates and the bomb. He crouched at the office door, as the bomb men made their way to a steel post fifty feet away. He saw Neese check ahead with his binocs, scanning the scene, looking for traps. The next waypoint was another post, just this side of the crates. Then a jog left, around the crates and they'd be able to approach the bomb from its nose.

They made the second post without incident. French saw Capers kneel, extracting a sniffer gauge from his pocket. Explosive vapors, the Lieutenant had explained. Still experimental, but worth a tryout. He waved the gauge cautiously, letting it sense whatever it could. Neese also dropped to his knees. They felt the floor for a few minutes, then both stood again and prepared to move out.

The last crate they had to negotiate was only a few feet from the bomb. Neese was the first there, already pulling out a pair of insulated pliers when the radar proximity sensor registered his presence. At the speed of light, the return beam off Neese's armored vest sent a pulse through the detonating circuit to a switch buried deep in a relay box inside the bomb casing. The current closed the switch, allowing twenty-four volt direct current to flow from a battery nearby to the initiator cap sitting on top of the TNT satchel charge. The elapsed time was about four thousandths of a second.

To Mike French, the explosion was like an iron fist, slamming him in the face and stomach. He felt himself lifted off the ground and hurled backward as the pressure wave of the blast expanded outward, moving at the local speed of sound of twelve hundred feet per second, vaporizing the brick wall and paneled partitions separating the office from the warehouse.

His final thought, before losing consciousness, was how odd it was to see white cumulus clouds and collapsing trees overhead, mixed in with roof joists and bricks in a swirling hurricane of air and fire, roaring up and out of the building.

11-3-62, Saturday

Boones Mill, Virginia

7:45 a.m.

To Dmitri Kapitonov's eyes, the dim humps of the Shenandoah Mountains reminded him of the graveled approach road to Glavatom-16, in the Urals a few kilometers south of Chelyabinsk. Shrouded in fog and mist on a drizzly morning, the hills were low and round, as if weighted down with too many centuries of Man's trespass and folly. He found the rolling seascape of undulating hills oddly soothing and menacing at the same time, perhaps a distant reminder of the drumbeats of war that had once trod through the high mountain passes.

Kapitonov sat quietly lost in thought, riding shotgun with Ramirez in the front cab of the truck. They were a few minutes south of Roanoke, doing seventy on Route 220 behind schedule, according to the Cuban commander. Ramirez was nervous, edgy, hyper, licking his lips and rubbing his eyes and mouth, as he swung the wheel trying to negotiate the curving mountain road. Thankfully, morning traffic was light. The Cuban could barely keep the two-ton truck on the road.

"Have you ever seen an atomic explosion?" the Cuban asked. His eyes stayed on the road ahead, and they leaned, taking a turn much too fast. "In person, I mean?"

Kapitonov nodded in the dark. "Last year. Novaya Zemlya. In the Soviet Arctic. A fifty-megaton device. The biggest explosion the Earth has ever seen. I was in a plane, filled with test instruments, monitoring it."

What was it like, 'this biggest explosion'?"

Kapitonov closed his eyes, recalling the scene as if in slow-motion, a black and white cinema reel of preternatural power and beauty.

"Like a monster. An arrogant and unspeakable monster, dredged up from the fires of Hell itself. You know the Russian folktale of Koshchey, Cuban?"

Ramirez snorted. "I'm a soldier. I don't have time for fantasies."

"It's no fantasy. It's a lesson. Koshchey the Immortal was a dragon. The only way he could be killed was to find the egg that contained his death. A silly tale, perhaps. And a symbol. The atom is like that egg. That which is death also creates life."

Ramirez blinked fatigue from his eyes, flexing his tired arms and shoulders. They had been driving for almost ten hours. "You actually saw this explosion?"

"From several hundred kilometers away. It was in August. I had goggles on and still felt the thermal pulse nearly three hundred kilometers distant. The bomb was dropped from another plane and detonated at about four thousand meters altitude. We were flying above some clouds, I remember, and suddenly they were lit up from below, as if the sun was below us rather than above. We left the clouds for a moment, and down in the gap I saw a huge, bright orange ball, boiling and seething as if alive, rising toward us. It crept higher and higher and I was afraid it would engulf us. But we flew into more clouds. Behind us, the ball kept rising, right through the clouds, big tentacles of flame and smoke. It seemed to suck the whole earth into it. By then, we heard the shock wave, like distant thunder, only the thunder never stopped, but grew and grew until it filled the plane and we shook from the impact of the wave. One of the crewmen, Yevgeni--he was a photographer, said it was like the earth had been struck a mortal blow and was dying. It was fantastic, unreal, even supernatural. I will never forget it."

"How big was this bomb?"

"Massive. Enormous. The casing was armored steel. They dropped it from a Tu-95 bomber, specially modified. The actual bomb was eight meters long and two meters wide. It was too big for the plane's bomb bay, so they cut away part of the fuselage and hoisted the bomb up that way. Half of the thing protruded from the belly of the plane all the way to the drop. The plane's fuselage, even the propellers, had to be coated with white reflective paint to protect them from the flash. It weighed twenty tons at least."

Ramirez was impressed. "I hope to see such a sight. Soon."

Kapitonov found himself jerked back rudely into the present. "I haven't finished re-wiring. You know that. And the other bomb--the K-5--probably won't work at all."

"You have time in Washington," Ramirez promised. "When we--what the--!" He stopped, hauling the wheel hard over, swerving right. Out of the fog and spray ahead, another car had suddenly materialized, careening right for them, straddling the center line. Ramirez leaned into his turn. The brakes squealed and they both felt the rear tires let go. The Ford truck swung tail first into the oncoming car, shuddering with the impact of two tons at sixty-five miles an hour.

The impact straightened their skid and Ramirez fought the wheel, struggling to keep them on the road. As the rear wheels bit asphalt again, the truck leaped forward, tilting left, then smashed through the side barriers and pitched nosedown, falling for a second, before slamming into a tree, wedged in a shallow ravine beyond the apex of the curve. The tree shattered the front windshield and tore into the engine compartment, sending metal and steam geysering over the cab. Ramirez and Kapitonov were thrown into the shards of the windshield, even as it disintegrated around them.

The momentum of the truck buried the front of the cab into the dirt and rock of the embankment and sent fuel spraying everywhere, as the gas tank ruptured behind them. It was over in less than six seconds. From somewhere behind them, the other car had spun out of control as well, flipping on its side before skidding into the hill on the opposite side. The roof was flattened by the impact of the car against bare granite cliffs. The horn blared. Inside, driver and passenger lay sprawled and unconscious.

Ramirez was shaken back to awareness by the sound of furious banging behind his head. For a moment, he wasn't sure what it was. Then, he shook himself upright, tasting warm blood on his lips. He realized he had a bad gash on his forehead. The banging had come from the cargo hold. Muffled voices creeped through into the cab.

He clambered down from the truck, still miraculously upright, and scrambled back to the door, pounding the bolt open with his hands, then yanking the doors free. Inside, several men spilled out heavily onto the ground. Saguente, bleeding from a head injury too, and Arrantes, badly scraped on the face and neck. They staggered to the ground, then got up, groaning.

"What the fuck happened?"

"Capitan...you okay...the bomb, she rolled and...."

The bomb! Ramirez helped Barracoa out, supporting his weight as he gingerly negotiated the drop. His left arm was still nearly useless, the shoulder separated, several ribs cracked. Ramirez hoisted himself up into the hold, saw the bomb lying on its side, having dented the thin steel walls.

"A flashlight! Bring me a flashlight!"

The ruso, Kapitonov, appeared in the door, shining a light into the dark. He stepped up, pausing as the truck shifted slightly, then knelt on the floor, playing the light up, around and over the bomb surface.

"She came loose," Arrantes said, from the ground. "Sucker pinned me good, right where that dent is."

Kapitonov crawled in, examining the wireways at the bomb's baseplate, then the seams around the casing, the battery connections...it was hard to tell.

"I need more light. More space--"

"How badly damaged is she?" Ramirez asked. "Can you tell?"

"Not really. I don't see anything but a few scraps from that wall. One of the wireways may be crushed."

"Capitan! In the other car--a woman, she's alive! And a child--"

"See to the truck, first!" Ramirez growled. "We're losing time."

But Barracoa had heard moaning from the car and gone to investigate. Inside, he saw a young woman, bleeding from a head injury, her neck bent at a bad angle. The child was crying. Barracoa jerked and pulled, finally managing to wrestle the rear door open. The car lay on its side. Barracoa eased himself down into the back seat, standing on the opposite side door. With his good right arm, he reached into the front seat, cutting his elbow on glass shards, and pulled the child back, up and out. He was young, crew-cutted, lacerated around the mouth and eyes, maybe three or four. Barracoa lay him on the ground and stepped back in to the see about the woman.

She was petite and frail, her brunette boufant tangled and sticky with blood. Barracoa nudged her on the shoulder and she moved slightly, moaning again. He decided to try the passenger side door again, and this time, pulled the door completely free of the car. It thudded to the ground, and slid under the car.

Grunting and swearing, Barracoa managed to upright the woman enough to see her badly gashed face. He didn't know if he had the strength to lift her up and through the door opening.

"Compadre, let me help." It was Saguente. The boy stepped on the edge of the car and lay on his stomach, leaning in through the shattered windshield. "You pull that arm, I'll pull this one. Take her out through the front."

It was a ticklish operation, but in a few minutes, the Cubans had the brunette sitting up in a patch of oily grass beside the car. Her eyes were crusty with dirt and blood. She'd taken some glass in the face. But she was alive and conscious.

"Pete...where's...mmm...where's Petey?" She swayed for a moment, trying to sit up, then fell back.

"The child is right here," Barracoa said. He was still groggy himself, and his neck was killing him. He motioned to Saguente and the child was brought over next to his mother. "His arm...I think it's broken."

"What?" The young woman shook her head, flinging droplets of blood onto Barracoa's face. "Let me...let me up....have...have to....have to see...." She sat up with great effort, focusing her eyes, reaching out. "Pete, honey...Petey, you okay....." The child started crying again. The woman became suddenly frantic, fighting off arms and squeezing her child, rocking him. Barracoa let her go. She seemed okay. He stood up, spying the Capitan. He was half inside the truck engine, legs dangling out, trying to fix something.

Barracoa staggered across the road, picking his way through metal debris and glass.

"Capitan, the woman...she's alive. What do we do with her? And the child?"

Ramirez backed his way out of the engine and dropped to the ground. His right eye was purpling, puffy and he rubbed his jaw tenderly. "Shit! Radiator's got a leak, we'll never get very far like this. Damn!" He spat bloody saliva onto the ground. He looked oddly at Barracoa, squinting and focusing, as if seeing the soldier for the first time. "What woman?"

"Over there, Capitan. With Miguel. And a child. What do we do with them?"

Ramirez trudged over to see for himself. The woman held her child close, both smeared with dirt and blood. Her lips were thick and bruised. She saw legs in front of her, shook herself a bit, then looked up, still rocking Petey.

"I guess we should call the police, huh? You okay?"

Ramirez squatted down to examine this American woman, realizing for the first time she was very young. A teen-ager at best. "No, senorita, we won't call the police. That would be a serious mistake. What's your name?"

The woman looked more pained than puzzled. "Mary Vance. Of course we have to call the police. Ambulance too. City's only a few miles that way. I saw a few houses the other side of the turn. We can get a phone--"

"No!" Ramirez slammed a fist on the ground. "No police!" What to do with them? He couldn't let them call the police now. Angrily, he checked his watch. It was nearly eight o'clock. They were supposed to be in the American capital by noon, in place. Castro would make the announcement. Shit! He stood up abruptly. "Get them to the truck! Now!"

Saguente stared at Barracoa for a moment, just long enough to attract the Capitan's eye. Ramirez glared at them. "You have ears, don't you, compadres! Move! We're wasting time." He stalked off across the highway, waving and yelling at Arrantes and Kapitonov. Saguente jolted into action and hoisted Mary Vance roughly to her feet. She swayed, still carrying Pete, and hung on to his arm as he guided them over to the truck.

Ramirez paced around the truck, while Arrantes patched the radiator with some tape. Saguente dumped Mary and Pete Vance at the curb, then stuck his head in with Arrantes, as much to hide from the Capitan as anything. Kapitonov came around, rubbing grease from his hands with a rag.

Ramirez pulled out a cigarette and lit up, sucking hard. "Arrantes says he can fix it," he told the Russian, indicating the engine repairs. "Radiator's busted, and the engine block's cracked. Probably won't hold compression. But we got a safe house in Roanoke. If she'll hold together for a few miles, we can make it there."

Kapitonov examined the damage doubtfully. "Then what?"

Ramirez glared at him. "Then we find another truck. We get back on the road. I have an appointment with Kennedy today."

Kapitonov bummed a cigarette off the Cuban. "You're insane but I guess you already know that. You think the Americans are fools? They know we're here; we saw it on television. It's only a matter of time...."

"No, my ruso friend," Ramirez replied, smiling thinly. "You're wrong. I know the Yanquis. I fought them last year, with Tomas, my brother. They're cowards. They got no stomach for a real fight. At the Bahia de Cochinos, they had ships and bombers and tanks and thousands of men. But we won. How do you explain that, eh? They're lazy cobardes, that's how. Spineless dogs. With too much money and pride."

"The bomb will never work, you know. The wireways are crushed. I checked them. I can't get a current into the explosives, can't initiate. It'd take days to fix it, several weeks to machine the parts and fit them and check them. Why don't you give up this stupid dream of yours and get out while you can? Before the Americans kill all of us?"

Ramirez calmly extracted his Makarov sidearm. His eyes burned with hatred as he thumbed the safety off and emptied a 9-mm bullet into the Russian's leg. The report of the weapon echoed loudly around the ravine, interrupted only by Kapitonov's scream of pain. He collapsed to the gravel, falling heavily on his side, curling into a fetal position. Blood poured from the wound.

Ramirez waved Barracoa over. "Pick him up. Get the field dressing kit and patch that wound. Don't worry, ruso. You'll live awhile longer. It's just a flesh wound. You die when I permit it, not before. And get those two into the truck too." Ramirez went to check with Arrantes and Saguente. "Close the hood. We're leaving."

"Capitan, there's no fluid in the radiator. The--"

"Close it! And get in! We're going to find that safe house and get us another truck."

Feeding juice from an extra battery, Ramirez finally got the battered Ford started. The engine clattered and groaned, metal scraping metal, as he threw it into reverse and spun the wheels, seeking traction. With a sickening crunch, the rest of the windshield cracked, then burst forward in a shower of glass, as the tree clung to the cab. Ramirez rocked the Ford in and out of gear, slamming into reverse, then the truck slid sideways as he backed them up the ravine, bumping over ruts and gouges, then pancaking hard onto the asphalt of the highway. Grinding and shuddering, the transmission was rammed into forward gear. He tapped the accelerator. From behind, the differential smoked and shrieked. Getting up any speed seemed to take forever and the entire truck rocked and vibrated as they hit twenty and rounded the first turn.

The ROANOKE 2 MILES sign slipped by a few minutes later, just as Ramirez finally wrestled the truck into second gear with another grinding wrench of the shift lever.

Where is that damn place? Ramirez cursed. Pleasant something....he grabbed the wheel with one hand, fishing with his other for the piece of paper. After a struggle, nearly losing control of the truck, he extracted the paper and read off the address: 1501 Old Mountain Trail. The Pleasant Valley Trailer Park.

Ramirez spied an Esso station ahead and pulled into the lot, clanging over the cable. A sleepy attendant came trudging out, a teenager with thick black hair and sideburns, ala Edd Byrnes.

"What'll ya have?"

"I need directions," Ramirez told him. "Pleasant Valley Trailer Park. I need to be there quickly."

The attendant, whose oil-stained shirt sported a green name tag reading Darrell stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Pleasant Valley, huh? Reckon the best way to get there is stay on your 220 here for a ways, on through town. Then, hang a right on your Herschberger--that's Highway 101 and go over to the Hollins exit. Hang a left and go north. You'll see the signs for Old Mountain Trail."

"Thanks." Before Darrell could say 'You're welcome,' Ramirez had dropped the Ford into gear and pulled back onto the highway.

He came up on the sign about thirty minutes later, traveling north through light morning traffic along 115, toward Hollins and Cloverdale. Pleasant Valley Park...The Perfect Community the sign had said. Ramirez checked the description Munoz had given him in Atlanta. This was the place. He pulled up into the drive, stopping by the small white frame house with the dark green Office sign out front.

Inside, Sam Chesley was attending to his usual morning routine: hot coffee, three jelly doughnuts and the comic section of the Roanoke Mountaineer. He was chuckling over some Snuffy Smith witticism when Ramirez came in through the door, alone.

"Yessir?"

Ramirez regarded Chesley coldly. "A colleague of mine made a down payment on a spot here. I've come to occupy the place."

Chesley chewed a doughnut thoughtfully, crumbs dribbling out the side of his mouth. "That right? What's your name?"

Ramirez had no patience with this imbecile. He idly fingered the Makarov in his pocket, but thought better of it. No sense leaving any more for the authorities than necessary. "My name is...Dana," he replied, remembering the witless Yanqui comedian who'd satirized Spanish speakers on American television the last few years. "Bill Dana."

Chesley knew Mr. Dana was no Virginia country gentlemen. "Let me check the list." He thumbed through a notebook, licking his thumb and forefinger with each page. Bugger's Mexican, if I'm a Tar Heel fan, Chesley thought. "You friends with this Rodriguez guy? He rented a double spot for six months. Just a week or so ago. Said he was a writer or something."

"Rodriguez." Ramirez was still shaken by the accident, Kapitonov's revolt, leaving evidence for the Americans to find. He wasn't thinking straight. Rodriguez. Was that the name Munoz had told him? Had to be.

"Yes, that is my friend. I asked him to rent a spot for me."

"Writing that big novel, huh? Mr. Rodriguez told me about it."

"Something like that. Please, I'm in a hurry."

Chesley saw the Ford idling outside the window, its front bumper mangled, engine hood barely secured.

"Where's your rig?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your trailer, mister? Where's your trailer?"

"Oh, we're staying in the truck for a day or so." Ramirez had to think fast. "My rig is on the way. Should be here in two days, tops."

"How many folks you got?" Chesley had started filling out a rental form, then passed it across the desk. "Read and sign."

Ramirez scribbled a purposely illegible scrawl and passed the sheet back. "Just four of us." Munoz had mentioned something about his novelist cover story. "Research assistants, for Mr. Rodriguez, actually."

"Yeah? What's he writing?"

Rodriguez thought. "Oh, a spy story. You know, lots of action."

Chesely nodded wisely. He hadn't read a book since high school. "Kind of your James Bond type, huh?"

"Something like that."

"Come on. I'll show you the spot."

Ramirez started to protest, but thought better of it. Best to play along. He'd always emphasized the need to blend in, in all the training the Moncada team had done at Camp Columbia, all the practice night time assaults in and around the mogotes of Pinar del Rio. The Yanqui were trusting fools, for the most part. Become your adversary, he had warned the men. Speak and act like the enemy. Wear his clothes and eat his foods. Use trust as a weapon and give the norte no reason to suspect anything.

Chesley and Ramirez hiked up to Wildflower Court. The driveway was a steady twisting climb, back into some low foothills thick with pine and birch. Wildflower bore off to the right, down a slight incline.

"Your spots, both of 'em." Chesley pointed out. Ramirez indicated a trailer uphill from the spot, sporting blue and white awnings and a scattering of shrubs.

"Our neighbors...they are quiet?"

Chesley nodded. "As a churchmouse. Ralph and Muriel Watson. He's retired, car salesman I think. Nice couple."

Ramirez appreciated the seclusion of the spot. It would be difficult for the Yanqui authorities to trace them here. Only Chesley knew of them. He could be dealt with, in time. Ramirez had no intention of staying at Pleasant Valley a moment longer than necessary. They needed to fully inspect the bomb. And get another truck. More importantly, he'd have to decide what do about the girl and the boy. Perhaps, concealment could found nearby, up in the hills behind the trailer park. A spot well hidden, large enough for the bodies, but not so easily stumbled upon. They would only need a few days at the most.

"It will do nicely, Mr. Chesley. It's perfect."

Chesley wondered if all Mexicans were so nervous and anxious. Rodriguez had

been that way. This fellow was about to pee in his pants. "Well, I got the down payment. You already signed the form. Just need to give you the covenants and rules and it's all yours."

They went back to the office and concluded business with a handshake. Watching the Mexican leave, Chesley was thoughtful. He was skeptical about these Mexicans. They bore watching, for sure. The last thing Pleasant Valley needed was a bunch of hoodlums spoiling business. He'd have to keep an eye on this bunch. First sign of trouble and they'd be out faster than a BiC lighter in a hurricane.

Ramirez got back into the truck and drove up to Wildflower Court. He backed down the narrow lane, and into the space. Then he went around to open the cargo door.

Arrantes and Barracoa hopped out, Saguente following, helping Kapitonov down. The Russian was pale and sweating. He sat heavily on the ground, breathing hard.

"We got the bleeding stopped," Barracoa told him. Ramirez inspected the field dressing, pronouncing it satisfactory. "He's lost a lot of blood."

Unlike the Brigada Rivera last year, there was no brigade aid station or corpsman available. Ramirez hoisted himself up into the dark cargo hold. Mary Vance huddled in the corner with her son. Her face was streaked with blood and dirt.

"Your son...how is he?"

Mary blinked at the Capitan. "He needs help. Broken arm or shoulder. It don't feel right. He may be going into shock."

Ramirez called back to Barracoa. "Geraldo, come here."

Barracoa grunted and climbed back into the truck. "Si, Capitan."

"You can fix the boy. He may have a broken arm."

Barracoa examined the five-year old, feeling his upper arm and shoulder. Pete cried and buried himself deeper in Mary's chest.

"Hard to say, for sure, Capitan. I can try to set it, if it's broken. Make a field splint. But I don't know exactly what is broken."

"We can't leave them here." He pushed Barracoa on the shoulder. "Outside."

Ramirez gathered the Cubans for a short talk, leaving Kapitonov sitting propped up against a rear tire. Saguente, Arrantes and Barracoa made a circle around him, next to a mailbox post identifying their address.

"Your shoulder, Geraldo. How is it?"

Barracoa winced, rolling his right shoulder and arm forward. "I've got a cracked rib, for sure. The joint feels dislocated. I've had some morphine, from the kit, so the pain's bearable."

"What about the ruso?" asked Saguente. "Is he going to die?"

Ramirez shook his head, lighting up a cigarette. "He'll live. It's just a flesh wound. He probably needs blood though."

"Hospital, maybe?" Arrantes offered.

"Do we have the time?" Barracoa said. "We'll never make it to Washington by noon now."

Ramirez kicked at some loose pebbles. They went careening down the lane into some bushes. "The timetable's shot to hell. I'll have to get word to Florio, and soon. Maybe I can use the owner's phone. Biggest problem is the girl and the child."

"We should have killed them on the highway, Capitan," said Saguente. "No witnesses. That way the operation's not compromised."

"Tactically, you're right," Ramirez admitted. Saguente was young but devoted. "But we can't leave a trail of evidence everywhere we go. We killed Senor Lynch and used him to decoy the Yanqui. I hope it works. The last thing we need is a trail of bodies all the way to Washington."

"Take them with us," Barracoa suggested. "Kill them in Washington. We could dump their bodies in the Potomac River. In front of Mount Vernon."

Ramirez smiled through a wreath of cigarette smoke. It was starting to drizzle again. "A nice thought, eh? Maybe that's the answer."

"What about the ruso? He needs medical attention. If I could get near a hospital, get some bandages, some more morphine, maybe some units of blood and plasma...."

Ramirez agreed. "We need Kapitonov. For the time being, anyway."

"And we need another vehicle." Saguente said. He shook his head at the damaged front of the Ford. "She won't go another five miles."

They heard a scream from inside the truck. Ramirez stubbed out his cigarette on the mailbox post. "That woman is unmanageable. She screams again and I'll kill her with my own hands." He trotted over and climbed into the truck.

"Keep quiet, woman!" Ramirez told her. "If you want to live. What's the matter?"

Mary Vance was sobbing. "Petey's...I don't know...his breathing...." Ramirez bent down to the boy. His face was swollen, his lips purple.

"Barracoa! Get up here!"

Barracoa hoisted himself into the truck. "What's--"

"The chico\--he's having trouble breathing."

Barracoa squatted down, wincing in pain as his arm and shoulder throbbed. He examined the boy's eyes, his throat. "He needs attention, Capitan. From a hospital. Something's obstructing his windpipe, I don't--"

Ramirez was thinking fast. The woman was growing hysterical. "Saguente, go to that trailer." He pointed up the hill at the Watson's silvery Windstream. "See if they can take the boy to a hospital. And get the boy out of this truck. I don't want anybody seeing our equipment."

Saguente ran off and pounded on the front door. While Barracoa removed Petey and lay him on the ground behind the truck, attempting to force the obstruction clear, Ramirez kept an eye on Saguente. Presently, a white-haired man in bathrobe appeared at the entrance. Saguente gestured at the Ford truck, apparently explaining things. Ramirez hoped the Yanqui could understand him; it was joke among the team how excitable Saguente was. Like a child himself, Ramirez thought, splitting his attention between Barracoa's efforts at resuscitation and Saguente's explanations.

"Oh....is he...is he going to...oh, Jesus...." Mary Vance ignored her own injuries and tried to help Barracoa, until he grew frustrated with her and shoved her away. He'd had basic training as a medical corpsman with Somoza's regiment in Vinales a year ago. Routine field dressing, splints, treating minor wounds, that sort of thing. Ramirez could see Geraldo was struggling, rapidly running out of things to try. Petey lay deathly still, pale and waxen.

Saguente re-appeared with the white-haired man.

"What's the trouble, folks?"

Ramirez told him. "The boy and the mother were in an auto accident. We rescued them. But the boy's badly hurt."

"Name's Watson," said the white-haired man. He looked to be in his seventies, tall and deeply tanned. "Ralph Watson."

"Jose Jimenez," said Ramirez, trying out a name. They shook hands. "Is there a hospital or doctor nearby?"

Watson nodded. "Valley Regional. About five miles away. Out on 11, right across from the college. They got an emergency room."

Ramirez considered the risks. Mary and Petey Vance had been in the truck cargo hold. They had seen the bomb. He didn't know if they realized what it was. Mary was distraught. Ramirez figured she'd be harder to handle if Petey wasn't taken care of.

"Can you help us get the boy to the hospital?"

Watson's brow furrowed with worry. "Sure thing. Let me get some clothes on. Muriel's gonna want to come along. Bring the boy over. We'll use our car. Looks like your truck's seen better days."

While Ralph Watson got ready, Ramirez assigned Saguente and Arrantes to accompany the Vances. He made sure they understood the story.

"You were riding into town to help me set up a home here at the park," he explained. "Both of you are assistants. I'm a writer, needing seclusion to finish my story. You were in the back of the truck the whole time. The truck came up on an accident, car ran off the highway. Two injured people. You helped them into the truck. You came here. We were going to look for a hospital but the boy got worse. You went to get help." Ramirez made them repeat the story word for word several times, until he was sure they had it. Moncada depended on unit integrity and careful deception until the mission was accomplished. It was axiomatic, in all the Spetsnaz and special forces training he had ever undergone: leave the enemy no trail to locate, nothing to arouse suspicion. Blend in and become the enemy until time to strike. Then, attack with sudden violent force.

He sent them to the Watsons' trailer, Saguente bearing Petey in his arms. Mary Vance stumbled behind, still bleeding from facial cuts, still bruised and dazed. Presently, Ralph Watson reappeared in a plaid shirt and jeans, a light jacket over it all. Muriel Watson stepped out of the trailer after her husband, clad in a cotton dress and jacket. She took the boy from Saguente and cradled him in her arms, rocking him gently, occasionally sneaking a peek at Ramirez's truck. Watson started up their Chrysler and the group got in. Moments later, the car was creeping up Wildflower Court toward the driveway. Watson turned and headed down toward Old Mountain Trail.

When they were gone, Ramirez pulled Barracoa aside.

"We need to find us another truck. There's a car through the woods there, next street up. You can hotwire it, get it going?"

Barracoa grinned, holding up his hand and flexing his fingers. "My tools," he said. "I have some other gear in the kit." Barracoa went up into the back of the truck for pliers, crimps and a slender metal rod with a hook at one end. As he gathered and sorted the gear, Ramirez went to Kapitonov, still slumped against the left front tire.

"Ruso, we're going for a ride. Get up."

Kapitonov was pale and sweating, awkwardly massaging his wounded leg. Barracoa had dressed the wound competently, but the Russian looked in shock. At first, he didn't respond, didn't even look up. Ramirez kicked his good leg.

"Stand up!"

Kapitonov rolled and groaned, struggling to his feet. He could bear no weight on his wounded left leg, and he clung to the truck for support. "I can't walk," he said, at last. "Can't put any weight on it."

"You can ride." Ramirez told him. "Sling your arm around my shoulder. You're too valuable to leave behind. Besides, you've got work to do, getting the bomb ready."

Barracoa waved at Ramirez as he skulked off into the woods. Light mist soon obscured the soldier. In their training, Ramirez had made sure each and every member of the team had learned and practiced troubleshooting and hotwiring a variety of cars and trucks. They'd done that part of their training in Havana itself, usually at night, in neighborhoods darkened by sporadic power outages. The drill was always the same. Find a target vehicle, make the silent approach Calderone had taught all of them, complete the forcible entry and bypass the ignition circuit with wire and crimps. Over and over, they had practiced the tactic, until the General Staff began to hear police reports of a car theft ring in Havana, counterrevolutionary traitors left over from Batista, they had said. When the policia began to investigate, even calling in the Ministry of the Interior, Ramirez ordered the team withdrawn from the city. They had learned the tactic well. And Barracoa had consistently posted the best time, never more than ninety seconds.

True to form, Barracoa came driving proudly down Wildflower Lane less than two minutes later, behind the wheel of a green and white Studebaker. He braked and climbed out, leaving the engine running, all smiles.

"A cinch, Capitan," he told Ramirez. "So many Stoodies in La Habana, I could do it blindfolded. Where to?"

Ramirez helped Kapitonov into the back seat and climbed in beside him. "Out to the main highway. Let's drive into the town and see if we can find a truck."

Valley Regional Hospital was a red brick clinic directly across the highway from Hollins College. Ralph Watson pulled up to the Emergency Room entrance. Muriel Watson climbed out, still holding Petey, Mary Vance right at her elbow. They went in through the wide doors, which opened before them.

Admissions took about twenty minutes. Mary Vance gave the attendant all the information: address, insurance, nature of the injury. Saguente repeated the story he'd memorized, word for word, giving an alias of Hector Garcia. He'd been assigned several in training, to use as discretion and mission requirements dictated. The 'Garcia" cover was well documented, thanks to the DGI, who'd seen fit to recover the identification papers of the real Garcia, after he had been murdered and his body dumped weighted with cement in the Intracoastal Waterway in south Florida. Saguente had a matching driver's license, photo and Social Security card. The rest he had made up himself.

The examining doctor was a young red-haired intern. His name tag said O'Brien. He'd been on duty all night and black stubble darkened his face.

O'Brien examined Petey for a few minutes. The boy seemed to breathing better now, the obstruction cleared. The intern felt, probed and pressed Petey's neck, chest shoulders and arms.

"Must have been quite an accident," he muttered. "Fractured clavicle, feels like. There may be damage to the neck vertabrae. How much has he been moved around?'

"Quite a bit," Saguente admitted. "We brought them both in from the highway, south of the town."

O'Brien sucked at his lip, hearing that. "Boy's in shock. We need to get him under cover, and stabilized with fluids. Build up his electrolytes. I'll admit him as an ER in-patient. You the mother?"

Mary nodded. "Is he gonna be okay, Doctor? Is he--"

O'Brien nodded. "He needs rest. We'll need some X-rays of the neck area. Let's have a look at you." The intern arranged for Petey to be placed on a gurney and wheeled through huge double doors marked Internal Medicine. Mary started to follow, but O'Brien grabbed her arm. "Hold up a sec. Let's get some anti-bacterial on those cuts. Nurse...." O'Brien and a young nurse treated and bandaged Mary's face. She'd only suffered superficial cuts and bruises, though one was near her right eye. O'Brien examined the eye carefully, pronouncing it okay. "I'll get you some compresses for those bruises. Swelling'll be a bitch in another hour, if you don't keep ice on them."

Saguente and Arrantes followed the entourage to a small room in the back hall of Internal Medicine. A sign outside indicated X-Ray. Inside, O'Brien and several nurses prepped the child. Mary watched from the door, sobbing softly, a blue icepack clutched to her left cheek. Outside the Watsons asked questions.

"What happened, exactly?" Ralph Watson wanted to know. "Must have been a hell of an accident."

Arrantes, who'd identified himself as 'Lopez', his favorite of several assigned covers, repeated the story. "They were lucky, we figure, Hector and me. Lucky we came along. I think the woman went asleep at the wheel, lost control that way."

Muriel Watson was sympathetic. "Poor dear. She's all upset and practically beside herself. I'd be too, if it were my child. But this is a good hospital. They'll have little Pete up and about in no time."

"Join us for breakfast?" Ralph offered. There's a commissary one floor up, just opening up. We been there before. They got eggs and bacon, even. Pancakes and syrup."

"If Wanda's still cooking," Muriel reminded him. "Unusual for a hospital. But folks come here from miles and miles away. They put it in two years ago, had a big fund raising and all."

Saguente thanked them. "We've eaten. We'll stay with the girl."

"Suit yourself. Muriel and me are gonna have a bite to eat. Didn't get my eggs this morning. We'll be back in an hour. Come get us if you need to go." With that, the Watsons headed off.

Arrantes leaned wearily against the wall, arms folded. He locked eyes with Saguente and they exchanged knowing glances.

"You think she knows what the chico was lying against? The bomb, I mean?"

Saguente shrugged. His eyes burned from lack of sleep. The commissary had sounded good. But he knew they couldn't leave the Vances unattended. If they said anything, anything at all, they'd have to be killed. On the spot, if necessary. Mission rules were strict about that.

"Who knows? Capitan didn't think so. What the hell...we should just kill them now. Be done with it. This is wasting time."

Arrantes smiled a grimy smile. "You're a hardass guerrero, Miguel, you know that? A teenaged warrior-child. Saw a lot of your type at Camaguey, when Guevara was commanding. Suckers'd charge like bulls, right into the machine -guns. Chopped down like ripe cane, for nothing. All you had to do was tell 'em Fidel was coming. They'd trip over each other throwing down their weapons. But Guevara didn't want surrenders. He wanted the glory. Wanted to crush 'em."

Saguente lit a cigarette, blowing smoke in his face. "You're a good one to talk, aren't you? Remember when we did that escape and evasion exercise in September, La Palma I think it was. Around the tobacco farm. Who was it got himself 'killed' every time? I thought Calderone would shit, yelling at you so hard. I never seen him so mad."

"Hell, it was fucking dark that night. I couldn't see a thing. Couldn't feel the wire they said was there. You know what it was...I think Calderone took down the wire. You were supposed to set off the charge, then run until you felt the wire, then follow it out. Asshole took down the wire. He wanted me to fail, that's what."

"Hey, tell me something." Saguente said. "Capitan's changed, seems like. You notice it? Like he's always on edge. He was never like this in training, always yelling, blowing up at people."

"I know what you mean, companero. He's got a lot to think about, I guess. Remember when we were doing night assaults, getting ready for Bejucal? Remember the first time Paco Quinones drove the armored vehicle, the BTR-60?" Arrantes chuckled. "I thought he'd kill all of us."

"He damn near plowed right into that logging truck on the highway. You see that driver's eyes--" Saguente laughed, "-they were about a foot in front of his face."

"Si, Capitan was different then, wasn't he? I was afraid of him, at first, right after I came to the unit. He had that--what do you call it?--that stare of his, like a knife. And you couldn't help noticing that scar..."

"It twitches when he's mad, like it was a snake or something. You have to stare at it."

Arrantes sat down heavily on the linoleum floor of the hospital wing, back to the wall. He drew his knees up to his face, thinking. "It's the Yanquis, that's what it is. When we were training, Capitan was always thinking tactics, strategy, how could we train better or harder. But you know how he hates the nortes. Now, he's on a mission. He's focused. I think the hate makes him that way. He wants to kill Yanquis, as many as possible. He blames them for Tomas, his brother."

"It's crazy, you know that. You can't kill all of them."

"He wants to, though. You see how he treates the ruso. He could have killed him back on that highway. Maybe he should have. Who knows if the bomb will work?"

"It has to work," Saguente muttered, stubbing out his cigarette on the wall. "We didn't come this far to fail. We trained hard. Moncada's critical, you know that. Raul Castro said so. Capitan'll make it work somehow. He knows what to do."

Arrantes nodded, though he wasn't convinced. "Miguel, you think Capitan is crazy?"

Saguente was already lighting up another Pell Mell. Norte tobacco wasn't worth toilet paper but it was all he had now. He nodded, as he puffed around the match.

"Companero, I think we're all crazy."

Ramirez had slowed the Studebaker to about twenty, as he negotiated Roanoke's nearly deserted downtown streets. It was still early on Saturday morning, foggy and drizzly, and the town was slow coming to life. They turned onto Hill Street, giving onto a fine view through the brick buildings of distant humps, the Shenandoah Mountains, dim and brown with fall color. They had been circling the immediate center of the town for ten minutes, hunting, looking for a vehicle. They needed a truck, two axles would do, with enough space to hold and hide the K-12 bomb and the team.

"There." Barracoa swung his arm around, pointing out a furniture store on the corner of Hill and Western. A Rent-All Store, still closed but its front showroom was ablaze with light. Several vehicles were parked in the front lot. Among them was a delivery truck. "A good truck, no?"

Ramirez permitted himself a thin smile. "Good enough." He pulled the Studebaker into the lot, letting it coast to a stop by the front door. He didn't have a key and he didn't want to kill the engine just yet. Barracoa slipped out, and looked around for a moment.

Traffic was light. A few pedestrians walked along Western a block south, heading for the Country Diner. Its garish oval sign blinked 24 Hours - Food and Drink through the drizzle. Otherwise, the streets were clear. Barracoa extracted his tools and bounded over to the truck. Ramirez waited a second, while he inserted the long rod into the window, hooking the door handle to unlock the door. In a second, he was inside, closing the door behind him.

Ramirez let off the Studebaker's brakes, then coasted over next to the truck door. Just as he approached, Barracoa got the truck started, coughing oil smoke. Ramirez engaged the Stoodie's parking brake and got out. Kapitonov struggled out as well. In seconds, the three of them were in the truck cab.

As Ramirez closed the cab door, a voice erupted from behind them. Ramirez turned to look. A man was running at them, waving a pistol.

"Hey! Hey, you! That's my truck...get the fuck out of my truck....!"

He had come out of nowhere. Running, waving, screaming like a wild man. Ramirez yelled to Barracoa.

"Vamos! Go, go, go!"

The man fired, a single shot that went over the cab. He kept closing, less than thirty yards separated them. Ramirez struggled to extract his own Makarov pistol, even as Barracoa swung the white delivery truck around. He bore down on the gunman, who fired again, this time striking the windshield. There was a loud crack! and the windshield crinkled with the impact, starbursts of cracked glass radiating outward. Barracoa swerved, unable to see fully, and swerved back. The gunman froze in the middle of the parking lot. Barracoa gunned the engine and struck the man at forty miles an hour. The thump sent him flying to the side, where he landed against a light pole, his head and neck whipped back from the impact. Barracoa slammed on the brakes, squealing to a stop just in front of the Rent-All's plate glass front window.

"Sucker's dead," Ramirez said. "Get going. Let's get out of here."

Barracoa backed around and took them out onto Hill Street, accelerating through a red light to put some distance between them and the store.

"Shit," said Ramirez as they left the city limits, heading south on Route 220. "More evidence for the police. Our luck is terrible."

"It was him or us, Capitan," Barracoa said. "Couldn't be helped."

"I know, I know. But we're leaving a trail a blind man could follow. Too many bodies."

Kapitonov snorted at that. The Cuban was prepared to obliterate Washington D.C. with an atomic bomb. What did he care about bodies?

"We better get back and get moving," Ramirez decided. To Kapitonov: "How long to re-wire the bomb?"

The Russian shrugged. "Hard to say, exactly. I don't have any prints. A day or so, maybe. If I have the right equipment. I can't guarantee it will work, bypassing the normal inputs to the relay panel."

Ramirez's face hardened. "You will make the bomb work, ruso. That much I can assure you." He did some quick mental calculations. "We get the bomb transferred and we can be gone in an hour. It's just ten now. I figure four hours, maybe five, to Washington, if we go up this valley and head east. That would put us in place about mid-afternoon. I hope Fidel doesn't announce anything until then. I told Florio to promise him we'd be ready by noon. But I can't take a chance on calling now."

Barracoa slowed, hunting for the entrance to Pleasant Valley. Presently, the green and white sign appeared. He turned off, bumping up the main drive to Wildflower Court. The Palm Breezes truck was untouched. Ramirez had been uneasy leaving the bomb locked up but unattended. Ramirez saw that the Watsons had just returned. Saguente and Arrantes jumped down from the back of the truck at the sound of their approach. Saguente waved.

"We just got back." He jerked his head toward the battered Ford. "Our friends are inside. Doctors fixed them up."

Ramirez popped his head in the back. Mary Vance sat in one corner, Petey next to her. His arm was in a cast and sling. They were tied together with cord.

"I see you are comfortable and content, mujer. And the boy's well?"

Mary jerked against her cords angrily. "You won't get far, mister, whoever you are. Let me go now! Who do you think you are--first you run me off the road, then you kidnap me and my child. What kind of monster are you?"

"A dedicated monster. Something you wouldn't understand, I'm sure. A few scrapes and bruises are nothing to the Revolution. You should consider yourself fortunate. You're going to witness history."

"What history? What revolution?"

"A glorious day...America defeated and humiliated before the entire world. You and your son will be a part of it."

Mary Vance made a puzzled frown. "I don't know anything about that. Just you leave Petey alone. Just let us go now before someone gets hurt. I don't know what you've done. And I don't care. Let us go and we'll be on our way."

"Nice try, mujer. But I cannot. You're part of the team now." He waved the rest of them over, told them to get Mary and Pete out of the truck. "Lay them over there on the ground for the time being. We got to get our...ah, cargo, moved."

The Vances were lifted out of the truck and placed on the ground, up in the woods a few dozen yards away. For good measure, Saguente tied them both to a tree.

Barracoa backed the Rent-All delivery truck up to the back ramp of the old Ford. Several steel drums were located near the entrance of the park. Saguente and Arrantes rolled them up the hill, finally situating them underneath the ramps of both trucks. The K-12 was maneuvered in the tight confines of the Ford, until its wide conical base was hanging on the tail ramp. A makeshift path was rigged by placing the steel drums underneath the abutting ramps.

The move took four of them, Ramirez and Barracoa, using his good left shoulder, on one side, Saguente and Arrantes on the other. The Russian, sour and sullen, helped guide the device over the open ground. The men rested halfway across, gingerly letting the full weight of the warhead bear on the tops of the steel drums, which supported the ramps. After another ten minutes of wrestling and grunting, they had the bomb transferred. The Rent-All truck seemed to have more room.

"We need gas," Barracoa said, as they hoisted Mary Vance into the truck. Petey was carried by Ramirez and placed down beside her. Their cords were re-attached. "And maybe something to eat."

"Get the truck started," Ramirez ordered. "I'll get the rest of the gear moved. When we're away from here, we'll talk about food."

The mission equipment, packed in several wooden crates, was transferred. Ramirez took a last look around the cab and cargo hold of Red Lynch's Ford truck, hunting for anything they might have left, anything that might help the police. The truck had served Moncada well. Ramirez knew their prints were all over the vehicle. Cigarette butts too, though they were Yanqui brands. At last, he satisfied himself they'd left nothing vital.

"Go," he told Barracoa, climbing into the front cab. As before, Kapitonov, Saguente and Arrantes were in the back, with the bomb and the Vances. Barracoa kept the truck in low gear, negotiating the hill down to Old Mountain Trail. Ramirez studied a map. They needed to make up time, to move fast but avoid the main highways. He plotted a tentative course: east on Route 221 to Lynchburg, then north on U.S. 29. Somewhere in the vicinity of Culpepper, they would turn east again, and make for Washington. With any luck, they would be in the District of Columbia by 3:00 or 4:00 that afternoon.

As long as Oriente and the decoy mission kept the nortes preoccupied to the south, their mission would work. All they needed now was a day or so to get the Washington device in place. He wondered about Calderone. How was Felix doing? Where were they?

Ramirez allowed himself to close his eyes for a moment. Madre de Dios, he was dead tired. Exhausted, really. . Thoughts swirled in his mind like leaves in an autumn wind. Each time he focused his mind, the thought became a checklist. The Bomb. The Vances. Calderone and the rest of the team. The Russian...could he be trusted not to sabotage the device? The Yanquis...what would they do next? What did they know?

In all their training, night after endless night of simulated assaults, simulated runs across Cuba in an Army truck, blending in with the people, living off the land like Cortez and his bandits, he had never trained for this: the myriad details of running the operation. The stress of trying to anticipate, trying to plan on the run, having to change everything, responding to the enemy's probes and their own carelessness. The price of vigilance, he supposed. Fighting with Che Guevara's Eighth Column had never been like this. Batista's goons were kids really, scared and nervous. Half the time, they dropped their weapons and fled, realizing Fidel and the Revolution were unstoppable.

The Yanquis were different. Like the black wildcats in the Sierre Madre, they stalked you day and night, never tiring, ready to strike without warning. Here, in the land of the enemy, they were the ones on the run.

They had been lucky this far, damn lucky. Mistakes were to be expected. But operational errors and failures had a way of stacking up, until you began fighting yourself more than the enemy. That couldn't be tolerated. As the Rent-All truck plowed through clumps of wet leaves lining the highway, Ramirez considered what to do with their unwilling passengers.

Perhaps there was yet a way to throw the Yanqui predator off their trail.

11-3-62, Saturday

Homestead Air Force Base, Florida

3:45 p.m.

Lieutenant Roy Cedars watched the big C-130 Hercules transport kiss the tarmac at the far end of Runway 22 Left and come rumbling toward the hangar complex in a cloud of gray engine smoke. He watched the Congressman's reaction out of the corner of his eye and saw the politician rubbing his hands together like a child, drinking in all the machines and the power and the throbbing sense of purpose they had staged just for his benefit.

"Magnificent," said Representative Stephen Jenkins (D-Florida), as the Herky Bird chopped its engines and the whine of the huge Allisons died off. "Just magnificent. Hell of a bird. You must be able to move a small city in and out of here."

"Yes, sir, something like fifty tons of equipment every twelve hours. At the height of the missile crisis, we were doing even better than that."

Jenkins walked the flight line, inspecting the row of Military Air Transport Service aircraft like an imperial potentate. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, in a sense, he was. Jenkins was also Florida's ranking Democrat and a wily veteran of the Hill's never-ending funding and appropriations wars. The base C/O, Colonel Raines, had warned all billeted units three days ago that the Congressman was coming. "Give him a good show," the Air Force O-6 had ordered.

With General Haley gone, Cedars was the ranking Marine. He'd checked with the other services at the COC. The consensus was that Jenkins was coming down on a political junket, pure and simple. The man was running hard for re-election next Tuesday and the issue was in some doubt. Like Raines had said, "The man wants to be seen helping our boys fight Communism." So it had fallen to Cedars to do the Marine part of the briefing.

He had cobbled together some canned slides on Marine operations in and around the Caribbean and especially at Guantanamo, where the Leathernecks were on the front lines, the Communist enemy less than a mile away. Cedars had played up that angle in the briefing, rattling off numbers of combat units, their tables of organization and equipment, basic mission orders. Jenkins had sat through nearly two hours of mind-numbing minutiae from each Service, munching a bologna sandwich, slurping a Coke. When it was all over, he stood up, stretching, wiping mayonnaise from his mouth.

"My photographers are outside. Let's walk."

The rest of the afternoon had been spent prowling the hangars and flight lines of Homestead, poking into every crate and pallet, posing every ten minutes for staged photo-ops. The Congressman had asked some desultory questions, handed him by a female staff aid, then asked to see the demo touch and gos that the Air Force had arranged with its Herkys. Watching the huge transports swoop in for a landing and a brief roll down the runway, only to roar off at max power for another go-around was music to Jenkins' ears. For the first time, he came alive and waved like an adoring parent as the planes rolled by.

During a break in his walk along the flight line, Cedars was hailed by a yeoman from the COC, carrying a small parcel. He signed for it, then opened the package and extracted the contents: it was a two-page telex document from Headquarters, U.S.M.C, signed by the Deputy COS for Logistics...General Sorrento. Cedars studied the dispatch carefully, his stomach beginning to tighten as he read on.

The Deputy COS had sent a brusque reply to Cedars' inquiry about the body bags, and other materiel drawn for Operation Sierra. He separated himself from the Congressman's entourage, finding a corner by a machine shop just inside Hangar Seven, where he re-read the dispatch several times. He tried out different interpretations of the DCOS's words, but found none.

The communication was succinct and straight-forward. General Sorrento's office had no knowledge of any official authorization for such an order. Even more, Cedars was directed to furnish additional information about the matter. The DCOS wanted OpOrd numbers, dates, authorizing personnel, reference and control numbers, and classification levels. Reading the dispatch a third time, Cedars realized his throat had gone dry.

General Haley was up to something. There was no longer any doubt about that. Cedars had been suspicious, from the beginning, especially when the General had done his own logistical work, bypassing the normal procedure. As Haley's S-4, Cedars knew he should have been involved. The DCOS even said that, wondering why a lowly Lieutenant would ask such ridiculous questions.

But the questions were no longer so ridiculous. Even the DCOS thought so or he wouldn't have asked for more information.

"Are you okay, Lieutenant?"

The voice startled him and Cedars fumbled, dropping the dispatch. He retrieved the papers, looking up to see a pair of shapely legs in front of his eyes. He stood up, and found himself face to face with Congressman Jenkins' staff aide.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You looked a little sick, there, Lieutenant. Your face is red. Are you feeling okay?"

Cedars realized he was sweating. He patted down his face with a handkerchief. "Kind of humid outside, actually. I just came in for some shade. This Florida weather's tough on us Californians."

"Is that so? I'm from Washington, D.C. myself." She extended a hand, which Cedars shook. "Barbara Shirley. Staff assistant for defense and foreign affairs." She smiled, revealing perfect teeth. "You think the Congressman's making an ass out of himself?"

Cedars had to laugh. "Well, actually--I don't--"

"Oh, it's quite okay. He really is an ass. The whole staff thinks so. But we love him anyway. The Congressman doesn't get out much. He's like a kid here, really enjoying himself." She sighed. "I just hope it helps. Next Tuesday, I mean. He's in a tough race."

"Yes, ma'am. I--well, we're just trying to show the Congressman what we do here. Our mission, that is."

Barbara Shirley was a petite blond, her "Jackie" cut slightly tinted on top. "Exactly what is your mission anyway, Lieutenant?"

Cedars launched into his canned presentation but Shirley held up a hand, laughing. "Please, I already heard that one. I meant your mission. What brings you to a swamphole like this?"

Cedars shrugged. "I've been assigned to General Haley's staff for several years. An S-4 goes wherever his Old Man goes."

Barbara Shirley paused, waiting for another Herky Bird to make its thundering pass over the runway. The transport climbed out on thin ropes of engine smoke, disappearing into low-hanging clouds.

"You didn't answer my original question, Lieutenant. I thought you were going to pass out on me for a moment."

"Sorry," Cedars said. "I guess I've got a slight cold."

"That was a workmanlike briefing. Not too short, not too long, not saying anything at all, actually. You seem well practiced in that sort of gibberish."

"I practice. What brings you to Florida, Mrs. Shirley?"

Barbara Shirley glanced around, put down her notebook, and extracted a small compact from her purse. She examined her hair critically, then refreshed her lipstick. "It's Miss, actually. The Congressman needs all the help he can get. I'm the female vote. Did you know he has a fund-raiser tonight, in Miami? Fontainebleu Hotel. Miami Chamber of Commerce. He trots me out when he needs to impress the other half of the electorate."

"And otherwise--?"

Barbara shrugged, snapping her clutch shut. "Otherwise, I'm a staff expert on defense readiness, training and manpower issues. The Congressman's a busy man. House Armed Services keeps him in the public eye these days. It's my job to make sure he knows what he's talking about."

Cedars considered that. "You write reports, that sort of thing?"

"Sometimes. Mostly, I investigate. Visit bases. Watch men run around yelling and waving guns. Got me a green badge for the Pentagon, E-Ring access and all. My dates are impressed. You ever been on a submarine, Lieutenant?"

"Can't say I have."

"I was at Groton when they launched the George Washington two years ago. First ballistic missile submarine. Before the ceremony, the Navy gave a special VIP tour of the boat, missiles and all. I was doing a study on strategic preparedness."

"Seems like you're overqualified for what you do. With your background, I'd figure you for a professor or something, teaching international relations. Tenured at Georgetown, even."

Barbara Shirley laughed. "I don't look good in a tweed jacket, thank you. And Georgetown's too stuffy. I get enough male hormones and cigar smoke on Capitol Hill as it is. Tell me something, Lieutenant."

"Sure."

"Your briefing mentioned special operations in support of Task Forces 135 and 136. What special ops exactly were you talking about?"

Cedars smiled. "Miss Shirley, even you know the rules on operational matters. In general, the Marines support Force Recon missions to gather intelligence on the enemy, engage the enemy when authorized, implant sensors and detection devices, capture selected prisoners, conduct terrain reconnaissance, and provide terminal guidance data for fire support. That's all I really can say." Not that you shouldn't know a helluva lot more, Cedars thought. But rules were rules.

Barbara nodded wisely. "Well put. I do have a need to know. The Congressman's sitting in on a Committee meeting next week. Training and preparedness. I'd like to be able to tell him we met all our mission availability and combat readiness objectives during the missile crisis. With some data. Suppose you could help me with that?"

"Probably. I've got more information back at the COC. Sortie rates, equipment MO's and downtime, training curricula for brigade exercises, the works."

"You mentioned training. We both know the Phibriglex was cancelled this year, what with Cuba and all. What effect did that have on your readiness?"

Cedars pondered the question. Barbara Shirley had a hell of lot more brain cells than your average Congressional staffer. And she dug deep too, something Cedars could appreciate. Staff work was like good health, he liked to tell the battalion weenies at the O Club, over beer and peanuts. You never missed it until you didn't have it.

The barest germ of an idea planted itself in the back of his mind.

"Actually, since you asked, we had to do some juggling around that. You probably know we had several full brigades at Viecques Island, ready to storm the beaches when the missile crisis hit. It was a mad scramble for a week or so, getting the units re-organized, kitted out, and re-deployed. Logistics was a bitch too. One minute, we're two miles off the coast of Puerto Rico, up to our ears in training reqs trying to get the right gear to the right outfit. The next minute, Kennedy's on TV and we're pulling out and I get orders to pitch the exercise tables and assemble full combat kits and loadout. I'm telling you, it was hairy."

Barbara had quietly started taking a few notes on a small spiral pad. "The men made that adjustment okay? I mean, training exercise to combat deployment?"

Cedars leveled with her. "We had some rough spots. Normal screwups, wrong ammo here, short on rations there, that sort of thing. Look, if you're interested in knowing, we still got training going on now."

Barbara took off her black frame glasses, chewing one end thoughtfully. "Really? I hadn't heard. I saw nothing on the duty schedules."

Cedars measured his words carefully. "There's an exercise called Sierra. Low profile. Just a few units, forward-deployed. They're using operational deployments to get some training mileage out of the missile crisis."

Barbara Shirley rubbed subconsciously at a light mole on her left cheek. "Which units?"

Cedars smiled. "You know I can't say anything about operations."

"Don't play that game, Lieutenant. You know I can find out. You said forward-deployed. How far forward are they?"

Cedars held up his hand, squeezing his thumb and forefinger. "Kissing cousins, I'd say."

Barbara stared at him in disbelief. "Isn't that a bit dangerous? Sierra...." She tried the word out, eventually shaking her head. "I've never heard of it. Is it a follow-on to Phibriglex?"

Cedars waited a moment, as several bird Colonels passed by, zipping up their green flight suits, heading out to waiting aircraft. "Sort of. I think you and the Congressman ought to conduct a little inquiry. You might just find some interesting facts."

"Such as?"

"The usual things: deployment tables of organization and equipment, authorization, readiness levels, objectives."

It was the way he suggested the inquiry as much as anything, that intrigued Barbara Shirley. She studied the Lieutenant's face, watching his eyes. Something was there, she was sure of it. She was certain Lieutenant Roy Cedars, U.S.M.C, was suggesting far more than he was saying. Maybe even than he could say.

"You trying to tell me something, Lieutenant? Maybe if I knew a little more about the details--"

Cedars figured he had said enough for the moment. "Sorry, Miss Shirley. You know the rules. Operational security. But I think you'll find this exercise quite intriguing."

"You know Congress doesn't turn on investigations like a water faucet. These things take time."

"I understand what you're saying. Your time would be well spent, in this matter."

They resumed their walk along the flight line, following the Congressman and his gathering, heading slowly back to the COC. The base commander, Colonel Raines, was gesturing at a row of parked C-124 Globemasters, explaining and clarifying. Jenkins, holding onto a light gray fedora, bent to listen. Cedars excused himself and plunged into a nearby group of the Congressman's political friends, all Miami-area businessmen, all generous donors to the Party. He continued his part of the briefing with them, leaving Barbara Shirley hanging back, wondering.

She walked after the briefing party, more puzzled than ever. Intrigued, she knew full well that Cedars was trying to tell her something without actually saying it. Operation Sierra. A training exercise, for forward-deployed units. And he'd practically invited her to get a little investigation going, to look into the matter.

Very well, Lieutenant Cedars, I'll just do that, she told herself. She smoothed out her light blue cotton dress and fixed her pillbox hat, hurrying after the Congressman. She resolved to look into this Sierra business when they got back to Washington. And to take the matter up with Stephen Jenkins.

Nothing like a little Congressional inquiry to get to the bottom of a mystery.
CHAPTER 13

11-3-62, Saturday

Roanoke, Virginia

12 noon

Sergeant Earl Mackay had been with the Roanoke Police Department for something like twenty-two years, gaining at least a pound of weight for every one of those years and had never passed up an opportunity to sample the pancakes and biscuits Luana laid out every Saturday morning at the Country Diner. So it was with special irritation that Sergeant Mackay reluctantly got up to answer the telephone Luana handed him, wiping his mouth before answering the call.

"Mackay."

"Sergeant, this is Annie. I thought you might be there. Got a report of a fatality right across the street from you. Two civilians reporting a body found over at the Rent-All."

Shit. "On my way." Mackay scooped up some more pancake ladled with syrup, and dropped a five on the table, wiping his hands on his black uniform. It never failed. He headed out of the Diner in a foul mood, crossing the street, to where a small knot of people had gathered.

The body was that of Lemuel Jones, founder and owner of the Rent-All. Mackay bent to the fallen corpse. He saw right away the angle of Jones' head was all wrong. The poor fellow had a broken neck. Plus his right arm and shoulder seemed out of whack. Severe impact trauma, Mackay told himself. There was blood and bits of hair and skin still stuck to the lamppost. Mackay stood up.

"He dead, you figure?" a man asked.

"Deader than a skunk in a perfume factory. Ya'll step back now, give me some room. I got to secure the area as a crime scene." Mackay went to his car, and radioed in. Ten minutes later, the RPD Crime Scene unit pulled up, a black and white delivery truck. The evidence techs quickly set up yellow crime scene tape and got their cameras and tape measures and plastic bags out. Detective Lieutenant Pete Loudin, Homicide, arrived soon thereafter.

Mackay nodded to the Lieutenant. "You figuring murder, Lieutenant?"

Loudin was young, thin, a line of black moustache the only definition on an otherwise unremarkable face. "We'll see what Roy says." Roy Sanders was the Roanoke County medical examiner. The ME was bent over Jones' corpse, feeling along the neck and clavicle line, testing the fractured bone. At length, he sat back, then stood up, flexing his leg.

"What's the verdict?" Loudin asked.

Roy Sanders scratched his mostly bald head. "I'd say he was struck by a vehicle. All the lacerations are consistent with that. He's got a broke neck, shattered right shoulder. Probably internal damage too. I'll have to do an autopsy on cause of death. But offhand, I'd say intestinal/peritoneal hemorrhaging. You can see the swelling and the discoloration around his chest. Pretty good impact, I'd say."

Mackay handed a set of keys to Loudin. "Probably his delivery truck, Lieutenant. They were on the asphalt, behind that bush. Impact must've knocked 'em out."

Loudin pocketed the keys, then said, "Let's see if we can get into the front office. Where is his truck anyway? Anybody seen it?"

Mackay asked around the crowd without success. "Not a clue," he reported. "Truck might be over at his house."

"Or maybe making a delivery," Loudin suggested. "Didn't he hire a boy recently...Catton, or Cotton or something?"

Mackay phoned a request to check records into Dispatch. While he was on the car radio, Loudin found the store key and went into the Rent-All front office. He and another sergeant scoured the room, examining papers and orders, finding nothing. He came back out.

"We better find that truck," he told Mackay. "There's a couple of garages near here. Plus Andy's Auto Shop over on Juniper. Go see 'em, see if they know anything about Jones' truck. I'm going to make some calls."

"Lieutenant, if I recollect correctly, Rent-All doesn't make deliveries on Saturday. Store's open but you have to come in yourself. The wife and I just bought a sofa last month and we had to borrow my neighbor's pickup because of that."

"Then we may a stolen vehicle on top of a probable homicide. Get going."

Mackay flung a salute at Loudin and headed out. The Lieutenant watched the Medical Examiner's people zip up a body bag around Lemuel's Jones's corpse. Poor sucker, Loudin thought. In his mind's eye, he could almost imagine the crime as it happened: attempted robbery, botched when Jones discovers them, the perps getting angry, running down the Rent-All owner in his own parking lot. Not the first time Roanoke had seen such foolishness.

Loudin went back to his own cruiser and keyed the mike. Annie's scratchy voice came through from Dispatch.

"Annie, this is Loudin. Put me through to the Virginia State Police operator. I need to call in a missing vehicle report." While he waited through assorted chirps and whistles on the radio, Loudin scowled. Someone would have the unenviable task of driving over to Lemuel Jones's home in Hanging Rock and telling his widow that Lem had been run over and killed in a robbery.

Loudin winced at the prospect. He figured he knew who would get that duty.

11-3-62, Saturday

Bejucal, Cuba

12 Noon

General Issa Alexandrovich Pliyev told the driver of the field car to halt. The private braked the GAZ-10 right in front of heap of cement blocks, now surrounded by trucks and cranes. Pliyev got out and watched as the K-12 boosted fission-fusion-fission atomic warhead was laboriously winched up into the back of the truck.

He had come to Bejucal from General Headquarters, an hour's trip over the low misty hills of the Guaniguanico ridge, to see for himself the dismantling and cleanup work underway at the weapons compound. Ten warheads had already been dispatched to the Alexandrovsk, tied up along wharf number 1 at the port of Mariel. There were still five more at Bejucal, and they were to be taken away this morning. Pliyev lit a cigarette and puffed on the papirosi tube as the regimental engineers sweated in the morning humidity, stripped to their waists, wrestling the device into its transporter bed.

A crime, thought Pliyev, a damn crime and a slap in the face as well. The imperialists wouldn't be so fortunate next time. If there was one thing Pliyev would swear on, it was the certainty there would be a next time. Somewhere, maybe Berlin or Laos. Or even the Congo, if the Central Committee would get their heads out of their asses and look around.

Marshal Malinovsky's order to dismantle the missile sites and remove all warheads and launchers had come through, coded in Caspian cipher, on Tuesday. Four days ago. Dankevich swore like the devil and grumbled all day long but you had to expect that from an officer in the rocket army. The Strategic Rocket Forces officer, a real prick in Pliyev's opinion, had come to Cuba first deputy to Pliyev himself. The General Staff, with Marshal Zakharov's own blessing, had ordered it. The trouble was Dankevich thought Anadyr began and ended with missiles. And that, Pliyev thought sourly, would be his undoing someday. It was bad enough that imbecile Khrushchev had stolen money from the other services to build a separate rocket service in the first place. What was worse was having to work with arrogant fools like Dankevich in a major overseas deployment. Pliyev had a cavalryman's outlook and that was the way war had always been. You engaged the enemy at close quarters, destroyed his formations, then withdrew and redeployed to do the same somewhere else.

This business of pressing a few buttons and destroying cities halfway around the world thirty minutes later was a fool's hallucination. The problem was that fools like Dankevich were a rising force in the Red Army.

Pliyev sought out the garrison commander, Colonel Beloborodov. The dumpy Tatar was on the other side of the compound, swearing at a detail of construction troops, while they patched some fencing the Cubans had mowed down.

"Nikolai Vasileyevich, I thought I heard your voice." Pliyev found the colonel a gruff, humorless worker, a man he could trust to speak his mind. "You'll have the perimeter re-built and secured by sundown?"

Beloborodov swore again, this time jerking a shirtless private off the line, and throwing his own weight against a fence post that wouldn't seat properly in the marshy soil. He leaned his shoulder into the post as troops poured and troweled off a cement pad around the base. When it was done, he backed off. His khaki shirt had a wet brown streak across the front.

"I'm sorry, General, the troops are green. Infantrymen don't make good engineers. But it has to be done."

"Indeed," agreed Pliyev. "And quickly. The Marines will be paying us a return visit, I'm sure of it."

"Any intelligence?"

Pliyev said, "I've called a staff meeting at one o'clock. In the barracks wardroom. You have the tactical weapons well protected?"

"Yes, in two bunkers, right in the center, over there." Beloborodov pointed out a pair of adjoining concrete mounds, surrounded by fencing. Three T-55 tanks stood point just outside the bunker fencing, their 100-mm main guns depressed to their stops and trained in. A decent enfilade of rocks and sandbags had been constructed further out, manned by riflemen from the 134th and some of Rukavishnikov's Ninth Directorate Troops from State Security. Pliyev nodded his approval.

"It's a good thing the Lunas don't belong to Dankevich and the rocket army. Moscow would probably order them withdrawn too. You know, Colonel, in a way, the American Marines have done us a favor."

Beloborodov smiled. "Nothing like an armed assault to change the politicians' minds, eh?"

Pliyev had studied every word of Marshal Malinovsky's order for several hours. Only the R-12 and R-14 launchers and warheads were to be removed. The strategic weapons, that's what worried the Americans. Perhaps they didn't even know about the Lunas. In any case, Pliyev had issued the necessary operational orders to all units, effecting the dismantling and removal of all the weapons the Americans regarded as "offensive." No one had said anything about the tactical weapons, normally issued to Motorized Rifle Regiments like the 74th and the 134th. And now, with the failed Marine assault at La Esperanza, Pliyev knew Moscow's thinking was bound to change. The day would come, and soon he calculated, when the General Staff would thank him for being so far-sighted.

Pliyev and Beloborodov strolled the grounds of the compound for half an hour, judging the cleanup work to be proceeding satisfactorily. The damned Cuban bismachi had done a hell of lot of damage, not to mention killing half a dozen of Beloborodov's men. They should be punished but it was out of his hands. The General Staff, and Mikoyan and State Security would do whatever was needed to return the stolen warheads. His job now was to prepare the Group of Forces Cuba for the Americans' next move, a move he expected in less than forty-eight hours, judging from intelligence sources.

Satisfied that the tactical rocket warheads were well guarded and operational, Pliyev returned to his staff car. The Luna devices were small, only a few kilotons, and designed to mate with the FROG launchers, carted around on a ZIL-135 chassis. Nominally, they had a range of 25-30 miles. The Luna was nothing more than a spin-stabilized, unguided artillery rocket, a longer-range version of the Katyusha with a nuclear punch. Unlike the R-12s, Pliyev knew this weapon well; he'd trained motorized rifle divisions in the annual Dnieper exercises several years running, firing conventional rounds for deep interdiction and destruction of the enemy's rear areas. It was a normal, routine battlefield exercise and the Ground Forces were well versed in its peculiarities, how to handle, load and launch the rocket under combat conditions.

The American Marines would find themselves in a real fight if they decided to return to the beaches of Cuba.

Pliyev started the briefing in the barracks mess hall promptly at one o'clock. Assembled around the rough pine table were Beloborodov, the Bejucal commander, and the regimental commanders from the 134th at Artemisa, Colonel Priabin, and the 74th at Managua, Colonel Gorbatko. Lieutenant General Stepan Grechko, deputy commander of Air Defense Troops had just driven all morning from an SA-2 site at Guanajay, in central Cuba. He was sleepy and disheveled from the inspection trip, sipping tea to stay awake, when Pliyev began.

"Comrades, we were lucky yesterday at Esperanza. Frankly, the Cubans surprised me. Somoza's men deployed and contained a company sized assault force of American Marines and destroyed them in less than four hours. Their own casualties were light. And we had command of the air. For some reason I don't understand, the Americans were very late getting air cover over the battlefield. They certainly had sufficient forces offshore to affect the battle. In any case, General Somoza is to be commended. I doubt the Americans will make the same mistakes again."

General Grechko slurped the rest of his tea. "What intelligence do you have on the American forces?"

Pliyev had pinned a map of Cuba and surrounding waters on the wall. He described what was known about the American Navy ships, their task forces, and compliment of Marines and aircraft. Then he added, "I had a brief meeting with Raul and Fidel Castro this morning. The Commandante is feeling very pleased with himself this morning. Twice in less than a year, he's beaten back the Americans and their cronies. I congratulated him and then I told him that overconfidence is the wine of the unprepared warrior. Esperanza is only the first battle."

Beloborodov studied the map with interest. "Does Moscow have any more instructions for us?"

"Only the Marshal's message. We are to continue dismantling and removing the R-12 and R-14 launchers and installations. The warheads are now aboard the Alexandrovsk. She sails tomorrow. I have to tell you the politicians are meeting at the United Nations now. They've worked out an agreement. The Americans are supposed to cease their low-level surveillance today or tomorrow."

"In exchange for what?"

"We are instructed to reveal all our missile cargoes to American surveillance planes in the Atlantic. The Americans will fly low. Our captains are supposed to keep the missiles out in the open, so they can be seen. And counted."

"Bastards," growled Grechko. "Moscow is full of spineless worms--"

"The General should take care in what he says," Pliyev warned. "Our friends are never far away, remember? We don't want to help them out, do we?"

"Comrade General, the Lunas aren't being removed?" asked Colonel Gorbatko. I've received no orders."

"That's correct. Malinovsky said nothing about them. On my own authority, I am issuing a new operation order after this briefing. All forces in Cuba under my command are to increase readiness to Level 1, immediately. Move to planned defense positions and prepare your men and equipment. I'm ordering condition Anadyr One."

Several officers stirred uneasily. Grechko spoke up. "You've informed Moscow, I assume?"

"An hour ago, through the Embassy telex in Havana. The General Staff will have the coded message by now. Give them a few hours to decipher. Comrades, we can't wait for events to happen. The Americans will be back. It's my responsibility to see that our forces and our position in Cuba are defended properly."

By unseen consent, the briefing evolved into a gathering around the map. Pliyev rapped on the southeastern United States with his finger.

"They've got several hundred thousand men here. Infantry, artillery, armor, all ready for transport. Their airborne forces can be over Cuba in two hours. And look at Guantanamo, comrades, a full brigade of Marines. Nearly five thousand. We have to have proper radar coverage at all times. One unit goes down and the Americans are rolling up the Central Highway and into Holguin in half a day. There goes your 106th Missile Regiment, just like that."

Grechko darkened. "The 106th won't roll over and play dead, Issa Alexandrovich, you know that. We've got full SA-2 coverage of every likely air approach to the sector command post. Full reloads too. My men are itching to fight. They got blood last Saturday with that U-2 pilot. They want more."

"Very well, General, but I'm taking no chances. The Americans will be back, you can count on it. In two days or less. Anadyr One is the correct level of readiness, Moscow or not. I've already drawn up the order--" Pliyev extracted a paper from his shirt pocket and waved it in Grechko's face--"and all regiments will be authorized to draw full armament and stocks, all tactical equipment. That means mortars, artillery, tanks, mines, everything. I'm not counting on the Cubantsy to be so lucky again."

"And the Lunas?"

"Released to the regiments. With their full armament."

"Atomic charges too."

"Of course, Stepan Naumovich, that's normal combat doctrine for these regiments. They train that way. Just to be sure, let's go over the rules of engagement outlined in Anadyr One."

The men seated themselves again. Pliyev found the doctrine manual in his briefcase and read the relevant passages out loud.

"Anadyr One is the highest level of combat readiness. Forces attached to the Group of Forces Cuba are required to post full guard and reconnaissance elements forward. You are required to verify fire lanes and fire support, to register all mortars and tube artillery on planned targets and objectives. You are required to deploy armored forces in combat formation at final jumping-off points, set in the plan. Rifle battalions will be deployed to attack points, and civilian traffic diverted around the maneuver areas." Pliyev scanned on down the page.

"Here it is, comrades. 'The First Stage of Combat'...'You will engage concentrations of enemy armor and artillery in the rear areas with Luna rockets when the tactical situation warrants this move. Such engagement will follow the principle of fire and maneuver, such that assaulting formations will wait four hours for radioactive fallout to clear the area. Initial probing assaults will be made with armored units equipped with special atomic fallout air filters and scrubbers. One will be assigned to each tank platoon."

Pliyev snapped the manual shut. "No further authorization is needed from Moscow or from me, for that matter. The regiments will draw their ammunition and supplies immediately. You are authorized to arm and use all weapons as military circumstances dictate. From this point on, Moscow has to leave the fighting to us. Normal combat doctrine applies." Pliyev signed two copies of the operation order. One he handed to his adjutant, Major Loginov, for dispersal to all forces once they returned to General Headquarters. The second copy was pinned to the wall beside the map. "Colonel Beloborodov?"

"Yes, Comrade General?"

"You will order the garrison to begin issuing Luna warheads per Anadyr One. Get your transports fueled and ready to move out at once."

Beloborodov saluted and left the mess room. Pliyev leaned forward, on his hands, over the table. He met every officer's eyes.

"We don't have much time to waste, comrades. I expect enemy action in forty-eight hours, despite any agreements, The missile issue is merely a smokescreen for offensive action against Cuba." Pliyev rapped the map with his finger again.

"The Americans may come with an entire army if they like. But they'll soon find themselves stepping into a hornet's nest."

11-3-62, Saturday

Miami, Florida

2:30 pm

Mike French first saw daylight when a distant voice seeped down through the debris and someone grunted, pulling hard on a beam that had once been part of the roof. Shingle and wall fragments tumbled off the FBI agent as he felt fresh air wash over him. He coughed up dust, and struggled to his feet, helped by unseen hands.

His eyes focused on the wreckage. The warehouse roof had collapsed, blown up and outward by the force of the blast. Reinforced concrete beams and joists supporting the structure lay scattered among the debris like tree branches. A pall of dust and smoke hung heavily in the air and coughing shattered the quiet, as men gathered themselves together. Shreds of paper and wallboard chips floated lazily on drafts circulating overhead, a sleet of vaporized matter orbiting the pile of rubble that had once been Mosley Transfer and Storage.

French brushed himself off. He had suffered minor bruises and facial cuts, and a firefighter dabbed at a fresh wound over his eyes.

"Hold that tight," the firefighter ordered, turning the bandage over to French. His name tag said Burton. "Let me tend to the others."

French wandered around the rubble for a few minutes, still somewhat dazed, a faint tinny ringing in his ears. He ran into one of the Russians. It was Maximov, sporting a hastily bandaged head wound and deep claw-like lacerations on one forearm. He smiled a crooked smile at the sight of the FBI agent.

"Fortune protected you, my comrade. I'm glad you're okay."

French slowly reconstructed the last moments before the blast. "What about Capers? And Neese?"

Maximov's face hardened. "Dead. Your emergency people just removed their bodies. What was left of them. They died as heroes."

French spied Jeff Torburg picking his way through the debris, near a still-standing steel door frame. He went over.

Torburg was bandaged too, though he'd suffered only minor cuts from flying glass and brick pieces. He had been outside the main warehouse, shielded by a masonry wall when the bomb went off. He waved the neutron detector at French.

"Good news, Mike. Or maybe bad, depending on how you look at it. I'm getting no spikes at all. Only background and residuals. This sucker was no nuke. Just your average, everyday TNT charge, looks like."

"Great," French muttered. He let go of the bandage, experimentally touched the stinging wound over his eyes and found fresh blood. Probably needs stitches, he thought. "I'm still not sure what happened."

"Neither am I," growled another voice behind them. French turned. It was Chief Parkes, zipped up in armor, gingerly crunching his way across a field of broken glass. He removed some protective eyegear, and wiped dirty sweat from his face. "South Division Bomb Squad's here now. Chief Wesley's got two guys, going over stuff. From what they said a few minutes ago, this was a TNT explosive device, rigged up with some kind of trip wire, set to blow on approach. One of 'em just found pieces of an oscillator crystal. Some kind of transmitter, rigged into the detonation circuit."

Mike French remembered his own bombing investigations in south Florida two years ago. "Chief, remember the Marti bombings we worked together back in '60 and '61?"

"Gutierrez Grocery...Jesus, how could I forget? You Bureau guys did a good job, backchecking those refugee interviews with INS. We'd still be looking if it weren't for that. What about it?"

"Marti's Cuban. I was trying to recall some of the technical details of the bombs. Seems like they were pretty simple devices, really. Crude pipe bombs: radio battery, some screws and springs, multistrand wire for a loop switch."

"That's right. I do remember, from the trial. Damn things were put together in a basement, weren't they? Just soldered connections, copper wire, stuck in a lead pipe. What's your point? You thinking Marti here?"

French shook his head. "Possibly, but I don't think so. Jeff, your opinion of the bombmaker: professional or dedicated amateur?"

Torburg was quick to answer. "Professional, no doubt about it. First, real TNT isn't easy to get. There's forms and licenses and so forth. From what the Bomb Squad guy just told me, we got definite TNT residue on some of the debris here. Second, the detonator design. Wired into some kind of transmitter, like a detector. If I didn't know better, I'd say they rigged up some kind of radar or something. Oscillator crystal, pieces of waveguide, that ain't your normal Saturday-afternoon bombmaker at work. Third, look at your bomb casing, or rather the pieces. MPSD just retrieved a chunk a few minutes ago. It's rounded, made of sheet steel alloy, like it was machined. And it isn't so much the material as the actual design. Remember what Capers was saying: it looked like a bomb, like a military bomb, down to the ovoid shape, the stabilizing fins. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make this thing and wire it up."

"Someone wanted us to spend time investigating the bomb," French added. "You said before the basic dimensions weren't out of line for an atomic bomb. Coincidence?"

Torburg shrugged. "Hard to say, Mike. It could be a coincidence. But the dimensions and the external shape and the precision machining and the wiring and the TNT all point to some kind of plan."

"And a nasty sense of humor," French said. "Chief, I hate to say it but I think we've been decoyed. This whole thing looks like an elaborate, well-thought-out effort to send us scurrying down the wrong path. And it looks like we did."

Chief Parkes was rubbing his chin. "Mr. Torburg, you or the Bomb guys get a make on the origin of any of your evidence yet? Like where it came from?"

Torburg secured his detector and powered it down, clutching it under his arm like a briefcase. "Not yet, Chief. We need a lot of lab work to determine that. Alloying will sometimes point to a source. Why?"

Chief Parkes looked around, spying Maximov and Kudinov a few dozen yards away, picking through the debris, examining pieces. "Your Russian buddies don't seem to have a whole lot of respect for crime scene discipline. I shooed them away from things twice already."

"They're on the case, Chief," French reminded him. "Detailed to the Bureau by their country."

"I know that, Mike. I'm just wondering if they don't know a bit more than they're letting on. Who the hell knows: maybe they made the bomb, maybe they made up this decoy operation you mentioned."

French conceded the point, watching Maximov turning over a fragment in his hands, holding it up to the sunlight. "The thought had occurred to me, but there's no evidence. I've got my suspicions, hell, we all do. Just between you and me, Hostetler--the Bureau's AD--told me to assign someone from the Field Office to keep an eye on them. Poor man's counterintelligence. I haven't done it yet. I guess I haven't seen the need. All we have are suspicions. Given the times, that's pretty normal."

"It ain't normal conducting national security investigations with Communists looking over your shoulder," Parkes said sourly. "I don't like it at all."

"What now?" Torburg asked.

French surveyed the destruction. "It'll take weeks for anything useful to come out of this investigation. If this is a decoy, then where are the Cubans? Is Miami still a target? If not, where?"

A new team of evidence techs arrived, with cases of equipment, ready to expand the perimeter of the crime scene area. The detail leader scowled at Parkes, hands on his hips. Parkes smiled back.

"Prick from South Division," the Chief explained. "One of Wesley's whiz kids. He wants us out of the area."

"Why don't we collect our Red comrades and go back to the command post? I could use some fresh air."

French grabbed Maximov and Kudinov and the group walked several blocks east along Valencia, negotiating fire trucks, police vans and clots of media reporters and cameraman. Back at the makeshift CP, in the corner laundry at Segovia, they found Winslow Kelly poring over hastily rigged maps of the Coral Gables area, pinpointing known fallout shelters. The Civil Defense director dropped his box of push pins when he saw Mike French.

"I heard the blast," Kelly admitted. "The police wouldn't let us any closer than three blocks. You okay?"

"I'll live," French said. He located the coffee pot by smell, and poured himself a cup, black and fresh. The liquid burned but tasted good. "You heard about Neese and Capers?"

Kelly nodded. "Damn shame. I worked with Sergeant Neese just last year. He sat on our coordinating board. Good man for relating bomb effects to shelters."

Alexei Maximov stood before the map of Greater Miami on the opposite wall. "Michael, if this was a decoy, as you suggest, then Castro must not be targeting Miami. The purpose of maskirovka is to conceal purpose or draw your attention away."

"The question is away from what, Alexei? We got no real evidence pointing anywhere but here. We had the money order signed over to Mr. Lynch in Mobile, drawn on a Miami bank. That was hard evidence."

Maximov helped himself to some of the coffee as well. He sipped, made a face. "Weak. I must get you some Russian coffee. You know, Michael, sometimes you have evidence and sometimes you don't. It's amusing, really, how much faith American police put in their evidence. In my country, we're not so limited. Criminals and agitators don't always leave evidence. You have to be creative."

"And maybe a little devious, too, eh?" Chief Parkes muttered. "You slipped a few missiles into Cuba right under our noses. Maybe the same thing's going on here...a little maskirovka, like you said. How do I know you guys didn't make that bomb and have it planted?"

Maximov set the coffee down and leveled an even gaze at the Chief. "Mr. Parkes, that's the kind of propaganda we expect from capitalist lackeys. Believe me, if Russians had made and planted that bomb, you wouldn't be here now to complain about it." He turned to French. "In the Soviet Union, a provincial cop like this wouldn't even be part of the investigation. All cases are national."

"I'm afraid we have to work with the Chief," French told him. "It's his territory."

Kudinov was indignant. "Bomb is Cuban," he said. "You have no right to accuse. You mentioned evidence...what evidence do you have? Russians have no need to bomb Miami."

"Unless you're in cahoots with the Cubans," said Parkes.

"Remember, it was Cuba who stole our Soviet property," Maximov added. "We have as much interest as you in recovering atomic bombs. Do you think we're mad? No Russian would risk having one of our bombs fall into American hands. You could study our designs and take countermeasures. The punishment is for such a crime is death. We Russians have even more need than you to get our property back. You understand this?"

"I understand that we're back to square one," French said. "Right back to Mobile. That's where we went wrong." He went to the map, stood next to Maximov, who was still angry, his face flushed red. "What've we got? A dead man in a warehouse. Radiation traces there. We know the atomic bombs were there." He patted Maximov on the shoulder. "I'm sorry, Alexei, but that's evidence. We got a link to Miami, the signed money order. We find the Lynch truck here. And a nasty bomb setup, to lure us in and kill some investigators."

"Don't forget the neutron readings I got at the warehouse in Mobile," Torburg reminded him. "At least one of the bombs is a leaker."

"Chief, anything on the boards for stolen vehicles? Anything out of the ordinary? Somewhere after Mobile, the Cubans ditched Lynch's truck. Somebody drove it down here, set up this bomb and scrammed. But they still have the atomic bombs. And the bombs are big, so says Jeff here. Alexei too. And heavy. They'd need another truck."

"We should be checking the rental agencies right now," Parkes said. "I'll have Investigations go over recent vehicle theft records from around the Southeast. Your guys at the Bureau could help too."

Parkes phoned his orders to the Public Safety Building third-floor command post, telling a detective named Linwood to look for trucks similar in size and make to Lynch's Ford. "Start with last Monday, the twenty-ninth," he suggested. "Just the southeastern states for now. And make it quick. I'm coming in. I want a report in an hour." He hung up.

Maximov was tracing his fingers along prospective highways out of Mobile. "We have to put ourselves in Castro's mind. He is a political animal. He wants to make a political statement."

French traced a circle around the eastern half of the United States with his own finger. "The Cubans could be anywhere. By now, they've had time to travel several thousand miles. How do you narrow it down, based on the evidence?"

Maximov tapped his own head with a forefinger. "I don't need evidence. A wolf tracks an elk. He has the scent, the track, the droppings. That is evidence. But he also knows his prey. He anticipates." Maximov stared at the map for a minute, hardly moving, barely breathing. "The Cubans have two atomic bombs. It's not likely that two such bombs could do much to damage America. A K-12 device and a K-5 could kill millions, it's true. But America would survive."

"Are you suggesting we call Castro's bluff?"

"Not at all. Castro would want to make the maximum symbolic impact on America with his bombs. Our bombs, I should say. He wants to destroy the most direct threat to his existence. To make America pause and leave Cuba alone."

"I'd say Castro's not alone in that. You Russians must be reading from the same book, putting missiles in right under our noses. No way we're going to live with that kind of threat."

"Michael, it is a matter of perception. We Soviets have lived in the bullseye of your nuclear missiles for years. Now you know what it feels like. If Castro achieves even that small gain, it's worth it."

French could see the conversation was heading nowhere. "Forget it. You were inside Castro's mind. What would he target with the bombs? Maximum impact--the greatest threat--"

Maximov and French exchanged an uneasy look, coming to the same conclusion at the same time.

"Kennedy. And Washington, D.C."

Maximov put his finger on the Nation's Capital. "Exactly. Retaliation for the Bay of Pigs."

11-3-62, Saturday

Washington, D.C.

3:00 p.m.

John F. Kennedy sat back in the swivel chair of the President's main cabin office and studied the itinerary for his twice-aborted campaign trip to Chicago. He'd cut the trip short the last time just two weeks ago, citing a "cold" and returning to Washington, ready to face the U-2 photos the intelligence guys had developed, photos with unmistakable evidence of offensive missiles in Cuba.

The President had boarded Air Force One ten minutes ago, and after chatting briefly with Ted Sorenson and an Air Force sergeant at the door, made his way forward through the 707's labyrinthine cubbyholes to his quarters, situating himself before the trio of beige telephones on the kidney-shaped desk that dominated the compartment. The high-backed chair had its accustomed yellow cushion embroidered with PT-109 emblems to ease the pain of a persistent low back problem. Kennedy extracted some papers from a folder to go over his speech at the Hilton and to study the schedule for this hurried swing through the Midwest.

The President's Quarters aboard Air Force One were secured fore and aft by two-man Secret Service watches, posted in the cramped halls beside paneled doors reinforced with thin, bullet-absorbing laminate armor not greatly different from plating on an Army tank. Inside the office, the walnut desk and swivel chair upholstered in soothing aquamarine were accompanied by a sofa lounge and several more swiveling chairs in matching colors. The desk rested flush against cream-colored cabin walls, a huge blue Presidential seal adjacent to more phones, mounted against the bulkhead, for the use of staffers needing quick and secure access to their White House offices. The entire compartment was carpeted in plush blue pile, gold embroidery outlining patterns every few feet.

Kennedy has just started marking up his speech for the third time when Ted Sorenson popped his head into the compartment.

"Sorry, Mr. President, we just got an urgent message on the G1 line back in Staff. It's Hoover. He wants to come by for a quick visit, before you take off."

Kennedy sat back in the seat, steepling his fingers. "What does the Director want this time? More money in the budget?"

"He didn't say precisely, Mr. President. But he said it was urgent and for your eyes only."

Kennedy frowned. "If I keep standing Chicago up, they'll go Republican out of spite. Hoover on his way?"

"Yes, sir, he was leaving the Bureau as we spoke. Said he would be here in about half an hour."

Kennedy grunted, returning to his speech. "I'll call Colonel Fitzpatrick, tell him to hold the plane for half an hour. This better be important."

Hoover beat his estimate by five minutes. His face was flushed red with sweat as Sorenson ushered the Director into the President's Quarters, shutting the door on the way out.

Kennedy stood up to flex his back, wincing with the pain. Damn, he'd have get Dr. Travell out here too. If this back gets any worse, I'll never make it to Chicago. The President shook hands.

"The Air Force isn't too happy with you, Mr. Hoover. They don't like to hold this plane for anything. And my admirers in Chicago will be most unhappy if I'm late. Have a seat."

"Sorry, Mr. President, but this couldn't wait. I've been on the phone with the Miami Field Office. The leads they were running down on the Cuban commandos didn't work out." Hoover spent the next ten minutes relating the events of the morning in Coral Gables: the truck that was found, the warehouse, the bomb, and the aftermath. When he was done, Kennedy had broken a pencil and crumpled several sheets of his speech in anger.

"No nuclear bombs were found, you're sure of that?"

Hoover's craggy jaws flapped like a bulldog's. "So far as the agents have determined. No trace of residual radiations, like Mobile. The Special Agent in Charge is a man named Mike French. He thinks the evidence was planted, that Miami was a planned decoy operation. Diverting us from looking elsewhere."

"But where?" Kennedy asked. "What's Castro trying to prove?" The President drummed a pencil on the desk. "We should have taken him out last year. Bobby was right. I should have let Mongoose go forward. Maybe we'd have one less dictator to deal with now." Kennedy reached for a phone, and punched a few buttons on the keypad. "I'm getting Mac on the line. Maybe Rusk and MacNamara too." The National Security Advisor was in his West Wing office. Kennedy was grim. "Mac, I'm here on Air Force One. What? No, still at Andrews. Look, Hoover's just come by, right from the Bureau. Yeah, and he's got bad news from Miami. No dice. The evidence didn't work out."

After talking with McGeorge Bundy for a few minutes, the President made connections to State and the Pentagon, then put the three of them on speakerphone.

McNamara's voice was scratchy in the speakerphone but plainly worried. "Mr. President, we're staring a mass panic situation right in the face, if this gets out. How long can we keep this under wraps?"

"As long as we have to," Kennedy said. "I'm not ready to go public with this. We may still be able to grab these guys before it's too late."

Rusk's voice was sober, a little edgy. "We're running out of ideas, Mr. President. We're having a hell of a time with the Russians at the UN. Kuznetsov's a bitch of a negotiator. Good thing we sent McCloy up there. The Russians would eat Adlai alive over the missiles and the Il-28 issue. Does the Director have any take on where the investigation should go?"

Hoover cleared his throat, assembled a few notes. He lowered his voice to a grave whisper. "It's my opinion, gentlemen, that the Russians are working both sides of this matter. I don't think the Russians are cooperating fully in the investigation."

Kennedy watched Hoover. He had to admit the Director was in his element. He was a predator when it came to chasing Communists. He loved giving the Reds hell. "This decoy operation was thoroughly and professionally planned. It's our view the Russians either did it or assisted in it."

The President wasn't totally convinced. "I don't think we ought to sell the Cubans short, Mr. Hoover."

"No, sir, I'm not doing that. But the only organization with the skills and the resources to pull such an elaborate hoax off is the DGI, the Cuban secret service. And the truth is, they're tight with the KGB anyway. No sir," Hoover was firm, "the Soviets are the mastermind here."

Kennedy pondered the implications of Hoover's thinking. "And we've got two of them right in the middle of our investigation. Is this some kind of deliberate disinformation campaign here?"

"Mr. President," said McNamara, "we have to entertain the possibility. Do we have any hard evidence? Or just suspicions? We have to be rational about this."

Hoover was about to list evidence, but the President cut him off. "Let's deal with options, for now. What choices do I have?"

McNamara could be heard scratching something down on paper. He'll be taking notes at his own funeral, Kennedy thought. But the man liked to analyze. "Several choices, as I see it, Mr. President. I was just scribbling my thoughts. First: kick the Russians off the case. I know you worked it out with Khrushchev but things have changed. If he asks, tell the Chairman you're bringing vital national assets into the case, things we need to keep to ourselves.

"Second: keep the Russians compartmentalized, like we do with our classification systems. Limit what they have access to. Hell, keep them here in Washington, like they originally wanted. That was a bunch of horse droppings, wasn't it?

"Third: come clean with them and ask if they're working with the Cubans, helping them along. Personally, I don't think that's a good choice, but it's there."

"Not the most palatable list of choices, Bob," the President observed. "Is anyone assigned to the case with responsibility to keep an eye on the Russians?"

Hoover replied, "Mike French is assigned as Agent in Charge, with the Washington Field Office as OO. Office of origin. Handling the Russians is one of his duties but the investigation's overwhelming him. I've already talked with the AD. Hostetler's rounding up more bodies to put on the case now. I told him I want no less than four agents assigned full time to watch our friends very closely. Twenty-four hour surveillance and we already have court approval for extended wiretap. Plus the NSA's working on Embassy signal intercepts here in Washington, and at their Long Island compound. They won't be able to fart without us knowing it."

Kennedy grimaced, checking his watch. "There's absolutely no reason to trust these guys. But my reports from Lisbon say the Russians are just as concerned as we are about these missing bombs. They know the Cubans could just as easily use the devices against them as against us." He shook his head slowly, a painful decision. "My judgment is to let the Soviets stay on as part of the investigation. But watch them every minute. I'm still not sure Khrushchev's in full control or knows everything that going on from his end."

Rusk, Bundy and McNamara agreed with the assessment. The conversation was ended with the President's reminder about the campaign trip. "I'll be on the road for a few days, gentlemen. Politics waits for no man, not even a madman. But I want to be kept informed."

Hoover left Air Force One a few minutes later, after going over the names and the backgrounds of the FBI's investigating team, assuring the President that the Bureau had its ablest and most experienced people on the case. When he had gone, Kennedy went aft to the Presidential berth and poked into a cabinet under the lavatory sink. He withdrew a small bottle of Irish Whiskey and uncorked it, pouring a few fingers in a small glass. The amber liquid was warm and comforting, spreading feeling back in his back and stomach. He poured some more.

Half an hour later, Air Force One thundered down Runway 18 South into a clear, crisp autumn sky, turning right and climbing quickly through two thousand feet, as the Boeing 707 was rapidly vectored through Washington's complex airways. In the cockpit, the pilot, U.S. Air Force Colonel Richard Fitzpatrick, checked his Jeppesen Standard Instrument Departure chart for the Andrews area. The first waypoint for the flight was Dahlgren Three and he ran over the sequence in his mind, all the while scanning the instrument panel for any anomalies during the climbout.

Via Andrews 187-degree radial to Dahlgren intersection...cross Brooke Vortac 071 degrees at or below four thousand...cross Dahlgren intersection at or above nine thousand...then via Herndon direct to Brooke Vortac...turning onto jetway J8 to Louisville...right turn to jetway....

As Colonel Fitzpatrick studied his charts, steering the aircraft through a series of climbing turns out of the Nation's Capital, the President studied his own face in the lavatory sink, a hundred and twenty feet aft. The stress of the last few months had not been kind to his eyes, he noticed. Stress and this damn back ache. He was tired all the time. He decided he'd call Dr. Travell and beg for some more cortisone when they got to O'Hare.

John Kennedy wondered just how much longer he could keep up the charade of "normalcy", if the last few weeks could be described as anything normal. It was especially hard considering a renegade bunch of Cubans were wandering around the United States with two stolen Soviet atomic bombs.

Yet he knew with a certainty beyond explaining that he couldn't very well go on television again, and tell the American people. In the current climate, he might as well light off a match inside a gas tank. Mass panic wouldn't begin to describe the chaos that would follow.

Worse, unlike two weeks ago, Kennedy knew there was no consensus in the government, in the ExComm, even in his own mind, on what the best course of action was. There was nothing to announce to the people. That was the problem. They were reacting and Fidel Castro was pulling the strings.

He put on a grave face for the mirror, trying out different expressions for an imaginary TV address to the nation. The effort collapsed a minute later.

He knew perfectly well that if he were to announce in prime time that a rogue gang of Cuban commandos was carrying two stolen Soviet nuclear warheads around the United States, the animals in Congress would have his impeached head on a platter faster than he could blink.

Atomic bombs or not, he knew he would never allow that to happen.

11-3-62, Saturday

Washington, D.C.

7:45 p.m.

Barbara Shirley was puzzled. She stubbed out her cigarette and finished off the Scotch she had liberated from the Congressman's credenza. It was mid-Saturday evening and she knew she ought to be tired, at home in her east Capitol Hill walkup, watching TV or reading a book. Maybe even snuggled up next to Mark Preston in his Alexandria apartment, Budweiser and peanuts on the coffee table, watching airliners take off from National Airport.

But she wasn't tired. And Mark was off at the Litton shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on a project. She'd finished her last novel several weeks ago. And Saturday night TV was a joke.

So she found herself alone on the eighth floor of the Longworth House Office Building, on south Capitol Avenue, a stone's throw from the House chambers, alone in Suite 8552, the suite of Representative Stephen Jenkins (D-Florida), wondering. She had taken a taxi from National only two hours before, the flight up from Miami having been uneventful, and decided to stop by the office. She could walk the four blocks to her townhouse at 414 Seward Square when she was done, though late at night, the streets and alleys around Capitol Hill weren't the friendliest places to be. Still, she had done it many times and the autumn air was cool and crisp. She figured the walk would do her good.

She had just come from the dog and pony show the military had arranged for the Congressman and his staff at Homestead Air Force Base. Ever since the Eastern airliner had gone wheels up out of Miami, Barbara had been thinking about Marine Lieutenant Roy Cedars. Cedars had been telling her something. Hell, he had practically screamed it at her. Operation Sierra, OpPlan 322. A little tactical training exercise, Marines and Navy, a daughter to the annual Phibriglex games the services like to stage every fall. All seemingly legit but Cedars was mightily disturbed. Though not in so many words, the Lieutenant had practically begged her to get the Congressman interested.

I think you'll find this exercise quite intriguing.

Indeed. Barbara Shirley finished off her Scotch and replaced the decanter in the cabinet. She wondered if it was Roy Cedars himself she had really found intriguing.

She had gotten to the Congressman's suite about 6:30 pm, dropping her bags beside the desk she occupied in what once had been a coat closet. She rummaged through the Rolodex, looking for numbers, contacts at the Pentagon, friendly and knowledgeable voices that might be able to shed some light on this obsession of Roy Cedars. She found several, duty officers mostly, in the Department of the Navy. Deciphering her own scribbling, she realized one of them, a Commander Lawton Skiles, would probably still be at the situation desk in the Joint Staff Office, E-Ring, Second Floor. She had dialed the Commander through on an outside line, and identified herself.

For the next hour, Barbara had wound her way through the Pentagon bureaucracy. She had a simple question: "Have you got anything for the Congressman on Operation Sierra?" But the answers had ranged from brusque to Byzantine. The trail had led her from Commander Skiles, to the office of a Deputy Chief in the Navy's Plans, Policies and Operations office. There, she had talked briefly with a Captain Willard, just turning out the lights for the evening. Willard hadn't ever heard of Sierra, but he had pointed her to Atlantic Command down in Norfolk, indicating Admiral Corky Ward's S-3 might be of some assistance. He gave her a telephone number to try and she had dialed it a minute later. The chief who had answered politely reminded her that operational matters in the Command's area of responsibility were definitely not a matter for discussion on a non-secure public telephone. She would have to come to Norfolk and see Ward's S-3. The chief had rather abruptly directed her back to Washington, this time to the Joint Staff itself, the J-3 Operations Directorate.

And so it had gone for an hour and a half.

Bit by bit, she had pieced together some initial pieces of the puzzle. And what she had learned so far was beginning to disturb her.

By her own count, she logged twelve separate calls, twelve probes into the beast that was the Pentagon bureaucracy, each one by itself relatively uninformative, but taken in total, more enlightening than she had first imagined they would be. She had learned, over the years as Jenkins's defense and intelligence specialist, that when you dealt with the National Security complex, meanings and intentions were more often than not embedded in what was not said, rather than in what was spoken. She had become quite adept in the nuanced innuendo and the many shades of categorical denials. She sometimes imagined herself as a newspaper reporter for the Washington Post, delving into matters of global conspiracy, a female muckraker version of Scotty Reston or Joe Alsop. It was a thought and she squirreled it away in some distant compartment of her mind for later consideration, when she had grown tired of the ribald old men's club that was the U.S. Congress.

Twelve calls and she had covered several pages of yellow legal pad with scratches, notes, doodles and hasty scribblings. Flushed and perspiring with the spreading warmth of the Scotch, she tried to make sense of what she had learned.

The gist of it was this: Operation Sierra was a paper exercise, a wargame scenario, nothing more. Twice the name of General Olin Haley, U.S. 2nd Marines, came up. Barbara knew Haley was Cedars' boss. Another piece of the puzzle. One staffer she talked with, a Lieutenant Morton in the office of the Marine Corps Deputy Chief of Plans, Policies and Ops, had described Hellacious Haley has a "feverish old bastard," smitten with fantasies and delusions of evil spirits in every corner. Off the record, of course.

It was Morton who knew a little about Sierra, though only scuttlebutt. He emphasized several times he had never seen any workups or planning documents on the wargame. But around the Marines' S-3 office, Sierra had gained a bit of a reputation, as one of the odder and more lurid of Haley's fantasies. Morton chatted with Barbara for ten minutes, making it quite clear from the outset he "wasn't in the loop on this one, and what I'm telling you is what I've heard." Barbara had to assure him she was compiling a duly requested report for the Congressman--she had every intention of doing just that, though Jenkins had no knowledge whatsoever of her probing--and couldn't he give her a little background on the phone before she came by next week for the details? On that basis, Morton's lips loosened and Barbara's hand cramped from writing so fast.

Sierra was, in Morton's firm conviction, an exercise devoid of tactical merit. It called for surgical strikes against the Cuban leadership, and the island's political and military infrastructure. It was designed to evolve, somewhat like a tropical storm grows to hurricane strength, from a publicly avowed training exercise, such as the Phibriglex games, into an actual military operation. Only a small part of the wargamed forces would be involved, Morton had told her. Rumor had it that units of the 2nd Marines and even the Army's 101st Air Assault out of Fort Campbell would be involved, with suitable air cover by elements of Marine and Navy aviation.

Did the Joint Chiefs know about this? Barbara wanted to know. Were there any detailed plans or logistical orders or deployment schedules he could point her to, just for the Congressman's report. Morton demurred, saying he didn't know of any but again, "I'm not in the loop on these matters." And there the conversation had ended, Morton begging off to attend to other staff duties. Barbara thanked him and hung up.

All in all, it seemed to her, this thing called Sierra was nothing more than a fairly broad-brush scenario description, apparently a synopsis of something Olin Haley devoutly desired but without foundation or detailed planning. Yet, Lieutenant Cedars had implied the opposite, that Sierra was not only a real exercise, but that it was already underway, that forces were deployed and tasked. And, Barbara recalled, adding a few more notes, the Lieutenant had strongly implied there was even more than he could say. "Can't discuss operational matters," he kept repeating. Yet Sierra was supposed to be a paper exercise.

Was that it? Was Sierra more than some general's feverish delusion. Was it in fact a real operation? If she was reading Cedars correctly, then why was it no one knew very much about the exercise? A key purpose of wargames and exercises was public display of your capabilities. Hadn't the Navy used Phibriglex-62, before it been cancelled, to show Castro and the Cubans what would happen to mischief-makers in the Caribbean? Then why run another exercise in the dark. Unless....

Barbara Shirley knew she had nearly exhausted all her contacts in the Joint Staff and the Navy Department tonight. She had gone about as far as she could go with her current level of clearances. She'd never be admitted to the operational side of things. But Congressman Jenkins could. The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee could go just about anywhere he wanted to.

Barbara dialed up the Jenkins' home in Virginia.

After exchanging a few pleasantries with Mrs. Jenkins, a rather stale and frumpy hausfrau, Barbara thought, Jenkins came on the line. His voice was a little thick and slurred. Another bridge game with the boys, she told herself.

"Barbara," Jenkins was saying, "you still at the office? A girl like you ought to be home in bed, somewhere."

"Thanks, Congressman, my bed can wait a while. I've been checking into some things here. That Lieutenant Cedars at Homestead, the Marine, told me some things that I thought I should look into. Do a quick report on." How could she say this? "I've found some things you should know about"

"And what are they?"

"Well, sir, actually, I think it would be better if we could meet."

"Barbara, you have a helluva sense of timing. Margie and I are entertaining tonight. My state chairman is coming over and he's bringing three big donors from West Palm. Can't this wait? And what report are you talking about, anyway?"

But Barbara knew the Congressman. She persisted and told him she was working on a report on new deployments in the Caribbean, a revised strategy to deal with Castro. "It'll look good Tuesday, sir. If we issue a statement Monday, think of the conservative vote. Might be worth a couple of points in south Florida, especially with the Cuban immigrants." It was a lie, she realized, but she figured it was worth a try.

"Barbara, Barbara," Jenkins clucked. She could well imagine his face, that screwy grin cocked to one side, probably dribbling half his whiskey on his unbuttoned tie, "how can I say no? You're my favorite staffer, you know that? What's bugging you, girl? Your date stand you up?"

"No, sir, well, actually, if you must know--"

"Say no more," Jenkins was Big Daddy now, "I understand completely. Tell you what: get a cab and come on over. I'll pay the fare. Have a few drinks. I'll get the grill going and we'll do burgers. How about that? Margie just loves your sense of fashion and style. Says you must have a direct line to Jackie herself. No, don't complain, I know how it is for a single girl in this town. You get yourself a taxi and get your pretty ass right over here this minute."

The Congressman hung up and Barbara replaced the phone gingerly, like it was contaminated. She shuddered, thinking of what she was getting into. Stephen Jenkins with a cupboard of whiskey and bourbon...now there was a girl's evening from hell. She took a deep breath, stuffed the pages of notes in her clutch and dialed up the Checkered Cab Company. Maybe I should take that black cashmere sweater, she wondered. Better armor against prying hands. She'd have to make a quick stop at Seward Square. But as long as the Congressman was paying....

It was going to be a long and uncomfortable evening.

Stephen Jenkins lived in a two-story colonial in west Alexandria. As the cab pulled up, Barbara saw the white columns and portico out front brilliantly spotlit and several late-model cars in the curving pea-gravel driveway. She got out, and went up the door, ringing the bell. Moments later, Margie Jenkins appeared, a broad smile erupting on her heavily rouged face.

"Barbara, dear, Stephen told me you were coming over. Do come in, come right in here." They embraced lightly. Mrs. Jenkins held her at arm's length, critically appraising her new hair style and outfit. She shook her head ruefully. "You should be in Look magazine, honey. You know that? Those models don't have half of your style. That's such a delicious sweater...where did you get it?"

They chatted mindlessly for a few minutes, while the Congressman went outside and paid off the cab. By the time, Barbara could extricate herself from Mrs. Jenkins's clutches, she had provided a complete list of price, size, alterations and source for just about everything she was wearing, right down to the seashell earrings she had gotten that very morning at Miami International Airport.

She was grateful beyond words when the Congressman steered her away from the foyer and landed a fresh Scotch and soda in her nervous hands.

"Miss Shirley," Jenkins' voice deepened after polishing off the last of his bourbon, "I hearby resolve that Saturday night is no time for a pretty young thing like yourself to be alone in this town. The chair moves that we adjourn to the patio outside." His eyebrows arched.

Barbara sipped the Scotch. "Seconded, Congressman." She took the arm he offered.

The patio was refreshingly cool and devoid of cigar smoke. It looked out onto a spotlit leafscape of fall color, redolent pine and oak woods creeping right up to the patio landing. Jenkins leaned against the brick wall.

"Now, then, what's on your mind, madam?" His eyes blinked with a glaze that spoke of too many toasts in the kitchen.

She told him about her talks with Lieutenant Cedars and the telephoning she had done on getting back to their office. Jenkins listened with a squint in his eyes, trying to concentrate.

"I don't get it, Barbara. You're saying this Sierra thing's an exercise, right? What's the big deal?"

Barbara shrugged. "There may not be a big deal, Congressman. But Cedars was trying to tell me something, I'm sure of it. Something important, very important. And he was spooked. I can't prove it but this operation is no longer a paper exercise. I'd bet on it. It's either underway or about to get underway."

"But you said it's just an exercise. The military does this all the time."

"Woman's instinct. Call it whatever you want but something's not quite right. What I got from Lieutenant Morton at the Joint Staff was hearsay, I realize that. But if half of his scuttlebutt is true, this operation called Sierra is no normal exercise. First, look at the premise: decapitating the Communist leadership in Cuba. That's CIA stuff. Guatemala, Iran, you don't involve regular troops in that sort of thing. Certainly not with a big public show of force. Kennedy would be crucified if that happened. At the Bay of Pigs, he wouldn't even let our Navy planes fly over the battlefield on reconnaissance. Why would be approve something like this?'

"The President doesn't involve himself in approving tactical exercises and wargames," Jenkins said. "That's delegated. The services handle that. Or McNamara, if

it's a joint exercise."

"Then is Sierra an exercise, a paper study or a real operation? If it's a paper study, fine. The sky's the limit. We can hypothesize about a lot of things on paper, like limited nuclear war. But Cedars implied it was real. And operational. He used those exact words on me: 'I can't get into operational stuff.'"

Jenkins hadn't taken a sip in a while. He swirled the amber liquid around, studying it. "So what's your beef? Maybe the Pentagon just wants to do a little training while they got the forces to do it. I'd call that smart, actually. Save the taxpayers some money. And maybe send Castro a little message to boot."

Barbara spread her hands in frustration. "Maybe I'm just tired. It has been a long day. I can't go any further anyway. I don't have a clearance for ops stuff. It's just a hunch."

Jenkins saw the note papers she had been clutching. "Can I see?" He rifled through the sheets, silently mouthing her words. "You know, you've been my staffer for defense for how long now--"

"Almost two years."

"--right, and I was thinking...it's like being quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. You're only as good as the team around you. I may be slow but I'm no fool. I know a good team when I see one. One thing I've come to rely on, Barbara, is your hunches. On a lot of things." He gave her the sheets back, rubbing his eyes wearily. "Like when to quit this stuff." He set the bourbon down on the brick wall. "We're in for it on Tuesday. You know that."

Barbara smiled. "I was trying to help."

"I know you were. Look, you're right. A little press release tomorrow on Congressman Stephen Jenkins' trip to Homestead Air Force Base isn't going to stir too many clods to hightail it to the voting booth. If we could spice it up, say the Congressman is initiating an investigation into lack of readiness in the Caribbean, the need for more training, something like that--I mean, that's gotta help, right?"

"It won't hurt."

"Well, then, just tell me what to do. What can we do to get the ball rolling?"

Barbara unfolded her notes. "For starters, when you get back in the office Monday, get a resolution into the Congressional Record. I'll draft one tomorrow. Something about looking at our training and wargaming system, policy, and so forth. You're looking into abuses, fraud, whatever. I'll do a little more digging, maybe go over to the Pentagon tomorrow and ask around. See if I can find out anything more on Sierra."

Jenkins was relieved. "I smell a winning issue, Barbara. You're a genius, you know that? We've got to have something to distinguish me from my opponent. Kennedy's finally got some good coattails to ride on. But if we're not careful, the Republicans will eat us alive on defense. A lot of people already think we're soft on Communism."

Barbara was staring thoughtfully out into the woods, the front locks of her hair stirred by a freshening breeze. She scooped the hair back.

"It was the way the Lieutenant talked to me, Congressman. As much as anything else." She shrugged off the chill of the breeze, drew her sweater tighter. "I can't really put my hand on it. It's a feeling."

"Not too much going on at the Pentagon on a Sunday. Think you'll learn much tomorrow?"

"Hard to say. The duty officer at the Joint Staff said I could come in and go through some of the scenario-planning files if I wanted to. Not the operations files though. Damn it, that's what I need. If Sierra's real, and underway, somebody has to have some action reports. They won't let me see them, but if I knew they existed, you could request them. You have the clearances."

Jenkins finished his bourbon. He spied Nathaniel Scates, the state campaign manager, heading their way.

"Looks like business is calling, Barbara. You stick around and get yourself a good burger. I make 'em the way the gods intended, fat and juicy, special lemon salt and all. We'll meet again on this Monday morning."

11-3-62, Saturday

Near Dayton, Ohio

11:30 p.m.

Felix Calderone was fatigued beyond words, his eyes aching from squinting at the road. The trip from Atlanta had taken nearly sixteen hours, made longer by Calderone's insistence that they keep to the lesser traveled highways, county roads and bypasses. They had passed through the town of Spring Valley, Ohio three times in the last hour, searching for the road Munoz's directions called for, the road to the Sumner farmhouse. It was nearly midnight when the Cubans located the faded sign identifying Sumner Road. It was covered with vine and splintered nearly in half. Calderone wheeled the truck onto the bumpy macadam and they drove for several miles.

The farmhouse was dark, abandoned, and nearly invisible, even in the autumn moonlight. A two-story frame house, faded white clapboard siding now dingy with age and neglect, dominated a low rise in the front of the property. Calderone pulled up the winding dirt drive and stopped in front of a tiny garage beside the house, connected to the main building by the remnants of what had once been columned breezeway. Several hundred yards behind the house, a rusting, dilapidated barn sat at the end of a curving dirt path, surrounded by several outbuildings and sheds, the entire complex not more than two or three hundred yards across. Surrounding the farm buildings, fields of brown weeds and grass stretched toward woods on three sides, half a mile away in every direction.

According to Munoz, the place had been abandoned for six years.

Calderone got out and stretched, stamping some feeling back into his legs and feet. His back throbbed and he was thirsty and hungry. They had made several quick stops in Kentucky and southern Ohio to buy bread and lunch meats and cold drinks, but the provisions had long since been eaten. Felix went to the back of the truck and unbolted the door. Jorge Aleman, Luis Gallegos, and Eduardo Ortega climbed out, stiff and complaining.

Ortega had been sick the past six hours and Aleman helped him up to the sagging porch of the farmhouse. There he found an old squeaking glider and Ortega fell heavily onto his side. He was sweating and pale, even in the faint light. Calderone switched off the truck engine.

"He's sick, subteniente," Aleman told him. "Feel his forehead. High fever.. And those welts...on his face. There's some on his arms too--hold out your arms, Eduardo."

Ortega lifted an arm weakly and Calderone examined it. "Some kind of bites, maybe?"

Ortega moaned, holding the side of his head. "Nauseated....."

Aleman pushed into the dark house, looking for water and a rag. He came out a minute later. "No water, except for the toilets. And no power or lights." He went to the truck, retrieved a blood-soaked towel he had lifted from Obriega's house, and dabbed at the boy's face. "He's had headaches, nausea, and some vomiting. An hour ago, he was throwing up blood."

Calderone rubbed at the old knife scar on his chin uneasily. "How long has he felt like this?"

"Most of the way. Especially the last six or eight hours. He's getting worse."

Calderone cupped Ortega's chin in his hand. "What's wrong with you, chico? You eat something bad? Stomach hurt?"

Ortega mumbled something incoherent. He started coughing and more blood sprayed Calderone.

"It's the bomb, subteniente," said Aleman. "It has to be. That ruso was right. The bomb's cracked. The poison's getting out, getting on all of us."

Calderone got angry. "The bomb's okay. Gallegos said so. Luis, tell him...."

Gallegos was slurping water from a canteen. He rubbed at a wicked sore on his lips. "I can't say for sure. The casing does have a crack in it. The ruso showed me. And there's stuff coming out, a powder, silver and gray, very fine. Metal powder. I'm no cientifico, but I don't know about the bomb working."

That made Calderone ever angrier. "The bomb is okay! I say it now! It will work! We didn't get this far to screw up. You'll make it work."

Gallegos leaned on the porch railing. "Subteniente, I've been at the wiring for the past three hours. The truck bounces, the light inside's bad--" he spread his hands and shrugged--"I try but it's slow. Every time the road gets bad, I have to stop. The shadows make it hard to see the ruso's drawing--" he pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his shirt pocket, "and Eduardo here--" he straightened the paper out, held it up. It was smudged with dried blood. "He can't help it. But the ruso's wiring diagram is hard to see. I need better light. I need the bomb to be still for a few more hours, not bouncing around. I'm not even sure I have the right wiring, the right relays." He shrugged again, helplessly and Calderone began pacing, slamming a fist into the palm of his other hand, a boxer stalking his prey. Gallegos said nothing more. He had no need to add that he had intentionally sabotaged the wiring, purposely splicing wire to the wrong terminals in several cases. He'd been surprised how poor the Soviets' workmanship was, with crumbling relays and flaking insulation on a lot of the wiring. It wouldn't be hard to render this device completely inoperable. And bring immense and lasting embarrassment to Fidel and his companeros.

Calderone was like a caged bear, ready to erupt at any second. At one end of the porch, he swung a fist at the railing, splintering off the top piece. He whirled, glared at all of them, and started pacing again.

"We're behind schedule," he growled. "Way behind schedule. Capitan trained us to stay off the main highways. That's why it took us so long to get here. We've got to make up some time."

"We're a day, maybe two, from New York," said Aleman. "Has Fidel made his announcement?"

"I don't know. If we left now, we'd be at the safe house in Newark no earlier than tomorrow night, maybe Monday morning. And the bomb--"

Gallegos studied the man. He was a human Quivican, a volcano on two legs, crude and earthy by contrast with Capitan Ramirez. The Capitan was a strategist, a planner. Calderone was fluid, like boiling lava, willing to smother everything in his path. He did not know what would happen when Felix Calderone discovered the bomb would never work. He, Gallegos, was sworn to make sure of that.

The blood oath of the Marti was a bond Calderone would never be able to break.

"--the bomb has to work. We can't let Fidel down." Calderone grabbed Gallegos roughly by the arm. "The truth, Luis...what do you need?"

Gallegos thought. "Time. And a quiet, stable place. And light, too."

"How long, if you had those things?"

Gallegos shrugged again. Calderone's grip was iron. "Four hours. Maybe six." Has to be realistic, he thought. "It's hard to say."

Calderone released him and resumed pacing about the porch, slamming posts and railing at each turn. "No choice, hombres. No choice. If I did any less, I'd betray Capitan. The Revolution needs us. Cuba needs us."

He stopped and stood, hands on hips, decision made. "We stay here. Until dawn. Rest. Maybe that's what Eduardo needs too. Before dawn, we get the bomb out of the truck. I want to be away from exposure here. We'll back the truck up to the barn, put the bomb in there. We can knock open some holes if we need to, get you some light." He checked his watch. "You have the bomb ready by noon. You know how to arm it?"

"Si, subteniente. The ruso went over the arming procedure with me. That only takes an hour."

"You fix the bomb and see that it's armed. We can carry it armed, can't we?"

Gallegos hadn't discussed it with Kapitonov. "I should electrically isolate the detonation circuit, just to be sure. It's not likely but it's possible a stray current, maybe even static, could prematurely activate the detonator. That's what we have to avoid."

"And then to finally prepare the detonator--how long?"

"Just a few minutes. Open up the right wireway panel, connect the right wires to the terminal posts on the explosive shell, and close the panel. Maybe five minutes."

Calderone seemed satisfied. "We should contact Florio, give him our position and status, but not now. We'll wait until Newark. All right," he gestured toward the front door of the house, hanging by its lower hinge pin. "We have our hotel, hombres. You want luxury, you should have stayed in Havana. Sleep late, enjoy the view, we'll have brunch on the seawall of the Malecon, watch the pretty mujeres, eh?" He laughed, then coughed hard himself, instinctively covering his mouth. A trickle of blood streaked his hand. He held it up, like a badge. "See? I have Eduardo's sore throat, too. Let's get to work. Jorge, back the truck around this house, down to the barn. Luis, you and me will get Eduardo into the house. Maybe there's a bed."

The house was nearly barren of furniture, save for a dusty, creaking sofa in what had been the den. Eduardo Ortega was lain there, and covered with a Gallego's jacket. He asked for water, and Gallegos gave him a canteen from the spare kit. Ortega downed the entire contents in one go. Gallegos sprinkled the last droplets on his face, now waxy and ashen colored. He'd stopped vomiting when they got to the farm. Maybe it had been the truck ride. But his breathing was rattled and labored. Fluid in the lungs, Gallegos thought. What a way to die.

Calderone went down to the barn to oversee the positioning of the truck. Gallegos made sure Ortega was as comfortable as possible, then followed, finding the subteniente poring over a map in the light of the truck's headlamp. The Moncada plan had originally called for them to head east from Dayton, across southern Ohio and into Pennsylvania, again staying to less-traveled roads and highways, mostly at night. Stops were to be kept to minimum and nothing was to be left behind. Operational discipline was paramount. Calderone was tracing out optional routes with a finger, measuring off miles from the legend.

"A change of plan, subteniente?" asked Gallegos.

Calderone grunted. "We leave at noon. I want to be in New York by noon Monday. That gives us twenty-four hours, to make Lazlo Freight Forwarders in Newark, map our approach into Manhattan, do a little reconnaissance if needed, arm the weapon and get into place. When we're in Newark, I'll call Florio. I just hope Fidel keeps his mouth shut until we're in position."

"He wasn't supposed to make the announcement until Tuesday."

"Until that wire we got in Atlanta. Politicos\--" Calderone spat in the dirt. "Egotistical cows, all of them. But we'll complete our mission. And die heroes of the Revolution."

You will indeed die, compadre, Gallegos thought, but not as a hero. He wandered to the truck, to inspect the bomb once again. He knew he should try to contact the General, but that would have to wait. More important to get back to the bomb wiring and fix the thing once and for all. Fix it so the device could never be detonated, under any conceivable circumstances.

Gallegos hopped up in the truck bed, groping for the flashlight. He found it and surveyed the K-5, squatting down finally to get a closer look at the cracked seam. The ruso had called it plutonium. The heart of the bomb itself. Gallegos didn't touch it. He supposed all of them had been inhaling particles for several days. Perhaps, he would die too, in time. He had none of Eduardo's symptoms. It would be best to complete the sabotage before any symptoms showed, and he became too sick to do the job. He maneuvered the flashlight down to the base of the K-5 cone, to the wireway covers, examining his previous work with a critical eye, matching Kapitonov's crude schematic with the tangle of wiring and terminal strips inside the panel.

He'd had a vision most of the way up from Atlanta, a feverish image that rattled around in his mind like some unspent rifle cartridge, ready to go off at the slightest touch. In the vision, he was delirious, but still able to work on the bomb wiring. He had spent long, backbreaking tedious hours, running down the schematics, checking connections, relay numbers, terminal post locations, checking continuity everywhere. As the vision went on, he became faint, blurry-eyed, unable to think straight, and he fumbled more and more with the connections, having to double and triple check everything. The worst part of the vision was the end. He was dying. With his last labored breath, he strained for a few seconds of lucid clarity, to see the schematic with unclouded eyes and know he had done Marti's mission. To his eternal horror, though, he found he had done the opposite. In his vision, he had been so delirious, that he had completed the wiring as the bomb designers intended, as Kapitonov intended. Instead of sabotaging the bomb beyond recovery, in his delirious state, he had instead correctly finished re-wiring the bomb for ground detonation by hand. He had done exactly what Kapitonov and Moncada had called for.

The vision ended in death. And in his visionary death, Luis Gallegos went straight to Hell, tormented forever in the knowledge he had failed utterly, failed his blood oath to the hermanos of Marti, and made possible the final awful functioning of the bomb, bringing death and destruction to millions.

Grim and determined, Luis Gallegos set the flashlight down so its failing beam would keep shadows away from the innards of the relay panel. Once more, he bent to the ruso's drawing and began checking off the connections.

11-4-62, Sunday

Miami

3:00 a.m.

The only light still burning in the Miami Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was a small brass lamp with a cream shade at the end of the table. The rest of Special Agent in Charge Jack Connor's office was dark and stuffy, stale with cigarette smoke and a six-hour old scraps of the fried chicken supper they had wolfed down around nine the night before.

Both Connors and Mike French had nodded off to a light doze when the door to the office opened. It was Norm Steingren, Counterintel squad supervisor. He came in, flipping on lights, his arms full of paper records. He spread them out on the table as Connors and French sat up groggily.

"You sleeping beauties must've run out of coffee. Try some of mine next time. We use it on stakeout surveillance. It's like having toothpicks in your eyes."

"You rob the file room, Norm, or is that your kid's homework assignment?"

"Neither," said Steingren. He segregated several manila folders from the rest. "I been going over all the truck theft records for the whole southeast. Back for one month. Plus rental vehicle records, Hertz and Ryder and so forth. Had me a real dedicated crew downstairs in the file room tonight."

"I'll bet," said Connors. "Overtime and all. What you got?"

"Well, a few interesting things. Like this, for instance." He pushed one file folder toward Connors, who thumbed it open, holding up papers. "I was looking for any rentals, especially trucks, for the last two weeks, with a south Florida destination. Quite a list of possibles here--" he indicated a legal pad crammed with scribbled entries, "and I even got some of Ryder's records from their accounts-payable office. Had to drop over to the main office. It turns out, after I talked on the phone with 'em, they're just a few blocks away. Convenient, huh?''

"You're a regular genius, Norm," said Mike French, examining the list on the pad. What are these you've got circled?"

"Best bets, Mike. Seven in total. All south Florida residents too. Everything from a guy who hauls construction equipment around, to some house and apartment movers to this gift importer to a produce carrier and even a strip joint over on the Beach. Can you believe that? They were hauling stage props and costumes. Owner just bought out another joint up in Baltimore."

"What so special about this group?"

Steingren shifted a bit uneasily in his chair. "Well, the way I see it is this: each of them brought their truck into the Miami area pretty much within a twenty-four hour period of the others. That's what distinguishes this group. All the trucks were rented and all of them were dropped off sometime around Friday or Saturday, the second or the third. Beyond this group, the drop-off dates are real scattered, none of them closer than a week to when that MPD cop found the truck."

Mike French rubbed his eyes wearily. Sleep was something he vaguely remembered. Plus the cuts he'd suffered over his eye still ached. "The Russians think Castro's after President Kennedy. Maximov came out and predicted it: the real target's Washington. But what have we got here? We know they came in through Mobile. The arrival of any truck carrying an atomic bomb to Miami, even a fake one, has to be after the arrival of the bombs in Mobile. We've got that placed pretty well at some time after midnight Wednesday night, the thirty-first of October. And we got a bank address for the money Lynch got, leading us back here, actually to the Little Havana area."

"Coral Gables," Connors corrected him. "We gringos are sensitive about that"

"Whatever. If Miami is a decoy, and I'm inclined to think it is--that truck with the address to the Mosley warehouse was too good not to have been planted--what evidence do we have the Russians are right? Does anything point to Washington? Or to anywhere else? Christ, the damn Cubans could be anywhere. We don't even know how many there are. Maximov says the Russians lost two bombs. Are they both in the U.S.? Are they together?"

Connors shrugged. "Beats me, Mike. Looks like we only got one real avenue to follow now. These leads, Norm's list. There's only seven. We could probably knock these off in a morning, maybe less."

"You're right, of course. Meanwhile, the bombs get closer to their targets. Whatever they are." French looked around for something to drink, picked up a paper cup with hours-old coffee and looked at it dubiously. His mouth was furry and dry. "Let's set up a plan: Jack, you and me can each take three from the list. Norm, you take the last fellow...this produce carrier Gonsalves. We'll head out at dawn."

Connors nodded. "Okay by me. I'll take these guys--" he circled four, five, and six on the list. "Let's check the map, work out a route that makes sense. You gonna advise Miami PD?"

"I'll let Chief Parkes know what we're doing," French said. "He may want a uniformed officer nearby, somebody from the task force." He checked the list, silently mouthing the names of the first three: Gibbons, Munoz, The Can-Can Club. That one should be a hoot. He decided to start with the nearest first. Munoz Gifts. Over off West Flagler, near the airport.

"I'll feel better already," Connors said. "At least we got a few leads. What say we take a break...head out for a bite and some coffee."

Steingren was up for it. "Tootsie's deli's open all night. Two blocks south, on Third. They got a patti-melt that won't quit."

"Bagels for me," French told them, gathering up his jacket. "Some eggs and bacon too and a tanker truck full of black coffee. We ought to develop some questions we can use in common."

"I'll bring a pad," Connors said. "We're looking for actual departure and arrival times, nature of the cargo hauled, and any corroborating evidence they got."

The three FBI agents left the cramped office, after checking postings in the squad room. Each made a stop at Forms and Documents, grabbing a handful of 302's to record their interviews on. The radio room was open and lit up. Connors ducked his head in, saw a sleepy agent at the console, one ear to an earphone, recording tape spinning on the machine. It was DiMarco again, pulling the graveyard shift on a surveillance and wiretap operation the Bureau was running in Hialeah, some kind of bookmaking fraud.

"Sweet dreams, Vinnie," Connors chuckled. DiMarco waved without looking up.

Connors, French and Steingren took the elevator down and went out the side street entrance. A brisk ten minute walk in the salty, humid early morning air put them right outside Tootsie's main window, salivating like dogs over the smell of fresh coffee and hot bacon.
CHAPTER 14

11-4-62, Sunday

Washington D.C.

4:00 a.m.

Mary Vance felt her son Pete snuggle up a little closer, resting the cast of his broken arm in her lap. She rubbed the back of his neck softly, using her free hand. The other hand was tied with cord to Pete's hand. She shifted uncomfortably. It was hot, stuffy and cramped in the dark confines of the Rent-All truck. And she didn't much care for the company either.

The blond one was in pain, shot in the leg by that crazy fellow the men called Capitan. Mary was sympathetic. She knew about pain. The dim flicker of a battery-powered lamp provided the only illumination. In the deep shadows, the blond man stared back, straight through the wall, sullen and angry.

"You're not from around here, are you?" Mary asked. She tried a faint smile, receiving only disdain in return. "From Virginia, I mean."

Dmitri Kapitonov was half sitting, half lying alongside the base of the K-12 bomb, his right boot tucked around the mating collar of the warhead. He moistened his cracked lips, looked around for a canteen. One of the Mexicans--Mary didn't know their nationality and anyone speaking Spanish was automatically Mexican in Roanoke--nudged the canteen toward the Russian with his foot. Kapitonov unscrewed the cap, and water sloshed as the truck bounced on a rut. He slurped a few swallows, and replaced the cap.

"Where are you from?"

Kapitonov wondered what this stupid American woman wanted. "Rostov-on-Don," he grunted. "Ukraine."

Mary was startled. Oh. I see. That's Russia, isn't it?" She eyed the bomb, then the Cubans. "What's going on here? Are you moving or something?"

Kapitonov had to smile at the woman. "We're making a statement."

"What kind of statement?"

Kapitonov started to say something but Barracoa, squatting in a rear corner by the door, withdraw his Makarov 9-mm sidearm and leveled it at the Russian. Kapitonov heard the slide click back. He swallowed hard.

"Nothing."

Mary Vance saw the pistol. "You men are criminals, aren't you? On the run. Look, I don't know what you've done but you better let Pete and me go. The police'll be looking for you. And my husband Wayne, too. You left the scene of an accident back there. Where are we anyway?"

Barracoa had heard enough. He poked his Makarov in Mary's side and she flinched. She whirled, and came face to muzzle with the weapon.

"Shut up."

Mary Vance froze, her eyes fixed on the end of the Makarov. "Do all Mexicans carry guns?" she asked.

Barracoa placed the muzzle against the temple of her head. Mary shuddered, her eyes blinking fast. Her brown bouffant was coming apart, and she picked at the curls with her free hand, watching Barracoa's shaking hand out of the corner of her eye.

"Mexicans are dogs, mujer. Keep your mouth closed. Or I'll stick this gun in it."

Mary bit her lip. "You don't have to be nasty about it, you know. I'm not a teenager. I know when I've been kidnapped. But me and Wayne, see, we don't have much money. You won't get a lot for a ransom. Just don't hurt Petey, that's all I'm asking. Petey's my life." She ruffled his brown hair again, cradling his head in her lap

Kapitonov watched them. "He's a fine boy. How old?"

Mary was always proud to brag on Petey. "Going on five now. I can hardly believe it. He loves Twilight Zone, and science stuff. He wants to be an astronaut when he grows up, just like John Glenn."

Kapitonov snorted. "In my country, we call them cosmonauts. I too love science."

"You mean like space and stuff?"

"Atomic physics, actually. I designed this bomb here."

Mary's face went blank. "Bomb? This is a bomb? Are you kidding me?"

"Not at all. A K-12 multi-stage thermonuclear--" He stopped when Barracoa slammed the butt of the Makarov into his temple. Blood poured from the gash and Kapitonov covered his head with his hands. Arrantes lunged at the Russian, turning him over, face up. He grabbed Kapitonov by his hair.

"That's enough, fucking ruso! Keep your mouth shut or I'll tape it shut, permanently!" He popped Kapitonov with a quick fist, bringing more blood from a broken nose. Kapitonov groaned and rolled over.

Mary winced at the violence of the Mexicans. She hugged Pete tightly, shrinking back in the corner. "You didn't have to do that. He was just trying to be polite. And what kind of bomb is that, anyway? Is it real? You going to rob a bank or something?"

Barracoa sank back against the wall, his shoulder throbbing. The damn thing was getting worse, swollen, something cracking whenever he tried to move it. "Woman, please! We're trying to get some rest, do you mind? It's been a long day."

Mary was adamant. "You're going to knock off a bank, aren't you? I know it. You men are real scum, that's what I think. If Wayne were here, he'd know what to do. You better let me and Pete go, before it's too late. Before you hurt someone. You know what the Bible says, an eye for an eye. Live by the sword, die by the sword."

"Why can't you be quiet?" Barracoa asked her.

"Because I'm scared, for Christ's sake. I'm nervous. God, you sound like Wayne. Why don't you just pull this truck over and let us out? We can hitchhike. Just go rob your old bank. You won't get away. And Petey--" tears came and she started sobbing.

Barracoa jammed the Makarov back in his pocket and sank back, disgusted. He was tired, frustrated, dejected by endless travel. A lifetime ago, they were riding through Bejucal like wild Indians, shooting up Russians and making things happen. Ever since, he'd been in one dark, cramped smelly place after another, on the run, hiding instead of fighting. He wished he'd never volunteered for Moncada. This mujer needs to die, he told himself. We should have ditched her to begin with. Capitan Ramirez wanted to leave nothing behind. "True guerillas live off the land and travel light, taking from the enemy whatever they need." Fuck that. Barracoa squeezed his eyes shut, trying to blank out the woman's endless prattle. Over and over, he silently mouthed a prayer: Commandante Fidel, please just get me to the target, that's all I ask. Open air and light, a place I can die like a hero.

His head rested against the cab bulkhead, the road's thrumming vibration mercifully shutting out all else. Angel Barracoa soon lapsed into a light doze, dreaming of Bejucal, the staccato pop of machine gun fire like music to a soldier's ears.

Six feet away in the cab of the Rent-All truck, Rafael Ramirez sucked at his lip, spying the darkened sign: WASHIINGTON 32 MILES. He hunched his shoulders up and down, trying to get some feeling back in his dead arms and back. Traffic was light along Highway 29 and he'd seen a sign for the Simpson Truck Stop a little outside of Falls Church. He was low on gas and his body ached with tension. A brief stop would be welcome.

They had been on the road for over ten hours, zigzagging across Virginia, seeking out lonesome county roads and desolate hamlets, trying to avoid the major corridors. Somewhere around Culpepper, they had turned east on U.S. 29. Ramirez had spent most of the time checking the rear-view mirrors, watching every car that approached them with suspicion. He was amazed that no police had set up roadblocks, that they had encountered no Highway Patrol, no Army vehicles, no militia. He found the isolation of the open road unnerving and in time, he settled into an uneasy state of dread and edginess, constantly scanning the skies and the road around them. But he had seen nothing. There wasn't the slightest shred of evidence that the Yanqui police even knew of them.

That was hardest part to take.

Every fiber in his body screamed trap, yet they had no choice but to press on. When at last, the flashing red and white neon of the Simpson Truck Stop and Restaurant materialized out of the dark like an oasis, he geared down and pulled into the vast asphalt lot, finding a dark corner in the back. He had no key for the ignition so he couldn't turn the engine off. Ramirez climbed down from the cab, and opened the rear door.

Barracoa scrambled out and went to the cab. He felt under the steering column for the wire he had spliced and killed the engine. Then he went to the back to help with the others.

"Everybody out," Ramirez ordered. The Russian eased himself to the ground, limping on the wounded leg. Saguente's field dressing would have to be changed soon; the bandage was stained a dark brown as the wound continued to bleed. Saguente followed, then Arrantes. He helped Mary Vance down, then hoisted Pete to the asphalt. They stamped their feet and massaged their arms and legs, their cords momentarily removed.

"I need to use the ladies' room," Mary suggested. "And I'd like a Coke or something to drink. Crackers too. Pete wants some M&Ms."

Ramirez told Saguente to accompany them. "You will do as he says. Exactly. If you disobey, you'll be killed on the spot." As to emphasize the point, Saguente briefly flashed the business end of his Makarov. Mary's lips tightened and she grabbed Pete's good arm. They marched silently toward the restaurant.

When they had gone, Ramirez closed up the truck's rear door and lit a cigarette. He was thirsty too. He gave several American bills to Arrantes, ordering him to secure Cokes all around, with crackers and candy bars. The Soviet Spetsnaz training he had taken last year had always emphasized how you could find food anywhere. The key was ingenuity and a strong stomach. Ramirez sucked at the Marlboro, clearing smoke through his nostrils. The tobacco was weak but tasted good. He remembered the final Spetsnaz field exercise, an escape and evasion mission. The instructors had dressed them in prison garb and dropped them in the middle of a mid-sized Russian city in the foothills of the Urals. Then, they had notified the local police that escaped prisoners were in the area. That had been exciting. That and having to catch and eat mice and cockroaches. The taste wasn't so bad, a bit acidy, but it was an act of faith to swallow. Mars bars and peanut butter crackers were infinitely preferable.

Barracoa kept a wary eye on Kapitonov and stared down a few nosy, inebriated truckers who'd come wandering in their direction.

"Angel, we may have to ditch this truck. Before the sun comes up. We're almost in Washington, just a few more miles. The Yanqui will be looking for this vehicle. We left them a perfect way to find us back in Roanoke."

Barracoa nodded. "We couldn't help it, Capitan. The man was going to fire his weapon. It was him or us."

"I know. Look around...dozens of trucks. We're probably safe here. But when we get into Washington, then we're exposed. No, we'll have to change vehicles again."

"Where?"

"In the original plan, we go to a street address in the northwest part of the city, off Connecticut Avenue. We live out of the truck until time to place the bomb. We'll have to find us another truck then, before we approach the target. And the ruso needs time to finish his work. We're way behind schedule. I need to contact Florio too, when we get into the city. Maybe I could call from here. Commandante Fidel has to hold off making any announcement for a day or so. But we should be ready by Tuesday. Election Day."

"You think we'll have to fight the Yanquis, Capitan?"

Ramirez thought. "I don't know. Since we got to Mobile, we've left two bodies and a wrecked truck for them to find, not by choice. And the American Navy had us under surveillance several times in the Gulf. The Yanquis aren't stupid, but I can't explain why the police aren't already chasing us. They may be setting a trap. That's another reason to change trucks."

Inside the Simpson's restaurant, Saguente had his hands full with Mary Vance and Pete. They had finished their business with the restrooms and were now in a long line of loud and raucous truckers at the take-out counter, trying to place an order. Saguente kept the Makarov in his pocket, his right hand tightly on the grip, safety off. Burly drivers jostled back and forth, cutting in and out of line, bellowing obscenities and bad jokes. If he hadn't been careful, the gun might have gone off. Carefully, Saguente thumbed the safety back on.

Half an hour later, they had a sack full of candy bars and crackers, and Mary carried a cardboard tray of Cokes. They left the restaurant and headed across the expanse of the parking lot.

The altercation started without warning, almost on top of them. Midway to the Rent-All truck, a pair of moving vans had pulled into a fueling bay. Their diesels rumbled, belching smoke, air brakes hissing, while the drivers engaged in a heated argument across the pump island, one of them waving a fuel pump wildly, spilling gas on himself. As Saguente approached, the argument flared into violence.

The shorter driver was a black haired man in black jacket and dingy jeans, an Orioles cap on his crew-cutted head. He flung the fuel hose at his tormentor and in seconds, the two men had butted like Sumo wrestlers, grappling, scratching and grunting, as they fell to the pavement. Fuel continued to seep out of the hose.

Saguente had to step aside as the fighting men rolled into his legs. Behind them, voices erupted.

"Hey! Lookee here, fellas...lookee that, willya!"

"Kick the fucker--!"

"Get his balls, Jimmy--go for the nuts--!"

The fighters rolled as one back and forth across the pavement, bumping into a truck tire, then the pump island. Neither could get an advantage. Saguente was about to take Mary Vance by the arm when a police siren chirped behind them. He whirled, saw the blue flashing lights. A State Police cruiser...shit, Saguente spun, grabbed for Mary's arm- but....

She had torn away, flinging the tray of Cokes down, running with Pete in tow, half dragging him across the pavement. Back to the restaurant, toward a crowd of onlookers gathering for the fight. The air was full of Rebel yells and shrieks, and Mary dived into the crowd.

Saguente started after her, had the Makarov half out when two blue-uniformed State Police officers burst out of the gathering knot, guns drawn. Saguente froze, quickly put the Makarov back in his pocket. Had they seen him? Had they seen it? He was ready to swing, lash out, but the officers swept right past him and dove onto the fighters, struggling, grunting to separate the men. Saguente stared in horror, what to do? He spun again, saw more police in the distance. His throat went dry.

As the crowd pressed in, Saguente shoved his way through a hole, fighting through the onlookers like an ocean tide, until he emerged in the clear, then broke into a trot back toward the Rent-All truck. He saw Capitan smoking, watching the melee with interest. Saguente ran up.

"Capitan, they're gone! I lost them---in that crowd--the police were coming and-"

Ramirez had seen what had happened. Furious, he slapped Saguente in the face. "Idiot! Imbecile! Get in the truck, all of you! Shit...Madre de Dios." He tossed the cigarette and climbed into the cab, leaning out before he slammed the door and yelling, "Close that up! Hurry up!" He touched the battery wire to the splice the way Barracoa had showed him and the truck spluttered into life. The fuel gauge stayed on Empty, but that couldn't be helped. He dropped the truck into gear and accelerated out of the parking lot, bumping over a curb in his hurry to get out of there.

Mary Vance flagged down a trooper. She was out of breath, still clinging to Pete who had started to cry.

"Officer! Officer...help me....please help us--!"

Trooper Sergeant Rick Warner, Post 77 of the Virginia State Police, had been heading for the altercation when the young woman with the frosted bouffant and long eyelashes practically knocked him down. She was crying, tears streaking a dirty face and she looked like she had been cut. They met in a whirling embrace as Warner grabbed the woman to keep from sending her flying to the pavement.

"Whoa, ma'am, whoa there! What's going on...you get hurt in that fight?"

Mary Vance burst into tears, heaving huge sobs as she tried to get her breath back. Warner made her sit down, he was afraid she'd pass out, she was gulping so bad. "Take it easy, you'll all right...just a few knicks and cuts...."

"Officer...I..." She swept her eyes around, seeing only truckers and police. The Mexicans were gone, a bad nightmare. "I was so scared...."

Warner helped them up and ushered the woman and the boy back into the restaurant. He had them sit at a table in the front, motioned the waitress for some water and a few cold rags. Lu Ellen ran the waitress station serving the back of the restaurant. She grabbed up some linen napkins, dipped one in a bucket of ice water and came over, dabbing at Mary's face, then Pete's too. Warner made her take a few sips of water, and Lu Ellen tried calming her down.

"Tell me what happened." Warner said, gently as he could. He'd been about to dig into a pecan pie when the brawl erupted.

Mary Vance related her story, between sobs and furtive sips of water. She told the trooper about the Mexicans she had run into, literally, on the highway leading into Roanoke. And the Russian--she didn't remember his name--who had bragged about a bomb. Sergeant Warner asked her about that but Mary could offer nothing but a general description of the inside of the truck.

"It said Rent-All on the outside," she told them. "Must have been from that store in Roanoke. They were so violent--one of them hit that Russian with his pistol, right in the face."

Warner was listening and trying to recollect what he had seen on the watch board at the Post before he'd come on duty that morning. There had been a posting from Roanoke, he was sure of it. And hadn't the FBI boys sent out a national bulletin on a bunch of Cubans the other day? He didn't remember seeing anything about a bomb.

"You sure it was a bomb you saw, ma'am?"

Mary Vance shook her head, her brown curls dropping into her face. She wiped tears with a fist. "No, sir. That Russian man called it a bomb."

"How big? Suitcase? Was it a pipe?"

"It was big as the truck, officer. The thing took up the whole truck, inside. We practically had to sit on it, there was so little room."

Warner told Lu Ellen to look after the woman and her child for few minutes. "I gotta call in to the post, check on something." On his way out to the cruiser, he fingered up a mouthful of the pecan pie, now growing cold. Then he called up Dispatch and got the Lieutenant on the line.

Ten minutes later, Sergeant Rick Warner fired up the three-hundred horsepower V-8 of his Ford Galaxy and spun gravel, accelerating out of the Simpson Truck Stop parking lot. He'd turned the Mary Vance situation over to the local cops, Falls Church Police having swarmed over the parking lot with three details of officers. It had been a slow night in town. Warner now knew there was a bulletin out on the Rent-All truck. The vehicle had been stolen in Roanoke Saturday morning, nearly a day ago, and the owner had been murdered.

He wasn't sure which way the Mexicans had gone but Miss Vance had the impression they were heading into the Nation's Capital. "They got some kind of business there," she had said, "or an appointment or something." Warner floored the gas pedal, topping out over a hundred as he flipped on the light bar overhead. The District limits weren't more than ten or so miles ahead. He cupped the mike with his hand, steering around light early morning traffic approaching Arlington, and tried raising the DC dispatcher on the assigned frequency. Then he cinched up his safety harness a bit tighter.

This baby could get lot more interesting in a big hurry.

Slowing down for the ramp to the Jefferson Davis Highway, Ramirez saw the Rosslyn City Limits sign flash by. He slowed, gearing down, and the truck leaned as he took the turn far too fast, coming off its right rear wheels just for a second. He felt the skid, then turned back, and the truck dropped heavily onto the pavement, tires screeching.

For the past twenty minutes, Ramirez had felt a faint premonition tickling the hairs on the back of his neck. Not especially given to faith in signs and symbols, he nonetheless had learned long ago that in special operations work, profound knowledge of the enemy paid off in a myriad number of ways. More often than not, when he'd captained a platoon of snipers in the Brigada Rivera hunting down Batista holdouts in the hills of Pinar del Rio, he'd run into situations like this: tracking elusive Army deserters or woolly-headed students from the University, he had sometimes come across indistinct, almost invisible scratchings in the dirt, or a bough of eucalyptus limbs broken in a certain way, or underbrush cleared in a way no animal would ever do, and the hairs on his neck stood up, giving a sign. He'd long ago learned to trust the feeling. There was no explanation for it but a hunter used every weapon he could.

The tickle had come again and in the knowing, Ramirez flashed back for a moment to the deep woods outside Guane, the last time he'd led the Brigada against Batista holdouts. That had been a battle for men, he remembered. For once, the prey had turned the tables and stalked the predators. Only a quick flanking maneuver with a platoon of riflemen had averted disaster. Again, the sign had warned him....

Ramirez knew well that they would have to ditch the Rent-All truck soon. The Yanquis were on to them, he knew it, he could feel it. He stole a glance in the rear-view mirror. Lights flickered and flared in the mirror, giving no obvious signs of danger. Normal early morning traffic in Arlington, as the early-birds made their way into the city, perhaps to church or other business. The question was where? And how?

Somehow, he had to get word to Munoz, to 'Florio', to warn Fidel about the delay. Election Day was the key, it had always been the real target for Fidel's ultimatum. That gave them about forty-eight hours. Find a safe place to hide, and put the ruso to work getting the bomb ready. That was the Moncada plan.

Ramirez savored the image of Americans waking up to do their civic duty, and hearing on their radios how little Cuba had changed the world forever.

11-4-62, Sunday

Miami

8:15 a.m.

Mike French and Jack Connors changed plans at Tootsie's diner. They decided to combine their efforts and go visit four of the seven names on the list of suspect truck renters compiled by Norm Steingren. Steingren himself wasn't happy about the change but, after a call to another agent, agreed to deal with the last three on the list. When they had finished bagels and coffee at Tootsie's, the men made final plans to meet back at the Field Office that afternoon, by five.

First on the list for French and Connors was Munoz Gifts. It turned out to a small corner shop in Coral Gables, right off 57th Avenue at West Flagler, and only five blocks west of the still-smoldering ruins of the Mosley warehouse. Miami PD still had signs and barriers up to all east-bound traffic for several miles along 57th. French subconsciously touched the still-tender gash over his right eye. It would be several weeks more before the debris from the bomb was completely removed and residents could start re-building.

The Munoz Gift Shop was empty and dark, a CLOSED / CERRADO sign on the front door, not all that unusual for eight a.m. on a Sunday morning. French checked his paperwork, running his finger down the list.

"We got a home address, Jack. You want to go calling or check the next guy on the list? That one's Gonsalves, the produce merchant, looks like West Flagler near the bridge."

Connors was smacking a Juicy Fruit, and blew a big bubble, which popped, splattering his face. Hoover would shit if he knew a Bureau man was chewing gum like a cheerleader. Connors shrugged.

"Makes no difference to me. What's the home address?"

French read it off. "Fourteenth Terrace, looks like southwest from the number. Probably tamaleland, maybe south Miami. We could check the guy's house, roust him out of bed for a few questions, then head toward Brickell. I got a feeling this produce guy's around Bayfront Park."

"Let's do it," Connors agreed. They climbed into their Ford Fairlane and headed east along West Flagler, through light morning traffic.

Munoz' residence turned out to be a yellow and green stucco and wood flat, midway down the block on 14th. It was a neighborhood in transition, full of Cuban and other refugees, and the potholes and orange crash barrels attested to years of neglect from the city's roads and drainage department. French parked the Bureau car in front of the house. They went up to the door and rang the doorbell, noting the odd statuary populating the front porch. Most of the pieces were minus an arm or a leg, even a head, yet they had been lovingly arranged around a tiny garden out in front of the freshly painted green wrought iron railing.

French looked at Connors, who smirked back. "Tamales got no sense of beauty, do they?" French shook his head and tried the doorbell again.

They heard a slight commotion through the door and presently a man emerged, peeking over the chain. He was clad in a blue bathrobe.

"Si?"

"Sorry to bother you, sir. I'm Mike French. This is Jack Connors. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Our records show you rented a truck through the Ryder people. We're checking cargo manifests and delivery times for the past week. Just routine. Could you step out here, please? There's a few questions I'd like to ask."

Munoz was a slight man, wiry and frail, even in a bulky bathrobe. He peered skeptically at them through black wire-frame glasses, low on his nose, chewing on his lower lip.

"Federales? Can I see some ID please?"

French flipped out his ID folder and badge. Connors did the same. Munoz wrinkled his nose, reading through the spectacles. His black mustache twitched like a cat. His eyes narrowed. Mike French noticed the man's hand shaking, resting on the door chain.

"It'll just take a few minutes, Mr. Munoz. Sorry for the early hour."

Munoz licked his lips. "Uh, okay, let me get into some clothes, okay? My wife Rosita, she's sleeping--"

"We'll wait right here, sir," French assured him. It was a bit embarrassing, but they had probable cause and French wasn't planning on being too courteous or patient this morning.

Munoz nodded. "I'll just be a minute." He shut and latched the door. French waited a moment, then tried the handle himself. It was locked but forceable. He figured a foot and a kick would be all that was needed.

They studied the neighborhood for a few minutes. Definitely lower middle class, bordering on seedy but not completely trashed. Connors described a number of neighborhoods in the area coming to be known as Little Havana, along the Calle Ocho, or Southwest 8th Street.

"Cubans are pouring in, Mike. Seems like hundreds every week. All classes but there's a good number of professionals fleeing Castro and his goons. Once they get through INS processing, they just melt into the community. This whole area's changing, fast. Ten years from now, who knows? Probably look like another country. The blacks and the Jews don't much care for it. MPD deals with a lot of petty crime in this area, property and theft, simple assault, some holdups and such. Nothing major, but it's growing."

Mike French well remembered hours and hours of stakeouts about ten blocks west, during the Marti extortion bombings last year. "I saw some of it, myself. Worked with an MPD chap named Horton, South Division Homicide, if I remember right. He told me about that serial rapist. Sucker was working the little tiendas, stalked his victims right out of the stores all along the main drag. Grabbed 'em in the alleys. He was a first-class ape, that one--"

They both stopped, hearing odd sounds inside the Munoz house. French pressed his ear to the door. Nothing. He tried the doorbell again, then pressed his face to the crack of the opening.

"Mr. Munoz, we're still waiting for you. Just a few questions. Could you come out here, please?" He listened harder, closing his eyes. That's a door...closet? Something jingling....that's feet, shoes sounds like, tile floor....

He backed off, wondering. "What's this fellow up too? Jack, you want to check around the side? Maybe there's a window or something."

Connors hopped off the porch, picking through more arty knickknacks dotting the lawn. He shoved through some hedges.

Just then, a loud crash was heard. Inside the house, something heavy had fallen and broken.

"Jack! I'm going in--" French withdrew his .45 and held it muzzle up, forced-entry procedure, hostile situation. Connors trotted back, having seen nothing, but he had heard the crash too. He extracted his own weapon and looked at French. On three....he mouthed silently.

Together, they planted two feet square against the door and kicked. The door splintered open, the chain jerking a piece of sheetrock with it as it banged on a chair. French lowered his weapon and slipped inside, Connors, right behind.

One look was all they needed. The place had been ransacked, hurriedly from the looks of it. The living room/den was a shambles, credenza drawers hastily pulled and dumped on the floor. Clothes were strewn everywhere. French stepped through the tiny kitchen into a short hall, then his eye caught the breeze blowing drapes in a side bedroom. He started in, then they both heard the engine. A car starting up--

They whirled and raced back to the front door. Piling out of the house, they French looked around. Connors saw the car.

"Red T-bird---there!"

They raced for their own car. Already half a block away and accelerating, Munoz and a woman, maybe his wife, had made it to the car, apparently from the back bedroom window, somehow unseen. Papers flew out of the car as it sped west on 14th Terrace, running a stop sign and swerving to miss another car, heading for Southwest 17th.

French had the Bureau car started and rolling even before Connors was fully in. He heaved the passenger door shut and French made a screeching U-turn, coming hard about and riding up on the sidewalk before getting the Fairlane under control. He slammed the pedal down, rocketing after Munoz. Through the intersection, Connors reached under the seat and found the portable blue light. He craned out the window and fixed it to the roof, as French hit the siren. They topped fifty as the T-bird, two blocks ahead, bounced over a curb, taking a hard right turn onto Southwest 17th.

Mike French hadn't done a vehicle pursuit in years and he knew he was rusty. He braked just enough to corner onto 17th, heading north, then reversed the wheel, darting from lane to lane, trying to close the gap. Ahead, the T-bird was a bright red beacon, still visible, but pulling away. Connors got on the radio back to the Field Office, wondering if DiMarco was still there.

"Palm Tree, Palm Tree, this is Bureau Eight! Palm Tree, we're in pursuit... suspect is an Hispanic male, driving a '61 or '62 Thunderbird, no license number yet...suspect wanted for questioning in the A-bomb case. Need backup. Need help fast, Palm Tree...."

French served hard left, just clipping the fender of a van, which spun sideways and bounced off a light pole before careening back into oncoming traffic. French looked up in the rear-view mirror. "Jesus, sorry buddy, I got my lights and siren going...."

The T-bird's brake lights lit up. "He turning, Mike. Watch out..." Munoz spun hard, out into the center of the intersection, slamming up against a food vendor's cart, which went flying, pineapples and bananas and coconuts raining down everywhere. The cart operator dived aside, just in time. Cars slammed into a chain reaction accident, trying to avoid the man, who quickly scrambled to his feet, shaking his fist. The T-bird pulled out from under the rain of fruit, half the cart still jammed on its rear bumper. It fishtailed east, heading down Calle Ocho, scattering domino tables lined up along the sidewalk. A block later, the remnants of the cart fell off into the street.

Mike French slowed through the turn, negotiating debris, then resumed speed on Southwest 8th. The car radio crackled. It was DiMarco. Connors answered, and French half listened, concentrating on navigating traffic, trying to keep Munoz in view. The T-bird had opened up a three-block lead, topping sixty, seventy at times, caroming off cars in each intersection.

"Better get Miami PD out here, fast, Jack! We need some roadblocks...funnel this nutcase off into a dead end or something!"

The avenue that some called the heart of Little Havana was a blur to both of them. Clots of men in white guayaberas huddled against store fronts, as the two cars blasted by. Vendors and churro stands disappeared into the shadows, their proprietors frantically folding up and covering their merchandise. Smart folks, Connors thought for a second. French found a stretch of open street and pushed the accelerator to the floor. They took a slight rise at 13th, and went airborne. The Fairlane's front bumper crunched asphalt on the impact and she bottomed out, losing traction momentarily. In that split second, a child broke free of her mother's grasp and darted into the street, chasing an errant birthday balloon.

"Mike!...Look out--the girl!--"

French saw her in the nick of time. He hauled the steering wheel hard left, into the gap between a bus and the oncoming lanes. The Fairlane's back end caromed off the bus, then off another car to the right, sending it plowing toward the sidewalk, spinning out of control. As French fought for control, Connors turned and saw the other car spinning sideways over the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians, then slamming into a glass storefront. The impact exploded the storefront and glass showered the street and sidewalk, as the car disappeared into the store. Thankfully closed, Connors had a glimpse of the store sign before it vanished in the impact: La Mancha Pescaderia.

By the time, Mike French had regained control, the T-Bird was a distant red five or six blocks away.

"Where the hell's he going?" Connors asked. They heard a siren behind them, and saw a Miami PD black and white gaining. Another turned out onto 8th from the intersection at Sixth, right behind the first, siren blaring.

Connors dialed the local channel and thumbed the mike. "Glad to have you with us today, gentlemen. Any thoughts?"

They sped on, passing theories, as French tried to narrow the gap with Munoz. The traffic ahead had thinned, as cars and pedestrians pulled to the side, or off 8th altogether. French was glad. He'd never liked the pursuit course the Bureau put its agents through at Quantico. The last day of the course, he'd wrecked the black Chevy they were using, bent the front end all to hell, and gotten a pretty good bruise on his noggin to boot. "From now on, I'll get my thrills at the fairgrounds, thank you."

It was a Miami PD unit, pulled now a little ahead of the Bureau car, who saw the T-Bird turn. The officer punched it and darted ahead of French, then slammed on his brakes, skidding halfway through the turn at First Avenue. French did the same and the two of them rolled abreast of each other, accelerating back up to speed as they flashed past Southside Park. Startled card players stood and glared angrily at the chase, shaking their fists, their checkers tables laden with strong coffee and fresh pineapples. Sorry to interrupt, Connors thought. Next time, we'll call ahead.

"Trying to shake us now," French remarked. They pulled up on the tail of the Miami unit, and followed the black and white through a series of screeching, skidding turns, narrowly missing cars at each one. Munoz had taken them into a rundown residential area, filled with houses burned out or boarded up, piles of rubble and brick everywhere. "Five'll get you ten, he switches back north and heads west again."

They had gained enough to finally see the driver and his passenger. Munoz was no professional driver. He lost space with every turn, as French and the Miami units exercised every bit of their driving skills, steadily closing the gap. As predicted, Munoz cranked the T-Bird left, then left again, squirreling up Second Avenue and across the Miami River bridge at Brickell Park. He went airborne at a construction zone, the little T-Bird riding over a mound of fill dirt beside the road, fill for the new convention center that had been so controversial. The T-Bird slewed sideways and pancaked to a hard landing, nearly flipping. Somehow, Munoz got it under control and sped off in a spray of dirt.

"Friggin' lunatic!" French muttered.

They sped up Second Avenue for several minutes. Without turns, the T-Bird's bigger engine made a difference and a three block gap soon opened up again. By now, Miami PD had five units in the chase, and more joined as they headed north toward the causeways.

Almost on impulse, Munoz darted right, then left, zigzagging north onto Biscayne Boulevard. The T-Bird skidded on loose gravel in front of the Bandshell and bounced up onto the sidewalk for a moment, scattering tourists and sightseers out for a Sunday morning stroll. French watched as the lead Miami unit closed the gap again, this time lightly bumping Munoz. Another unit followed, pulling abreast of the T-Bird. French knew what was up. Precision immobilization technique. The PIT maneuver. He'd failed it every time at Quantico. He watched as the squeeze play began, slowing slightly, figuring if it worked, they'd all be slamming on their brakes any second now.

But Munoz wouldn't play the game. The T-Bird swung out, knocking the lead unit left, then harder left again, until the Miami PD car swerved and bounced, narrowly missing a lamppost on the other side of the road. He dropped back, then inched forward to try again.

Just past the City Docks, the far right lane gave onto the MacArthur Causeway. Munoz swerved out again, plowing open a space to his left. Then, suddenly, his brake lights lit and the T-Bird swung right, rolling up on two wheels, then banging down hard. Munoz fishtailed onto the Causeway, heading for Miami Beach.

At times reaching ninety, Munoz flashed across Watson Island and headed east, French and the Miami PD cruisers right behind. Again, Miami PD bumped the T-Bird, trying to squeeze Munoz off onto the shoulder of the road. Each time, the T-Bird's back end broke free and it slid, showering rock and gravel everywhere. Just passed the Coast Guard station, Munoz sideswiped a barrier. French saw the violent twist of the car and swerved himself, praying Munoz' passenger wouldn't fly out. She managed to hold on, probably scared witless, French thought, as Munoz braked slightly, approaching the end of the bridge.

Munoz slid nearly three hundred and sixty degrees at the intersection with Alton Road. A Miami PD cruiser brushed the tail of the T-Bird and another dove forward, spinning into a traffic light on the corner. Munoz got the T-Bird straightened out and sped between them, heading north on Alton. French slowed too, plowing through glass and metal fender parts, turning to follow. Behind him, two more Miami cars resumed the chase. At the next intersection, Miami Beach chipped in too, adding three cruisers of their own to the chase.

Munoz made a hard left onto Dade Boulevard, knocking over a Post Office sign beside the road. Now heading back west toward the Venetian Causeway, he switched back and forth across the lanes, sending on-coming traffic spinning and screeching in all directions. Mike French looked left, saw a Miami Beach cop pull abreast. The officer was signaling with his hands. BOTH SIDES, THEN SQUEEZE, he mouthed and gestured. Mike French nodded, gripping the steering wheel harder.

They bumped up the ramp to the causeway and were soon inches off the T-Bird's rear bumper. Back and forth Munoz swerved, trying to shake them. He pulled away for a moment, topping a low rise as they passed through Belle Park. Bright stucco waterfront homes gleamed in the Sunday morning sunshine, through a forest of yacht masts and snapping pennants.

Again, French closed the gap, overshooting and bumping Munoz on the T-Bird's left rear bumper. Seconds later, the Miami Beach cop bumped Munoz on the right bumper.

Munoz never saw the orange construction barrels ahead. Rivo Alto Island was the first of the Venetian Islands chain, a brand new development in the middle of Biscayne Bay. The developer had barricaded the causeway down to a single lane through the center of the island, while sewerage and drainage pipe was laid. Munoz saw the barricades at the last second, concentrating more on keeping his car away from the pursuit. When he looked ahead again, there was no room left to swerve.

Mike French had seen what was about to happen and slammed on his brakes. The Ford spun, then straightened, skidding into a row of barriers. The barrels flew over the top of the car and caromed like bowling pins around the road. The Miami Beach cop had seen the obstruction just in time too, plowing sideways into some wooden fencing along the front property line of a waterfront mansion. The cruiser came to rest against a palm tree twenty feet from the veranda of the house.

Munoz tried to swerve but had no room. The T-Bird broke through the first row of barrels, then flipped left as the front wheels bit into a construction ditch. The car upended and skidded off the road, gouging dirt and gravel in a spray, through the roadside barrier. The first contact with the barrier slammed the car back upright but the momentum of the eighty-five mile an hour impact carried the car over the edge of the island's bed of rock and gravel and into Biscayne Bay. The T-Bird plowed into the water with a rending crash of metal and geysering water. It floated briefly for a moment, then began sinking rapidly, engine first. Stunned unconscious or dead, Munoz and his passenger didn't move.

French and Connors bolted out of their car and ran to the water's edge. Already, the T-Bird was half underwater, the passenger compartment filling rapidly.

"Come on!" Mike yelled, kicking off his shoes. He threw off his jacket and dove headfirst into the warm waters of the Bay. Connors did the same.

They stroked about ten seconds and got to the car, feeling the rear bumper in the murk. French swam to the driver's door, hoisting himself up. Groggy, dazed and bleeding from facial cuts, Miguel Munoz's head lolled against the headrest, then pitched forward to the steering wheel as the car rolled in the swells, still sinking fast. French reached in and grasped Munoz under the left armpit. The man wore no seatbelt. On the other side, Connors already had the woman out on the ledge of the door.

"Pull!" French told him. "Pull 'em out! We're gonna get sucked under...."

He wrapped an arm around Munoz' chin and wrestled the man into the water. A few strokes and they made the rock ledge of the island, though Munoz swallowed water several times. Coughing hard, he rolled onto his stomach and blood fell in a steady stream from several gashes on his face. Ten feet away, his wife was breathing hard, eyes wide, as Connors carried her over his shoulders up to the roadbed.

Miguel Munoz gagged and threw up water and blood, groaning. He turned over onto his back and squinted up, seeing Mike French clearly for the first time. He smiled weakly.

"Lo siento, amigo\--what's gonna happen--?"

Mike French already had the cuffs out. He reached for Munoz' left wrist.

"You're under arrest, pal. And that's just for starters."

11-4-62, Sunday

Moscow

4:30 p.m.

Leonid Brezhnev flicked the cigarette away and stamped it out in the light snow. He motioned for Kosygin to follow and the two of them ducked their heads, walking briskly toward the open cabin of the Mil Mi-8 helicopter that had just landed in the open field behind the main lodge of his dacha. Brezhnev brushed off the helping hands of the crewmen as he pulled himself up the short stepladder. Kosygin wasn't so picky.

The crew chief helped Brezhnev strap into a rear seat, then attended Kosygin. Across the narrow aisle, Marshal of Aviation Vasily Alekseyevich Borodintsev nodded gruffly at the VIP passengers, then thrust a sealed manila envelope toward Brezhnev.

"Units staged for maneuvers, Leonid Illych," he growled over the whine of the Isotov turbines, as the pilot spun up for takeoff. "Full combat gear, full load of ammunition and unit commanders briefed." Borodintsev shook his head sadly. "The squad and platoon leaders think this is an exercise."

Brezhnev had extracted the order of battle information the Marshall had compiled and perused it with growing satisfaction. "An exercise of national salvation, perhaps. Pity it takes an army to throw a scoundrel out. But we have our duties."

"Distasteful duties," Borodintsev said. "I'd rather be fighting the Germans. Or the Americans."

"In time, perhaps," Brezhnev concluded. "The others will be at Vnukovo?"

"All of them."

They flew in silence the rest of the way. The flight from the Central Committee dacha compound at Kuntsevo, half an hour west of Moscow's Chaykovsky Ring Road, to the air force base attached to Vnukovo Airport southwest of the city took less than an hour. The sun was a pale dab hanging low in a leaden sky when the Mil circled the field to gauge wind speed, then descended rapidly toward the helipad. Though nominally a public airport, in reality the Voenno Vozdushnye Sily (V-VS) ran the base as military airfield. The Mil pilot set them down a few dozen yards from a low brick and glass building: headquarters for Frontal Aviation's 8th Tactical Air Army.

The meeting had been set for five p.m. Brezhnev had brought Kosygin and Marshall Borodintsev. Marshal Rodion Malinovsky was already there, having come from his own dacha compound near Brezhnev's by Chaika limousine. Three other senior commanders were present: Marshal of Artillery Kamenov and Marshal of Armor Golovkin, of the Ground Forces, as well as Marshal Larionov, commanding general of the Moscow Military District. Brezhnev came into the small paneled conference room and greeted the commanders each in person. He knew the risk. They had an important duty to perform tomorrow. Brezhnev saw a familiar face at the other end of the room, wreathed in cigarette smoke. It was Vedenin, Kommandant of the Kremlin. Brezhnev went to him, and they embraced. Vedenin, at the very center of the storm, would be risking the most.

"Comrades, the time has come," Brezhnev told them, lighting his own cigarette, "to throw the wolves out of the barn. I want to make this meeting quick. Nikita Sergeyevich has eyes everywhere--we all know that. The less time together, the better. Spread your maps. Show me the forces of liberation."

Marshal Larionov already a map of the Greater Moscow region out on the table. "By sunset tomorrow, T-55 tanks and BTRs of the 75th Guards Tank Army will be in positions, here, here and here, right in the center of Moscow. Right now, they're bivouacked at an old training base on the Yaroslavl Highway, a base we haven't used for twelve years. Sixty tanks, ready for my signal at midnight."

"What about access to the center?" Brezhnev asked. "Semichastny's Guards Directorate are well equipped. I want to avoid a bloodbath in Red Square if at all possible."

"Leonid Illyich," said Marshal Golovkin, "there will be three tank regiments from the 75th to secure all main intersections of the Ring Road." Golovkin tapped the map at each one in turn. "Kirov, Mira, Gorky, Kalinin, all of them. Plus, we'll have 122-mm and 85-mm field guns in batteries bracketing the intersections. We can lay down a great deal of firepower on any of Semichastny's Guards Directorate men who resist."

"Ten blocks, centered on the Kremlin, will be isolated in less than two hours, a few more if there is resistance," Larionov went on. He glanced over at Marshal Borodintsev. "As long as I can count on air support."

"You will have it!" Borodintsev snapped. "My Mils will sweep any intruders from the skies like fat pigeons. We just checked communications with the ground units yesterday--common frequencies, call signs, passwords. And I've got a special security detail detached to guard the operations center here."

Leonid Illych, what the latest on the First Secretary's plans?"

Brezhnev sat down, motioning for Vedenin to come over. "Let's ask the Kommandant of the Kremlin. Anatoli Yuriivich--?"

Vedenin had been hanging back in the shadows but came out with a scrap of paper. "Still the same, comrades. Nikita Sergeyevich has had a very tough last few weeks. He needs his rest, so he's heading for Pitsunda tomorrow night. The plane is serial number V-1001 Nsh, one of State Security's Tupolevs, a -104, I believe. Take-off still set for about ten. According to the schedule given me by Kulagin, the staff secretary, the convoy leaves the Kremlin about nine-thirty. The Marshal will want to have his tank forces out of sight until after the convoy passes the intersection of Kalinin and the Ring Road."

"We have regiments and platoons of T-55s dedicated to every objective," Marshal Larionov reminded them. "The plan estimates securing the center of the city--the Kremlin, the Central Committee Building and State Security at Dom Dva\--will take two, maybe three hours, depending on resistance. Guards Directorate armor is normally positioned outside the Ring Road, on one-hour call-up notice. If we're careful, we'll have our forces in place before anybody notices. But we have to take out the Special Purpose platoons early on...they're always checking around Red Square, looking for unusual things. They could sound the alarm early if we don't detain them."

Vedenin had anticipated that. "The Kommendatura has decided to run a pass and control exercise in the square tomorrow night, 'preparing for Revolution Day', comrades. We'll have several hundred men outside the walls, armed a bit more heavily than usual. We'll deal with the spetsialny troops quick enough."

"And the other objectives?" asked Kosygin sourly. "Don't forget those."

"Not at all," said Larionov. "I have platoons detailed for Sheremetyevo, after the First Secretary has departed for his vacation, as well as the Central Television Studio, Pravda and our other objectives. Not to worry, Alexei Nikolaeyevich, it's all taken care of."

"It better be," Kosygin said. "Or we'll be taken care of."

Brezhnev re-directed everyone's attention to another map, an aeronautical chart of the Ukraine and Black Sea airspace regions. "Marshal Borodintsev, where exactly will you intercept?"

Borodintsev fingered a point over the Crimean Peninsula. "Normal flight plan for the First Secretary's plane is to go inbound to this marker at Yevpatoriya, then head east along the coast for Georgia. We're going to alter the transmitter signal slightly, tomorrow afternoon, after the Secretary is already airborne. That should cause some momentary confusion in the cockpit. Enough to let our MiGs approach. They'll come in high at first, from the northeast. If they're successful, they'll force the Secretary's plane toward here--" he tapped at an air base on the map-"Rudinka, the base serving Sevastopol."

"And then," Brezhnev completed the scenario, "he'll be arrested and incarcerated until we have full control of our objectives here in Moscow."

"Leonid Illych, you promised to bring a copy of the public statement. For us to see," said Marshal Larionov.

"Indeed, I did promise that. However, security concerns have caused me to keep that statement at my dacha for the moment. I can summarize it."

Larionov looked around at his fellow officers. "We have discussed this matter, Leonid Illych. A promise was made. We would read the statement, and agree with it here, in this room."

Brezhnev scanned the faces around him. "Comrades, don't worry. I won't betray you. We're in this together, like Lenin at the barricades. It's just that I don't want to carry that statement around with me until the time is right. You understand precautions like that, don't you?'

Golovkin growled. "Don't try anything, Leonid Illych. This is serious business."

Brezhnev held up his hands innocently. "We win or lose as one. That's what I say. It's for Rodina. Mother Russia needs us tomorrow. Save your personal bickering for another time."

Marshal Malinovsky scowled at their timidity. "Save your worry for the Americans, comrades."

"What do you think the Americans' reaction will be?" Larionov asked.

Brezhnev puffed on the cigarette for a moment. "The Americans are pre-occupied with events in the Caribbean, for the time being. As long as that's true, we'll have a free hand. In any case, we do have a similar goal to President Kennedy, don't we? We both want to reduce tensions between the capitalist and socialist camps. How can Kennedy argue with that? In fact, once our position is secure in Moscow, a letter will be sent to the American Embassy, explaining these very things."

"And what about the stolen warheads?" Marshal Golovkin asked. "The Americans think it's a Soviet plot."

"Some of them do," Brezhnev conceded. "Kennedy has to deal with the Pentagon. He's got militarists, just like us."

Kosygin piped up. "We had a meeting of the Presidium a few days ago. Semichastny gave the report from State Security. The Americans are still investigating, trying to find the bombs. Apparently, they haven't been too successful. Semichastny has two officers helping the Americans. But it seems the Cubantsy have vanished into the countryside."

"Marshal," Brezhnev told Malinovsky, "keep your forces on maximum alert. In case the Cubans do something rash."

Larionov wasn't satisfied. "I don't like it. The Cubans complicate things. Moving against Nikita Sergeyevich is dangerous enough. Have there been any more incidents, like the U-2 last Saturday?"

"None," admitted Malinovsky. "For the moment, the Americans have cut back their overflights. Of course, we've been complaining about them in the United Nations. That's one provocation we don't need. And there haven't been any more strays either, like the one over Siberia."

"These State Security officers, helping the Americans," asked Larionov, "they're Ninth Directorate?"

Brezhnev explained the agreement between Khrushchev and Kennedy, adding, "One of them, Kudinov, has special orders from the Chairman. If the warheads are located intact, he's to insert a small device they've developed. The device contains acid. It's supposed to destroy the inner parts of the bomb, though not the nuclear material. The Americans won't be able to study or copy our technology."

"We better get those bombs back soon," said Golovkin. "We've spent billions of rubles and a hell of lot of blood catching up to the Americans. If they get their hands on our designs, Stalin will rise from the dead and strike all of us down."

There was a smattering of uneasy chuckling. Malinovsky had an idea.

"Leonid Illych, has any thought been given to organizing a team of Spetsnaz, to enter America and seize the warheads once they're located? Before the Americans can study them?"

Brezhnev nodded. "It's been discussed. Zakharov at the General Staff came up with a plan. So far, the Presidium's been too pre-occupied with the missiles."

"I think it's a good idea," Malinovsky said. "We have assets available on short notice. I'd trust them before our friends at State Security."

"No doubt. Check with Zakharov again. If he can put men in America in the next few days, we ought to do it. At least, we have the option of seizing or destroying any warheads the Americans recover."

That decided, the meeting began to break up. Brezhnev was putting on his overcoat and muffler when Larionov pulled him aside. They huddled in a corner of the room, beside a portrait of Lenin overlooking a sickly stunted birch seedling in a pot.

"Leonid Illych, I didn't want to seem too negative in front of the others. You know how it is. I've got a lot to worry about the next few days."

Brezhnev placed callused hands on the Marshal's shoulderboards. "Valentin Borisovich, you've got a hell of a responsibility in this operation. Moscow Military District is the key to everything. I want you to be comfortable. What's troubling you now?"

Larionov shrugged. "We have the forces in place. Their loyalty is without question. But...so many things can go wrong. The Cubans, the Americans, State Security may learn something....I don't know."

"Come on, out with it--"

"Well, it's just something that keeps me awake at night. Raisa Borisova doesn't like that, you know. But I keep wondering: what if we fail? I know we can't fail, but things go wrong. Is there a plan--?"

Brezhnev motioned him outside the room. They left the building, stepping out into cold windy air, heavy clouds scudding low across the last fingers of sunlight. They crunched across a field of icy snow, heading away from Operations, heading for the wire fence and yellow gatehouse of the main entrance. Brezhnev stopped a few feet away from the inner fence. It was electrified, he knew. Beyond, between the double fences, anti-personnel mines dotted the freshly raked dirt.

"Here we can speak privately," Brezhnev said. "This is for your ears only. I don't want it passed around. Two days ago, I chatted for a few hours with several members of the Presidium. Shelepin and Kozlov, to be exact. You know how Nikita Sergeyevich dotes on them. Kozlov expects to succeed the Old Man. But the truth is more complicated and it goes back to Khrushchev's days as a Party man in the Ukraine. Both Kozlov and Shelepin have sentiments against the First Secretary. They haven't acted and they don't know about our little operation to save the country from the Reckless Adventurer, but they're sympathizers, just the same."

"You didn't tell them anything--"

Brezhnev held up a hand. "Of course not. I did something better. I created some insurance for all of us."

"And what is that?"

"I have found some papers, shall we say incriminating documents, that both men wrote. Don't ask how. The Kremlin's like a samovar when it boils: all seething with undercurrents, ready to explode. You can get anything on anybody, if you can meet the price. These memos criticize Khrushchev's virgin-lands program. It's a farce anyway, trying to grow wheat in the desert. And I added something to the memos, things that the two didn't write, references to military units in Moscow, even the name of one of your subordinates."

Larionov was shocked. "Leonid Illych, you said you wouldn't--"

"Listen, he's expendable. You haven't seen what State Security has on him. In any case, I returned the memos to their offices. The documents are there now. If the operation tomorrow blows up and Khrushchev starts throwing accusations around, Marshal Malinovsky and I will make counter-accusations. We'll implicate Koslov and Shelepin in the plan. When their offices are searched, and, that's inevitable, Nikita Sergeyevich will have all the evidence he needs to pin the coup on them."

Larionov wasn't so sure. "Fine in theory, Leonid Illych. If he stops with them. What makes you so certain he won't clean house, replace the whole Presidium?"

"Two things," Brezhnev admitted. "The Central Committee won't let him. And the second is the First Secretary's own nature. Remember what he told us about the capitalists, when the missile plan was first being debated: 'If a man sticks out a bayonet and strikes mush, he keeps on pushing. But when he hits cold steel, he pulls back.'"

"A peasant's tale, told by a peasant."

"Perhaps," said Brezhnev, "but what has Kennedy done? Shown us a steel wall across the Caribbean. Tomorrow night, when Khrushchev's plane is forced down and the tanks start moving in Moscow, we will be like steel ourselves."

Larionov was still unconvinced. "I guess I'm just hardheaded. But I'm in this for keeps. It's just that I know steel isn't so flexible. Sometimes it gets brittle. If it breaks, we have nothing to support us."

11-4-62, Sunday

Washington, D.C.

11:30 a.m.

For Barbara Shirley, a restless night and too much coffee had gotten her legs moving, even though she wasn't convinced the trip would amount to anything. She'd crawled out of bed just past seven, gotten dressed, eaten half a piece of toast with jelly and left her walkup at Seward Square to drive over to the Pentagon. She'd parked in the nearly empty West Lot, flashed her CONGRESSIONAL STAFF badge at gate security and walked briskly into the main concourse, heels clicking on the linoleum as she made her way to the public elevators. Two floors up, she went through more security, then crisscrossed through a maze of interconnected offices until she came to the E-Ring, the outermost of the Pentagon's five concentric circles.

Room 1225E housed the Joint Staff. Barbara flashed her badge again, and signed the log book. The guards were new or maybe it was just that she hadn't been diligent enough in her staff work lately, not enough to make the drive over and fight the crowds and the bureaucracy when a few quick phone calls would do.

Today, she had reasoned, lying in her bed that morning, no phone call would do. Only a personal check, around the Plans Library of the Office of the Joint Staff, would be likely to give her the answers she sought. The things she already knew, the things Lieutenant Cedars had already said or implied were troubling enough. There was only one way to put this beast to bed once and for all. She would go straight to the source and ask some hard questions.

Thank God for Congressional Staff passes, she mused, as she checked in with Commander Skiles, the duty officer at the situation desk. They had talked last night. Skiles was tall, handsome in an outdoorsy kind of way, with salt and pepper hair and leathery face. He unlocked the Current Records vault of the Plans Library and gave her a Form 5501, to log what she removed and took notes on. Unlike the average public libraries she had loved as a child, the Plans Library didn't offer checkout privileges to subscribers. Everything she legally had access to had to stay in the room. She smiled at the Yeoman in the glassed-in security office. He nodded sleepily and went back to his crossword puzzle.

From her earliest days as Jenkins' staff aide on defense, Barbara Shirley had made a special effort to learn the language of the Pentagon, a dialect as arcane and specialized as Urdu. Had anyone asked, as the Congressman occasionally did, what the hell purpose the Joint Staff served, she could have spilled the doctrine as well as any three-striper who'd ever trod these carpeted halls.

From memory: The Joint Staff assists the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in accomplishing his responsibilities for the unified strategic direction of the combatant forces, their operation under unified command, and for their integration into an efficient team of land, naval and air forces. The Joint Staff is composed of approximately equal numbers of officers from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force.

Since its establishment in 1947, statute has prohibited the Joint Staff from operating or organizing as an overall armed forces general staff, therefore, the Joint Staff has no executive authority over combatant forces.

But they did have one hell of a wargames library, Barbara thought. And she meant to dig in and find whatever she could.

For the first hour or so, she had the services of several duty staff assistants, more than willing to lend a pretty girl a hand on a sleepy Sunday morning at the office. She didn't expect to find any overt reference to Operation Sierra, or OpPlan 322 and she wasn't disappointed. If she was reading Lieutenant Cedars correctly, the whole thing was a tight little cabal, and the less documentation the better. Still, knowing the general layout and contents of the Plans and Exercises section, she figured she might be able to piece together bits and pieces of the scenario. For starters, she pulled out the huge notebook labeled Phibriglex-62, the wargame bible for the maneuvers recently cancelled in the Caribbean. Good a place as any to start, she told her assistants.

Throughout the morning, she had explained how she was conducting advance work for Congressman Jenkins. A report on combat readiness was to be the topic. She didn't mention what the Congressman planned to do with the report, not that such electioneering was all that unusual.

"The Congressman's interested in readiness in the Atlantic Command and Southern Command areas of responsibility," she told them. "That's what his constituents are concerned with, especially after the Missile Crisis." The two lieutenants shrugged, in effect, saying, fine with us...beats the hell out of pulling guard duty in the parking lot.

Barbara worked diligently for the next two hours, almost till noon, making notes on proposed units that OpPlans 312, 314, and 316 called for, units that would achieve different objectives depending on the scenario chosen. Though none of the documents she saw mentioned an OpPlan 322, it wasn't a great stretch to imagine the fictional wargame as some kind of modification of the others.

Lieutenant Cedars had implied early use of the Marines in Sierra. She remembered that. Coincidentally, several of the OpPlans, as well as the Phibriglex concept, mentioned the same approach. It was the commonality that struck her. Here was the first point for the Congressman's investigative report: did Sierra posit early use of the Marines, such as a Force Recon team, landing in Pinar del Rio Province in northwest Cuba to reconnoiter and provide strike guidance for follow-on air strikes? Likely, she thought, since two of the three existing OpPlans did propose just that. She wrote up several questions for the Congressman to put in his official request for information.

Another hour of study produced several more questions: did additional phases of OpPlan 322 involve aviation elements of the Marines and the Navy? She got that from the Phibriglex 'Concept of Operations' page.

From OpPlan 316, she learned a few more nuggets of information. The ground attack philosophy for assaulting Communist forces in Cuba called for an air assault by the 101st south of Havana and then amphibious assaults by the 2nd Marines near Mariel. Would OpPlan 322 have borrowed this same approach? Perhaps, perhaps not, yet she reasoned the forces each plan and scenario used remained the same. It was how they were used, the sequence and timing, that changed. That thought alone gave her encouragement to continue.

By two in the afternoon, she had a list of ten questions, around which she could fashion the preamble for a Congressional inquiry. She knew full well that the staffers she'd spent several hours with couldn't discuss operational matters, like current force disposition and status. She doubted they were even in the loop on such matters. In any case, ops stuff wasn't kept around the Joint Staff office anyway. For that, she'd have to have clearance to visit the National Military Command Center, two floors down and strictly off-limits to people like her.

But she felt better, knowing she had done something, she had something specific. With her list of possible unit involvements, concepts of operations, proposed targets and scenarios for assault, she could go back to the Congressman and he could make a formal request of the Secretary of Defense. Cumbersome and maddening though it was, that was how the process worked. As she gathered up her notes and papers, she wondered if somehow the process could be bypassed, sped up, thinking maybe, just maybe, there was some urgency in the investigation. She kept thinking about Lieutenant Cedars. He had been quite adamant that the inquiry should get underway and soon.

Barbara Shirley thanked the duty staff and signed out. She found the elevators, and decided to visit the cafeteria on the ground floor, river side, to get a bite to eat. Maybe a sandwich and coffee.

The real key, she realized, standing in line to pay for her bologna and cheese on white, was current force disposition. If any of the units the wargame scenarios and OpPlans called for were in positions required to conduct the operations called for, or if any of the units, especially the Marines, had actually been involved in combat, that would surely be enough evidence to begin a formal investigation.

Barbara smiled inwardly at that thought, as he munched on the sandwich, people-watching at the steady stream of uniforms flowing back and forth down the mall. Hell, if there had been any combat, it wouldn't stay an investigation for long. More like a lynching, she thought. All the Congressman would need was a few action reports, with casualties, and the hurricanes the Navy had been complaining about wouldn't be confined to the Caribbean anymore.

From what she knew, along with every other American who'd stayed glued to their TV sets the last week, the President had ordered no combat action in or around Cuba. She was sure he had told the Services to be ready, to move to deployment positions, and be prepared to move on Presidential order. But she was also sure no order had ever come. Such a thing wouldn't stay secret in this town for long. And Barbara had always prided herself on having pretty finely tuned political antennae. Plus, with the Soviets agreeing to a withdrawal of their missiles, there was every reason to avoid confrontation.

So why was Roy Cedars practically begging her to look into some dark corners, to ask questions that ought not to need asking?

That was the real puzzle. Something just didn't jibe. Barbara finished her sandwich and coffee and headed for the West exit. It was a brilliant fall afternoon in the Nation's Capital, a cool breeze stirring banks of leaves into small whirlpools along the edges of the parking lot. She found her light blue Rambler soon enough and got in.

She decided to call on Jenkins once again, to let him know what she had found. Besides, a short drive in the Virginia countryside on a day like this, with the top down and the breeze tickling her face, would do her some good. She made the trip through north Alexandria, and out on Columbia Pike in less than twenty minutes, turning at the Bailey's Crossroads sign onto Seminary Road. The Congressman's colonial was less than a mile south, on the left.

She parked in the pea-gravel driveway, but found no one home. She got back in her car and pulled out of the driveway, then remembered it was Sunday. That explained it. Jenkins had gone sailing in the Chesapeake with his state campaign chairman. An afternoon of beer and blue-shell crabs, he had told her. Get away from the pressure for a few hours.

She'd have to wait for Monday.

Barbara Shirley was pensive and quiet as she drove back into DC. She crossed Memorial Bridge, skirting the Lincoln Memorial, and headed east on Constitution, mindlessly ticking off the clumps of tourists and monuments, wondering. She passed Capitol Hill, resisted an impulse to head up to her office, and squeezed the Rambler into a tiny corner spot near Seward Square, a three minute walk up to her apartment.

Once inside, she flipped off her pumps and sat down, increasingly uncomfortable with what she had learned. Is it me? Am I seeing ghosts or something?

There was absolutely nothing on paper to substantiate any of her fears, or for that matter, anything Cedars had implied. Yet she felt a growing sense of dread. She needed to talk, to somebody, anybody, just to get it out, share her feelings. And, she told herself firmly, pouring a Scotch, they were feelings and little else.

But she didn't know what to do.

Mindlessly, she flipped on the TV, hunting for an old movie, something to occupy her mind. There was a football game...the Redskins were losing to the Packers. Nothing knew in that. She watched for awhile, as Bart Starr made impossible passes and the Pack notched another touchdown, running up the score on the hapless 'Skins.

She was never sure, exactly, when the idea came to her. But by the fourth quarter, with the Pack up 35-10, the thought was fully formed and she was setting down her third Scotch, hunting in her black book for the reporter's name and number. What the hell was that guy's name...?

Andrew Kingsley. She found it at last. The Washington Post. Foreign affairs staff writer. She'd met him at somebody's boring cocktail party a few months ago. Dark-haired, glasses, but cute in a college preppy way. She dialed the number.

Remarkably, she got Kingsley on three rings. He was watching the same game. They chatted for a few moments, renewing acquaintances, then Barbara told him she had a story he might be interested in. She declined to say more, but insisted he'd find the time well spent. They agreed to meet at a café on Pennsylvania, across from the Old Post Office Building, sometime around 4 p.m.

Barbara hung up and started to pour another Scotch but stopped. No, I need a clear head for this one. She knew perfectly well that what she was doing was both illegal and unethical. But she also knew Lieutenant Roy Cedars hadn't confided in her for sport. She'd found enough at the Joint Staff office to warrant a deeper investigation, the kind that Congressman Jenkins could start.

Perhaps it was just a woman's intuition, but Barbara Shirley felt a strong premonition of urgency, as she dressed for her afternoon date with Kingsley.

11-4-62, Sunday

Miami

3:30 p.m.

Mike French was fatigued from nearly eight continuous hours of questioning. He downed the last cold dregs of the coffee, flipping through page after page of handwritten notes, while he and Jack Connors waited for the Director to come on the line. They had spent most of the day in a small windowless interrogation room at MPD's seventh floor, after a brief stop at Miami's Victoria Hospital, near the Orange Bowl. The injuries to Miguel Munoz proved relatively minor--a few facial cuts and abrasions, and a wrenched back from the impact with the water. Munoz' wife, Rosita, had a possible slight concussion. She was being held overnight at the hospital for observation. French and Connors had been treated and released. They had come straight to the MPD Police Center, with Munoz in tow.

Haggard and unshaven, Munoz had offered no real resistance to their questions. From the beginning, it had been obvious the importer was a local contact and courier for the commando operation. Now approaching four o'clock, Mike French was stunned at the scope and audacity of Operation Moncada.

Two hours into the questioning, French had called time out, and gone to the comm center to phone Washington. They didn't have all the facts and Munoz' memory was still a bit fuzzy, perhaps from the painkillers the hospital had given him, but they had enough information to warrant an emergency call to FBI Headquarters. Just before noon, Munoz had confirmed the target cities for Moncada: Washington, D.C. and New York. Though he couldn't say the exact timetable or where the bombs would be placed, he told French that the Cubans had split themselves into two teams to carry the devices to their final locations.

The first call French had made had precipitated a near panic at the Justice Department. Cliff Hostetler had quickly gotten Hoover himself on the line and a three-way conversation ensued. Hoover had been blunt: Are you sure? What's the evidence? What's the timetable? When are they supposed to be in the area? What assets do we have tracking them? Anything on the alert boards? How about the state police?

It irked French that they had answers for none of the Director's questions. Hoover wasn't a man blessed with much patience and his voice began to rise. But Munoz didn't know everything. There were still several hours more of digging and cross-checking to get answers. Meanwhile, Hoover had said, the government had to act, now. The Director had told Hostetler to organize the contacts: calls would be made immediately to notify the State Department, the Defense Department, the White House, the Metro D.C. police, the Commanding General of the Washington Military District and the Office of Civil Defense. Comparable authorities in New York would have to be notified. Emergency meetings would be set up within the hour. And Hoover wanted reports too. Every hour.

French and Connors had between them sixteen pages of handwritten notes. Copies had already been made and the copies would be couriered to the Justice Department overnight. An Air Force plane was already on the ground waiting at Homestead for the trip. The two agents were in a private office adjoining Chief Parkes' suite going over a few inconsistencies in Munoz' story, when the speakerphone chirped. Hoover's gravely voice filled the air.

"Men, what have you got for me now?"

French spoke first. "A little more, sir. We have the locations of the safe houses Munoz arranged. After Mobile, they had stops planned in Atlanta--that's where the team split up--Roanoke and Dayton, Ohio, and a freight forwarder in Newark, New Jersey. I've got the names and addresses."

"Good. Give 'em to Cliff. You got a better description of the vehicles?"

"Yes, sir, but the suspect's memory's a little fuzzy. We're trying to crosscheck now. MPD's helping out."

Hoover growled. "I want accurate descriptions. Tag numbers, the works. You men are good agents. You know how to motivate suspects. The Chief gives you any static, you tell him to call me."

'Yes, sir. There is one other thing we've learned. The suspect indicated that the operation leader--this Ramirez fellow--had a personal vendetta against Kennedy. Seems he lost a brother at the Bay of Pigs last year. The suspect claims he doesn't know where the bombs are going to be placed. With a megaton device, I'm not sure it matters. But I'm betting the White House is it."

Hoover's voice was low and ominous. "Federal agents don't gamble, Mr. French. We deal in facts. You get me specifics. I've already ordered a national alert for trucks matching the descriptions you've given me. The better the match, the faster we'll find 'em. Now, get back to work and get me some facts. I'll look forward to your next report."

They heard the Director click off and the line went dead. French slammed the notes down.

"Goddamn it, he doesn't know what it's like down here!"

Connors was sympathetic. "And we probably don't know what it's like up there. C'mon, let's get back to Smiley-face. Maybe he'll remember some more."

While Connors and French peppered Munoz with more questions, three blocks away, the Russians had a few questions of their own.

Alexei Maximov and Valery Kudinov had slipped out an hour ago, and walked several blocks east, along 4th Street to the Bus Terminal. Both men were certain all phones in the Police Center would be carefully monitored. Their instructions, once the bombs were located or under surveillance, were to inform the Embassy in Washington. Feklisov, the State Security rezident, would want to know every detail. Especially what the Americans planned to do.

Maximov went into the Bus Terminal, hoping to find phones they could use, phones that weren't bugged. In the Soviet Union, even public transport was controlled by the State. In America, he hoped, the authorities' reach wouldn't extend so far. That was just one of the amazing things he had learned about their capitalist foe. That average people could travel about the country with no restrictions, no papers, no outward sign of surveillance or control was a thing almost beyond belief. More than once, he and Valery

Pavlovich had taken advantage of it.

Outside the terminal, Kudinov strolled, as casually as he could, up one side of 4th Street, crossed the street at the next intersection, then back down the opposite side. Routine fieldcraft for agents abroad. Check behind, note obvious surveillance. He walked the same route twice more, varying his routine slightly, pausing at newspaper stands, store windows, checking constantly. All seemed clear. There was no obvious tail that he could spot. Yet he knew without a doubt that the Embassy's assigned shadow was there, somewhere. Feklisov's sent a professional this time. Ten minutes later, he slipped into the terminal, looking for Maximov. He found his comrade at a long bank of phones.

After a frustrating delay filled with chirps and squawks, as ciphering equipment was turned on, the connection to the Embassy was made. Feklisov himself came on the line. He was worried. After Maximov filled him in, the rezident was even more worried.

"Fools! I tried to make things easier. I even talked with the President's brother. But Moscow doesn't want to listen."

"Alexander Kaganavich, listen to me, for once. I've heard nothing from Moscow Center. Nothing from Vnukovo. You have instructions? Any changes to our mission?"

Feklisov swore at them. "You know operational matters are not discussed on the phone. Instructions are available in the usual way."

"Very well," Maximov said. He looked at Kudinov, then hung up. They quickly left the Bus Terminal. On the way out, Kudinov stopped at a newsstand and purchased a Miami Herald. CUBA FIGHTS MISSILE WITHDRAWAL blared the front headline. He tucked the paper under his arm.

Two days before leaving Moscow for the meeting in Lisbon, Maximov and Kudinov had spent several hours at Dom Dva, going over contact methods with their handlers. There hadn't been time for the Embassy in Washington to organize anything but the most rudimentary variations of routine fieldcraft techniques. Moscow Center knew that its officers, assigned to the American bomb case, might have to travel around the United States. Normal dead drop procedure wouldn't work, when you didn't know where you would be from night to night. So an alternative was worked out. Maximov and Kudinov were to check in with the rezident every day, giving their whereabouts and next destination. The rezident would then see that a trained operative shadowed the officers, wherever they went, always less than eight hours after leaving Washington's National Airport. This shadow would function as a local handler, carrying the most up-to-date information from Moscow, and returning to the Embassy every night with Maximov's estimation of the case progress and hastily written reports for transmission back to the Soviet Union. It was cumbersome and expensive, and exposed a lot of Embassy personnel to American counterintelligence, but Moscow's orders had been firm.

The Russians walked back toward the MPD Police Center. This time, Kudinov's trained eye spotted him. They crossed the street at 4th and Northwest 2nd, turning abruptly left at the towering royal palm behind the traffic lightstand. A dark-haired man in khaki shorts and flowery shirt, sporting sunglasses, turned too. He had a tightly rolled newspaper tucked under his left arm. The man had been waiting for the light to change, but as Maximov and Kudinov came abreast, he started forward, angled toward them. They bumped and both newspapers fell to the concrete.

"I'm sorry," Maximov apologized. He bent down to retrieve the man's paper.

"No. It was my fault. Please--" The man squatted down to help Maximov. Their eyes locked for a split second. Maximov didn't recognize him but that was to be expected. Feklisov's shadow operation was expensive with manpower. He'd probably called in every officer working in North America. No doubt, the Americans were amused at the shuttling of personnel in and out of the Embassy. He could well imagine traffic jams at the Sixteenth Street entrance.

"Here," the man handed Maximov his newspaper. "I wasn't looking where I was going--lost in thought, you know."

"As are we all," Maximov said. He accepted the paper and they set off, with no further words. A quick glance down confirmed the shadow's professional training. No longer the Miami Herald. He now had a rolled copy of the New York Times, the front headline in the exact same position as the original paper. A moment's glance could confirm the success of the switch. It had worked perfectly.

Back in the seventh floor room Chief Parkes had assigned to the Russians, Kudinov took the paper from Maximov and carefully unfurled it. Inside the Sports Page, still doing post-mortems on the Yankees' World Series victory over the Giants, a small white envelope had been taped to an inside page. Kudinov opened the envelope, and extracted several sheets, uncoded. Maximov blocked the door with a chair, as no lock was available. Then he and Kudinov read silently, together. When they were done, Kudinov pulled out his lighter and touched the flame to a corner of each page. In seconds, the message was a pile of ashes.

Both men lit cigarettes, uneasy at their new directions.

The message had been typed but the wording was unmistakably Feklisov's. Probably cabled directly from Moscow Center and condensed down for the shadow. . The letter had provided a numbered list of actions they were to take:

1. Once the bombs had been located, they were to get to the weapons first, before the Americans had time to examine them, and either completely disable them with the acid capsules Kudinov had been given or, if circumstances permitted, arrange for the quick removal of the devices out of the country.

2. The Rezident was organizing a team of Spetsnaz operatives to be available for a quick insertion/extraction mission in the target areas. The commandos were currently aboard a Foxtrot-class submarine cruising a few hundred miles offshore in the North Atlantic, well east and north of the Americans' quarantine line.

3. Once the targets were known--and Maximov had made sure Feklisov knew the Cubans planned to assault Washington and New York--the Spetsnaz team would be put ashore, split into two groups, and make their way to the warhead sites.

If neither Maximov nor Kudinov could get to the bombs, the Spetsnaz commandos were to complete their mission: remove the weapons' fissile core, arming and fusing systems and other vital components, ditch the core, then make their way to agreed-upon pickup points on the coast for extraction.

4. Maximov and Kudinov were to be given a special ciphered signal to provide, over the American public telephone network, a 'go' command that would be relayed on to the submarine, signaling them to begin the operation.

5. Under no circumstances, the message had ended, were the Americans to be allowed to take the K-12 or K-5 devices into custody. Use of deadly force was authorized both men to prevent any such attempt.

That had raised Maximov's eyebrows.

"Valery Pavlovich, Moscow doesn't think the Americans can resist two well-trained State Security officers such as ourselves. I'm not hopeful we can use deadly force against the entire might of the United States government."

Kudinov was staring at a map of the U.S. someone had pinned to the wall. "Maybe not, but we have our orders. You better get back to the interrogation. Talk to French. See what the Americans are going to do. We need their intelligence to find the bombs."

"I suppose the Rezidentura has every clerk who can walk out on the streets, doing the same thing. It's an interesting competition: their investigators against our State Security and GRU officers. Perhaps I should take bets."

Kudinov was in no mood for humor. "The damned bismachy are going to get us all killed. Castro's an ass. I've got a good mind to tell Feklisov just to walk down to the White House and keep his eyes open."

Maximov headed for the door. He snorted. "Feklisov wouldn't know an atomic bomb from the Moon. It's up to us, Valery Pavlovich. If we fail, and Feklisov calls in the Spetsnaz, what do you think will happen? You think, the way the world's been the last few weeks, the Americans are going to sit still? Moscow's full of idiots, we all know that. They're the ones who are going to get us all killed." He jerked the door open and stalked off down the hall.

He found Mike French with Jack Connors, still pumping the Cuban refugee for more information. Maximov stood outside the room, peering in through the one-way glass. A pair of MPD detectives, one munching a candy bar, acknowledged him.

The FBI agent had given him several summaries of what the Cuban was saying. Apparently, the Cuban commandos had driven from Mobile to Atlanta, then split into two units, one for New York, one for Washington. According to Mike French, Munoz insisted he had had no further contact with the commandos, since they left had left Atlanta until Ramirez had called from Roanoke yesterday morning. The truck had been in an accident. They were looking for another truck. Munoz, nervously fingering a cigarette, told them Ramirez was worried. Castro was supposed to make an announcement on Saturday, that the bombs were in America. Munoz was supposed to get a message to his handler, a fellow known only as Sparrow, saying Castro should wait. The bombs wouldn't be in place yet.

Maximov could hear the questions and answers coming through a tinny speaker beneath the mirrored glass. Mike French had put down his pen and placed himself nose to nose with the Cuban, yanking out the cigarette dangling from the corner of Munoz' mouth.

"You told me before you didn't know what their timetable was. Now, you just said Castro has to wait. The bombs aren't ready yet. I'll ask you again: what the hell's the deadline?"

Munoz shifted uncomfortably. He gingerly touched a bandage on the side of his head. "I don't know. Exactly. Just that Ramirez wanted to have the bombs ready by next week."

"Next week, when?"

"Tuesday, I think. I'm not sure."

"What's so special about Tuesday?"

"Amigo, I don't know. I already told you that--"

"Jesus H. Christ," murmured Jack Connors, from the corner. "Tuesday's Election Day, Mike. That can't be a coincidence."

Mike French sat back. "That has to be it." He stood up abruptly. "Jack, take this joker back to his cage. I think we need to talk."

Munoz was taken back to the holding cell on the ninth floor. Mike French went to the task force command center. The Russians were there too, Chief Parkes showed up a few minutes later.

Mike went over the notes he and Jack Connors had assembled. The summary took about ten minutes.

"I've already notified Washington. The Director and Hostetler were on the line just a half hour ago. I've got to make another report on the hour. Plus New York's clued in too. Hostetler was handling that."

Chief Parkes waved a piece of paper. "I just checked the Crime Center logs a few minutes ago. Virginia State Police posted a stolen vehicle report at eleven this morning. Two-ton delivery truck, a Ford. Apparent murder-robbery at a furniture store in Roanoke. That would corroborate your suspect's story about an accident near Roanoke."

French checked his notes. "Munoz says the commandos were looking for another truck. Do we have the make and ID on this stolen vehicle?'

Parkes showed him the report. "It's all there. And here's another report from Virginia too. Suspected kidnapping hostage...right outside of DC. A woman and a child. Report says she was taken by a group of men, described as Mexican, just outside of Roanoke. She got away at a truck stop in Falls Church. Early this morning."

French scanned the cryptic Crime Center log entries. "I need to talk with the investigating officer. We may have our connection, right here"

"Christ, Mike, that means the Cubans are already in Washington. The bomb could already be in place."

"I know. Don't forget New York too. We need to back-check with Roanoke PD as well, see if anyone's filed a missing-persons report on this lady. You handle that. I've got to get this back to the Bureau. Hostetler will have my head if Hoover doesn't get his hourly report."

French went to the big wall map of the United States. "How many ways can there be from Roanoke into Washington? Or from Dayton into New York City?"

Parkes stood there too, breathing heavily. He'd taken the stairs up from the intelligence room three floors below, not wanting to wait on the damn slow-as-molasses elevators. "Hundreds. Your suspect said they were keeping to smaller roads?"

French nodded, jamming his hands in his pockets. "And trying to travel at night. The problem now is: we know the targets, we know the deadlines. Where the hell are the bombs?"

"Jack's right. Five'll get you ten the Washington bomb's already in place. And if our Russian buddies here are right, it won't make a hill of beans where it is. Thing like that could level half of northern Virginia, from anywhere inside the District."

"Great. That only leaves us a few hundred square miles to look in, and two days to find it. Hoover's already alerting the President now. He says the Director's recommending a full civil defense mobilization, immediately. The Bureau's setting up a task force with Virginia State Police and the Army to block all roads leading to and from the District. But cordoning off New York will be a lot harder."

"What's next for you?"

French looked around the command center. "Wrap up here. Get my notes in some kind of order. And get my ass up to Washington. We got a furniture truck running around the Nation's Capital with an atomic bomb aboard. And Munoz' description of another one heading for New York. Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey State Police have already been notified. In fact, Hostetler approved a nationwide alert for both trucks. There's just a chance the Cubans could change their minds, you know. Turn around and head for Boston or some other city."

Parkes gave up on the map and glared at the two Russians. "This is a hell of a mess you've gotten us into. We find those two bombs, we ought to ship 'em airmail special delivery, right to Khrushchev's front door. Armed and ready."

Alexei Maximov smiled wanly. "The First Secretary would appreciate that. Even if the bomb went off, he'd die knowing Americans hadn't stolen our secrets."

"I don't understand you people at all. How could you think we wouldn't object to having a bunch of nuclear missiles right on our front door."

"Chief Parkes, that was precisely the goal of our operation. To equalize the pain. Do you think we Soviets enjoy being in the bullseye of your missiles in Turkey? Or Italy? Or your Polaris submarines in the Mediterranean? Your government and your Secretary of Defense speak of deterrence, as if we are children. Slap our hands and we'll run away." Maximov smile faded and his face darkened. "We will not run away. You've won this time, and humiliated us in front of the world. But you may be assured there will be other times. The Soviet people have very long memories."

Mike French tried to intervene. "This isn't getting us--"

"No, now, I have their attention, Mike. I want to hear the man out. Hell, he's a cop, same as you and me. Tell me, Mr. Maximov: you're a police man of some sort. If this was Russia, what the hell would you do? Say Castro sneaks a couple of nuclear bombs into Moscow. You got two days. What do you do?'

Maximov lips tightened. He leveled a firm gaze at Chief Parkes. "Valery Pavlovich and I have discussed this very point. In Russia, there would be no argument. A Spetsnaz team would be organized and sent to Cuba."

"But the bombs are in Moscow."

"So they are. But the source of the problem is in Havana."

"You mean Castro?"

"Exactly. Our Spetsnaz are well trained in kidnapping and similar useful arts. In the Red Army, every rifleman is trained to aim for the head. The enemy is stopped instantly. Death is quick. Your problem is solved."

"And Castro is the head." Parkes mulled the idea over. "You know, Mike, that ain't such a bad idea. Maybe we ought turn this whole shebang over to the Russians."

French was already gathering up his notes to call Hoover. "I'll pass it along. That ought to go over real big at the White House."

11-4-62, Sunday

Homestead Air Force Base

4:00 p.m.

General Olin Haley was still angry when he came down the metal stairs from the C-2 Greyhound that had just spent two hours bringing him back from the Iwo. Damn it, he needed to be aboard ship, with the men, handling things in the landing force operations center. He had just come from an intense, frustrating meeting with Admiral Jack Stone. They had closeted themselves for two hours in the LFOC offices on Iwo's 04 Level, and savaged each other to hell and back over where to take Sierra next.

Haley had given a lot of thought to the problem of Jack Stone, turning it over in his mind every which way on the long flight back from the task force. Staring out the window at the choppy whitecaps of the mid-Atlantic, he had come to several conclusions, none of them comfortable. First, he wasn't sure Stone had the backbone to go forward. And second, if the Navy bowed out, could the Marines pull off the rest of OpPlan 322 by themselves?

The conventional, chair-borne commander's answer to that was no.

But Haley wasn't called Hellacious for nothing. If they lost air support from the Navy, the Marines could still put a few A-4s over the battlefield, and he figured any helicopter worth its rotors could carry a few riflemen to give some covering fire when the amphib forces came ashore.

Leaving Stone white-faced and sweating in the LFOC, Haley had turned his mind to another nagging loose end: the Army and what role they would play in Operation Sierra.

On the flight back, he had decided to execute the second phase of the OpPlan--the Air Strategic Bombardment and Tactical Neutralization phase--beginning at 0100 hours on Tuesday, the 6th. The SA-2 and SA-7 batteries around each target cluster had to go, along with the MiGs at Santa Clara and the anti-aircraft artillery everywhere. Not until the enemy's air defenses had been suppressed, could the Marines secure air superiority over the battlefield and give cover for the ground forces to come. Haley bounded across the tarmac toward the COC, eager to get to the radio shack and issue orders. He wanted to have the relevant units fully staged and equipped and alerted for movement by 1800 hours tonight. It would take twenty-four hours for the Iwo and her sister assault ships to maneuver to strike positions. Plus orders for Marine Air Group 14 at Key West would have to be cut and sent.

He also wanted to give Bill Cox at the 101st a little call.

Haley burst into the COC and soon spied Roy Cedars, head buried in a mass of requisition forms. He glanced up, then abruptly got to his feet.

"As you were, Lieutenant. And belay that paperwork. I'm cutting operation orders I want sent out, right away."

Cedars followed the general down the hall, through several cubicles and into his office. Haley slipped out of his flight jacket and flopped in the desk chair, which he rolled to a file cabinet. He spun the combination tumblers, removed the security bar and opened up the top drawer, extracting several folders.

"Will the General be needing any 1502s?"

"Negative." Haley opened all the folders and laid them across his desk. He selected several sheets from each, stapling them together. "Just an exercise. Normal shipsets will do. We're going to this party dressed the way we are. Here." He handed the pages to the Lieutenant. "Deployment orders for affected units. Do the Second Marines first. They have the most to do and the farthest to go."

Cedars accepted the forms. "I'll get them out on the teletype right away, sir. Will the exercise follow normal procedure? Routine sitreps on re-deployments, and so forth?"

"Not just yet." Haley leaned back and searched for a cigar, then realized the panatellas were in his jacket. He was glowing with enthusiasm. Must have had a good trip to the Iwo, Cedars thought. "I want to append some additional material to the sitreps. When Cedars looked a little funny, Haley chuckled.

"Don't get your panties in a wad, Lieutenant. I know it isn't regulation, but I've got my reasons." He leaned forward on the desk, cupping his chin in his hands, studying his S-3 like a wayward puppy. "You're a good man, Roy, but you want to guard against one thing. Predictability. You're aiming for command, just like any good john worth his bars. Predictability is the enemy of success in combat. Same as football. Fake one way, go the other. That way, the enemy has to cover more territory, more possibilities. Things get complicated. And that's when he makes mistakes."

"Begging the General's pardon, sir, but isn't it possible that we can overcomplicate things for ourselves too?"

Haley nodded sagely. The boy did have a head on his shoulders. Haley reminded himself that every S-3 was a work in progress.

"Indeed we can, Lieutenant. Indeed we can. That's why we train and practice. Get those orders out right away."

Cedars left the office and went to the radio shack. A Navy chief was running the comm center this afternoon. Cedars waved the orders, mouthing at Kelly: From the Old Man. I'll sort it out. He retired to his cubicle to prepare the transmission.

In his office, Haley paced restlessly. Cedars was asking a lot of questions. That was bad. The boy was right. Regulations required a situation report on every ordered re-deployment of any Marine unit. The bigger the unit, the higher the sitrep went. When you started moving entire divisions around, Headquarters USMC wanted to know.

And Haley had devised a little scheme to get around that.

The regs said you had to post a sitrep to the Deputy Chief of Operations, when ever anything higher than a regiment was re-deployed. But the regs had some loopholes. They didn't say you had to do it right away. The DCOS/Ops wanted to know right away, but this was the Marines after all and sometimes the paperwork took a little time. Nobody ever got busted for keeping his eye on the mission and letting the paperwork slide. There were sins and there were sins.

In the Marines, screwing up the mission was the greatest sin of all.

So Haley had decided to write up some attachments, to go along with the sitreps, or at least several hours later. Maybe even a day or two later. He had already written notes for the attachments. When the DCOS/Ops got them, the paperwork would simply explain that the sitreps were describing a "training exercise," nothing more than a little wargame using troops already in place. HQS would probably complain. But Haley knew how they worked. He'd long ago figured the desk jockeys occupying the DCOS's staff would be a lot more uptight over incomplete sitreps than they would be over the nature of the re-deployment.

With even a little luck, the sitreps would be hung up in the jaws of Headquarters' bureaucracy long enough to let Sierra reach the point of no return. By the time the DCOS/Ops started questioning actual deployment positions and units--and Haley knew he eventually would--the Second Marines would be marching lockstep into Havana, Castro's bearded head on the point of someone's bayonet.

By then, even the President himself wouldn't have the balls to call off the show.

Haley scribbled up some notes, then inserted paper into a typewriter beside his desk. He pecked away for a few moments, then stopped and got up, pacing the office again. He was too damn restless to do anything as tedious as typing. Maybe he could get Cedars to do these as well. A bit of a risk, but worth it. He snatched the notes up and stuffed them in his shirt pocket.

He took his notes to Cedars, with firm instructions not to transmit the sitreps and the appendix until 2000 hours that night.

"I have a few more things I want to add," he explained.

Cedars thought the request unusual but then the requester was Hellacious Haley and the General had done a lot of unusual things lately.

"Aye, aye, sir. Transmit to DCOS not before 2000 hours."

"I'm going back to my quarters for a few hours. I'll be heading out to Iwo tomorrow morning. Next phase of the exercise." He left the building and Cedars puzzled over the whole affair for a few minutes.

He had always admired the General. One thing you could always say about Hellacious Haley: he never had a single doubt about anything in his life. He made mistakes, same as the next man. Plenty of mistakes, to judge from the scuttlebutt out of Camp Lejeune. But Haley wasn't one to ponder the subtleties and ramifications of every course of action. To say he was a man of action was like saying Everest was just another mountain.

Cedars prided himself on being an efficient and capable S-3 for Haley. Logistics could be a bear for the non-methodical mind, which meant that, in his rare reflective moments, the General wasn't averse to praising Cedars for his attention to the details the General would rather not be bothered with. So it was that Cedars sometimes found himself dotting the General's I's and crossing his T's, tightening up the paperwork trail the man left behind, and essentially keeping the Commanding Officer, U.S. Second Marines right with the gods of bureaucracy in Washington. It was a role that Cedars enjoyed.

Normally, Haley was only too happy to leave such details as requisition forms and administrative reports to his S-3. That was what made this exercise so peculiar. Over the last day or so, Haley had several times taken it upon himself to handle logistical details that any sane field leader would delegate to his staff.

The question uppermost in Cedars' mind, as he scanned the General's handwritten appendix notes, was what to do. It was regulation, straight out of the Marine Corps manuals, to send full sitreps when any significant re-deployment of forces was ordered, even for exercises. Hqs USMC wanted to know where their men were and what they were up to. By delaying a full report, Haley was violating some pretty damned fundamental operating procedures that the Corps lived by. And, what was more, he knew it. Thus, Cedars decided, there had to be a reason.

Ten minutes of this kind of reflection had only succeeded in giving Cedars a headache. He massaged the back of his neck. Damn air conditioning. He needed a walk in the sunshine. Unfortunately, the weather was threatening and the skies might open up any moment. Over the last two weeks, since the mobilization, he'd come to despise south Florida. Nothing but heat and mosquitoes.

It was going on five o'clock when Cedars finally made up his mind. A good staff officer supports his commander. It was a simple rule. And the Corps swore by it. Cedars figured the best way he could do that was to make sure the General didn't trip over any paperwork taboos. Accordingly, he made up his mind to directly disobey the Haley's last orders.

He may take a piece out of my fanny but at least the paperwork will be right.

He decided to send the sitreps of the new deployed force positions to the DCOS/Ops right away. Not at 2000 hours, as Haley wanted. The next question was the appendix. Regs said that was an attachment to the sitrep. As such, it should be sent along with the report. But Haley had indicated he had more to add. I better hold off on the appendix.

He inserted a telex transmittal form in his typewriter and began typing. The sitreps had to be in the right format for telex. That would take about half an hour. Then, he'd sit with Chief Kelly in the comm shack and see that the reps got transmitted properly. With no explanatory appendix, the new troop movements ought to raise a few eyebrows at DCOS/Ops.

A short distance away, Olin Haley was fuming and snorting as he paced back and forth across the creaky wooden floorboards of the 'Q'. He was on the phone to Major General Bill Cox, C/G of the 101st Air Assault Division up at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

"Goddamn it, Bill, don't be so pigheaded! We need the 101st in the game. Time's short and the Army needs to get onboard. My boys are itching for blood. I'm sure yours are too."

But Cox was cagey, noncommittal. Haley had a reputation around the military and he wasn't buying the man's bayonet politics.

"Shit, Olin, I'm not so sure we need an exercise like this now. It's not that I'm disagreeing but the risk, you know--what you're asking is--"

"What I'm asking, Bill, is for you to get on the train before it leaves the station. You know damn well I'm right. And those crustaceans in Washington can't see it! What the hell's got into you, lately?"

"Just a little thing called the U.S. Constitution. And my officers' oath. For Christ's sake, even Ham Howse doesn't know about this. You can't really expect me to turn loose a few regiments without the Commanding General of Eighteenth Airborne knowing about it. With all respects, Olin, this is suicide. Career suicide. This whole thing could just blow up in our faces."

Haley squeezed the phone so hard it slipped out of his grasp and landed clattering on the writing table. He picked it up again. "Bill, listen to me. Castro's dead meat. I'm telling you he can be had. Just the other day, I was in a briefing. CINCLANT shared some intel from Washington. He told us several stories on how Alpha 66 and several other patriot groups are doing hit and run raids along the Cuban coast, really giving Castro's people hell. Do you know how many people Immigration is processing every day at Key West? Over three hundred! Cubans are voting with their feet, Bill. I'm

not making this up. Castro's a paper tiger. And the time to chop him down is now, right now! You can't make me believe the 101st is turning chickenshit, not when we have a Communist dictator right in our fist, and all we gotta do is squeeze."

"Olin, I'm going to have to think about this. Tuesday's go day, right?"

"That is correct, General Cox. Come hell or high water, the Marines are on the move Tuesday. The Army can either join the charge or get out of the way."

"Give me till noon Monday. I'll call you. Can you do that much? I need to clue General Howse in on this."

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you. I've already had a little talk with General Howse. He's not reading the same newspapers we are. Best keep this to yourself."

"Understood. Noon tomorrow, you'll have an answer. Oh, and Olin, one more thing?"

"Yeah?"

"The 101st will be more than happy to kick Marine butt anywhere, anytime."

Haley had to smile. "If that's an invitation, I accept. Just so you know: at 0700 hours tomorrow morning, I'm headed back to the Iwo. If the Army doesn't want a piece of the action, then I guess it'll be up to the Navy and the Marines again."

He hung up.

11-4-62, Sunday

Washington, D.C.

6:00 p.m.

The Joint Staff Situation Desk, second floor E-ring of the Pentagon, was manned this Sunday afternoon by Army Major Jim Lemaster. Lemaster had been on duty since 1200 hours, mostly attending to routine ops details in the Caribbean, as the task forces maneuvered to monitor the missile withdrawal. The President had ordered a partial de-mobilization as well, canceling some of the troop carrier squadron callups he had activated only last week. The crisis seemed to be winding down. There were still a lot of missiles to get out of Cuba but the Soviets seemed to be cooperating. Only minor incidents had occurred at sea the last few days, usually misunderstandings on procedure.

Lemaster had settled in to a detailed study of the Washington Post Sports Section when the Navy chief in the all-service code room brought him a stack of reports fresh off the telex.

"What's up, Chief?"

Chief Petty Officer Wilson Nutting landed the stack on Lemaster's metal desk. "Just de-coded, sir. Southern Command Expeditionary Force Headquarters."

Lemaster's big eyebrows went up. He hadn't expected anything today from the mainland. "Homestead, huh? Let's see..." He sorted through the paper, finding much of the pile a series of Navy and Marine sitreps. He scanned the transmittal. Second Marines...several companies...Marine Air Group 14 at Key West...

He started flipping through the sitreps, picking out key words from the standardized format he knew so well. Ordered Deployment...Time on Station...Table of Organization and Equipment...Readiness Evals....

Lemaster became aware of the Chief's hovering shadow and he looked up. "Thanks, Chief. That'll be all for now. I'll take care of 'em." Nutting hastily saluted and departed the glassed-in room.

Ten minutes' study of the Marines' sitreps produced several low whistles. Lemaster felt his jaw tighten. He had a small nautical map of the Caribbean taped to the frosted glass partition behind him and he pulled it down, checking positions.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he thought. Who ordered this? He rubbed his eyes. It had been a long afternoon and it was Sunday. He studied the deployment positions closely, converting latitude and longitude grid positions to something he could read on the chart. He wondered if he was missing something. If he was reading the sitreps right, several companies of Second Marines, now aboard the Iwo Jima, would be debarking on assault craft at 0100 hours Tuesday for an amphibious assault on the northwest Cuban coast. Destination: La Esperanza.

Huh?

Ordinarily, Major Lemaster would have attributed such a ridiculous sitrep to a typo or someone's haste in coding the telex. He thought about calling the Chief back in. Maybe someone in the code room had screwed up.

Then he remembered that Congressional staffer, from this morning. What was her name? Barbara Shirley. That was it. She'd been poking around in the Plans Library all morning, digging up stuff on wargames and training exercises. Some kind of report, Jeff Skiles had told him. The Navy commander, finishing up the early shift, had filled in him.

Miss Shirley was some kind of dedicated researcher, Lemaster thought. Pretty enough with her blond bouffant and dark eyes, she'd dove into the files with a single-minded determination you didn't often see on a sleepy Sunday morning. He had to admire her for that.

Shirley had asked a few questions. Mostly, she had said, she was interested in details of wargames and training exercises in the Atlantic Command and Southern Command areas of responsibility. Then, Lemaster remembered something. One of the units she was interested in was the Second Marines. The same unit in the screwed-up sitrep.

It was probably nothing. If you read the sitreps right, the Marines were saddling up for a nighttime assault on Cuba, right in the midst of missiles and atomic bombs and probably thousands of Russian soldiers. On the face of it, the sitreps had to be bonkers. Maybe it's a joke. Or an exercise. That had to be the answer.

Still, the very fact that the sitreps had come through on the secure wire and gone through decode, landing on his desk, meant he had to do something. Maybe I better look into this, he thought. He picked up the phone and dialed the four digits needed to connect him with the National Military Command Center, a floor below in the "Tank." Two rings later, he got Colonel Richard Neeley, Operations and Plans Officer at the Current Status desk.

"Hey, Dick, I got some routine sitreps that look funny to me. Deployment patterns and positions are all out of whack. Can I come down and show 'em to you?"

Neeley's voice was deep and operatic. The man was the shining star of the Arlington Heights Lutheran Church Choir. "Sure thing, Jim. I could use a break. I'll tell the guards to buzz you in."

Lemaster thanked him and slipped the sitreps from Homestead into a manilla folder. He couldn't leave the Situation Desk unattended, so he turned the duty over to Captain Starnes, now manning the Plans Library, saying he'd be back in an hour or less. Then he signed out at the security desk and headed for the creaky elevator.
Telegram from Soviet Ambassador A.I. Alekseev to USSR Foreign Ministry

5 November 1962

In connection with our explanations to Fidel Castro of how the decisive moment for us did not allow time for consultation with him on the issue of dismantling, he drew his own conclusions from the exchange of messages between N.S. Khrushchev and Kennedy, and doubts crept into his mind as to whether we had familiarized him with all the letters.

In particular, he says that it follows from Kennedy's open message of 27 October that our decision regarding the dismantling had been communicated to Kennedy even before that date.

Before 27 October, I passed on to Castro two confidential letters from N.S. Khrushchev to President Kennedy, of 23 and 26 October.

On the basis of the correspondence, I have come to the opinion that Kennedy did not yet have a basis in the message of 27 October for drawing the conclusion that we gave our consent for the dismantling before that date and it is necessary somehow to explain this to Castro. Comrade Mikoyan has entrusted me with the task of looking into the issue raised by Castro.

In view of the necessity of sending this telegram immediately, I have not had time to submit it to the approval of Comrade Mikoyan. The talks with Castro will take place on 5 November at 14:00 local time.

5.XI.62 ALEKSEEV
CHAPTER 15

11-5-62, Monday

Washington, D.C.

9:15 a.m.

Mary Vance found FBI Headquarters both impressive and impersonal at the same time. She climbed out of the motor pool car that had picked her up from the Albert Pick Hotel and walked thirty steps across the chilly underground garage to the elevators. The agent who had picked her up that morning, Lew Gaines, held the doors, then followed her in.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation occupied the Pennsylvania Avenue side of a six-story neoclassical building. The Justice Department occupied the Constitution Avenue side. Mary Vance and Lew Gaines exited the elevator at the fifth floor. A glass partition greeted them, hung with a sign reading General Investigative Division--Criminal Section. They took several turns through a maze of cubicles and found themselves in a small paneled conference room. The Deputy Director, Cliff Hostetler, rose to greet her.

"Thanks for coming on such short notice, Mrs. Vance. Have some coffee, won't you? I know you've had a very trying last few days."

Mary wore a dark blue skirt, with white blouse. She took her jacket off but put it back on a few minutes later. The room was cold. Outside, through venetian blinds, a bright autumn sun was slanting in, casting rippled shadows on the bare walls.

Moments later, Mary had met the full investigative team of the bomb task force. Mike French shook her hand, followed by the others: Jeff Torburg, Alexei Maximov, Valery Kudinov and Detective Captain Eddie Winston of the D.C. Metro Police.

"Why don't you start by telling us what happened, the sequence you remember," Hostetler asked.

Mary Vance sipped at her coffee, her brunette curls wreathed in steam. She described the accident, haltingly at first, with tears. The impact. Pete's broken arm. Crying. Glass and gasoline fumes everywhere. The Cubans' brutality, toward the Russian Kapitonov. That raised eyebrows with both Maximov and Kudinov. Both jotted down a few notes.

French probed her carefully for accurate physical descriptions. "We'll get an artist in here in awhile," he told her. "You tell him the same things and he'll sketch out a likeness of this Ramirez."

"There were only five," Mary said. "The four Cubans and the Russian. I thought they were Mexicans to begin with."

"Tell us about the Russian," Maximov asked. "His condition, his statements...."

Mary pushed her curls back. Her eyes were still red. Kleenexes covered the table. "The Cuban leader got mad and shot him in the leg. That was right after the accident. He was hurt but it didn't seem too bad."

"Did he say anything? About the bomb?"

Mary shook her head. "Nothing I can remember. I thought I heard him say the bomb wouldn't work. Electrical something. But I'm not sure."

Maximov exchanged glances with Mike French. "Try to remember, please. It's very important."

Mary was near tears again. She dabbed at her eyes. "I can't! I don't...I mean, I'm not sure. Shoot, they tied me up, with Petey. Kidnapped us and carried us all the way across the state. I'm still scared....."

Hostetler intervened. "Take your time, Mrs. Vance. We're not trying to pressure you." Of course, that was a lie. Hostetler didn't make eye contact with anyone else in the room after he said that. With Hoover and the President breathing down their necks, they'd squeeze as hard as they had to and everyone understood that.

"Can you describe the bomb? Did you see much of it?"

Mary shook her head. "It was dark in the truck. Kind of cramped."

"Overall dimensions, maybe? How long was it?"

Mary shrugged. "As long as the truck. It took up practically the entire space. I was lying on my side with Petey and it was a tight squeeze."

"How tall was the bomb?" asked Jeff Torburg. He sketched something on a notepad, passed it by the Russians first, who nodded, then showed it to Mary. "Something like this?'

Mary studied the diagram. Torburg was an amateur artist. He had sketched a cartoon view of the truck interior, with the bomb in outline.

"Yeah, kind of. It wasn't so tall as this. One end was all the way to the front. The other end was just short of the ramp."

Torburg quickly modified the drawing and showed the revision to Mary, who nodded assent. "That's closer."

Torburg passed the depiction around. "My guess is one-megaton. Alexei?"

Maximov concurred. "The general dimensions of a K-12 device. About seven to eight hundred kilotons, normal yield."

Torburg ripped off the sketch and stuffed it in a shirt pocket. "One down, and one to go, gentlemen. Your first witness corroborates my guesswork. We're dealing with what Alexei calls a K-12. Seven hundred kilotons, minimum yield."

"And it's right here," Hostetler said, "inside Washington, D.C."

"Now we just have to find it," Mike French said. To Mary: "Did you hear anything, anything at all, about their plans? We think we know the deadline. But we don't know where they plan to setup and arm the bomb."

Mary shook her head. "The Cubans said very little. Mostly they slept. Or glared at me and Petey." She shuddered. "I'll see their faces for a long time. I just hope Petey can forget all this. All of them were like animals. Their eyes...wild, cruel, like they'd kill a man for nothing. They shot that Russian just as calm as if they were washing a car."

Hostetler had heard the Russians' arguments that the deadline had to be Election Day.

"Mike, you agree with this? What do we have in evidence?"

French reviewed a small spiral notebook full of interview data from Sunday, a long afternoon and evening spent grilling Munoz at MPD.

"Not a whole lot, Cliff. Munoz claimed he didn't know the deadline. We couldn't shake him from that statement. He did say he thought the bombs were to be in place and ready by Tuesday. That would be Election Day."

"It makes sense, to a Communist," Maximov said. "Strike a blow in the heart of the capitalist empire, on a day of great symbolism like your Election Day. No Communist could resist that."

"I guess it takes one to know one," Hostetler said. "Mary, you said something about the bomb not working."

"The Russian guy said that. At the accident. I didn't think of it until I came in here. Something about the wiring or something."

French stood up and started to pace the room. "Alexei, does that make any sense to you?"

Maximov tapped a pencil on a gold tooth in his mouth. "Actually, it does. The K-12 is designed for air burst, after being delivered by a missile. All the wiring for fusing and arming the bomb is designed to send signals from outside the missile, telling the bomb where it is and when it's time to detonate. To bypass the normal wiring and set up the K-12 for ground burst would require some work."

"How much work?"

Maximov could feel Kudinov's eyes boring in on his head. Not so much detail, comrade. Remember your instructions. He got up and joined Mike French at the windows, peering out through the blinds at Monday morning traffic along Pennsylvania Avenue.

"Properly trained with the right tools in a special laboratory, re-wiring the bomb's detonating circuitry would take only a few hours at most."

"Could you describe what has to be done?"

Maximov turned from the windows and smiled a crooked smile at the deputy Director. "I could, Mr. Hostetler. But I have instructions not to do so. The K-12 and the K-5 are Soviet state property. We too have a military secrets that we must keep from our..." he smiled again, "shall we say adversaries? I'm sure you understand this."

"I understand that we've got a major crisis right here in the Nation's Capital. This investigation needs everyone pulling his weight. If I have to, I'll go to the Director. He can take it up with the President."

Mike French jammed his hands in his pockets. "Cliff, this is old ground. We've been through this before. Alexei, you said 'properly trained.' And 'under the right conditions.'"

Maximov nodded in appreciation. Not all Americans are capitalist dogs. "Correct. You would need special meters, special wire and equipment to alter the settings in the arming relays."

"But this Kapitonov fellow is hardly working under ideal conditions. The back of a truck. Shot in the leg. Desperate Cubans for company. And everybody on the run. That would make things harder. Take quite a bit longer, wouldn't it?"

Maximov conceded the point. "I don't know this Kapitonov, except by reputation. He's a civilian engineer with the Ministry of Medium Machine-Building. An inspector at Glavatom. In Chelyabinsk. Around the city, he's known as the 'Caretaker', sometimes as the 'Undertaker.' The bomb containers look a little bit like coffins."

"Does he have the knowledge to do this re-wiring work you've described?"

Maximov thought about that for a moment. "As an inspector, he's responsible for checking and signing off on many things. What he knows depends on where he works."

"Do you know where he works? What role he plays?"

Maximov avoided Kudinov's glare. "We have checked with Moscow, yes. Dmitri Andreyevich works in Final Assembly. Department Five."

"Meaning, what, exactly?"

"Dmitri Andreyevich is responsible for checking out all the device components, before they are put together. He runs electrical checks on the arming and detonating circuits, inspects the tamper and initiator parts, sees that the fizik package is ready for installation and makes sure the bomb components are managed properly for later installation in their casings. He also oversees the installation itself and final checks before shipment."

Jeff Torburg uttered a low whistle. "No question about it, folks. This is one Russkie expert."

"It's safe to say he can do the re-wiring?" asked Mike French. "Given enough time?"

Maximov nodded. "I would say yes."

"Then we have to make sure he doesn't have enough time." French went back to the table, and flipped his notebook shut. "If he hasn't already armed the bomb."

Hostetler checked the time. Nearly ten o'clock. "The Director'll be expecting his hourly report. And the President's already asking about evacuation, civil defense measures, the works. You got a plan?"

French opened up a map of the District on the table. "We know the bomb's here, somewhere. It may or not be armed. The presumed deadline is sometime tomorrow. We have no real target. Mary, did you hear anything about locations, places, that sort of thing?"

Mary Vance said, "Nothing specific. I'm sorry."

"We need a working hypothesis," Mike said. "Captain Winston, you know the District well. Your men are going to be involved."

Eddie Winston stood up and came over to peer at the map. "It's just a hunch, nothing more."

"A hunch is all we have at this point."

Winston put his finger on the U.S. Capitol. "The People's House. The center of the grid coordinate system, for street numbering and everything. I'd start there."

"Cliff, what about the Army?"

Hostetler was already making notes for his report to J. Edgar Hoover. "The Director's already talked with General LeClair, commanding officer of the Washington Military District. He's bringing a contingent over at eleven, right from Fort McNair. LeClair wants to blockade the city. All roads and railways shut down."

"Probably too late for that," French observed. "Hell of a thing, isn't it? Last week, we're blockading Cuba. Now we're quarantining Washington, D.C. Captain, you got anything on the truck?"

Winston shook his head. "We got an APB out now, all precincts. Nothing yet. We've got units dispatched to all major highway entry points, all bridges. And we're working with Maryland and Virginia State Police on the approaches. A few roadblocks and checkpoints are already up and working. As for shutting down the roadways, we don't have the manpower. I'm sure the Chief wouldn't go for that."

Hostetler shrugged. "It's up to the President, anyway. LeClair's got the Third Infantry he can use. The question now is: do they have time?"

"May I ask a question of Mrs.Vance?" It was Maximov.

"Shoot."

Maximov cocked his head. "The psychology of the Cubans intrigues me. We're dealing with revolutionaries here, patriots. Every real Communist is committed to the revolution. To bring the capitalist system to its knees is their greatest dream, my greatest dream as well. I'm a sworn enemy of everything you stand for here. But I wonder: is this Ramirez a Communist? Or is he a Cuban patriot?"

Mary Vance looked back quizzically, not sure what to say. She looked at the others, shrugging. "Mister, I don't know what you're talking about."

Maximov smiled at the woman. "Let me word it a different way. Did the Cubans seem dedicated to their cause? Did you see determination in their faces?"

Mary Vance thought about it for a moment. "They seemed like they had a goal. The loud one, the one in charge, he was in a hurry to get away from the accident. And they stole another truck when theirs wouldn't go. I guess I'd say they seemed dedicated, if that's what you mean."

Maximov nodded. "This loud one, you called him. He was the leader?"

"Well, he bossed the others around. They did what he said."

"That would be Ramirez. Describe him for me."

Mary squinted, conjuring up a painful memory. Her mouth worked but she stumbled for a moment, then started over. "I'm sorry. It's just--"

"What did he look like?"

"Well, he was tall, real thin. He had a moustache and beard, black. And his eyelid--the left one, I think--seemed kind of droopy. He sort of looked sleepy. His shoulders were always hunched over. Like he was ducking."

"I see. Do you think this man is capable of executing an order? An order to detonate an atomic bomb in the middle of a big city? And dying in the blast, along with millions of others?"

Mary's eyes widened. She rubbed her mouth nervously. "Yes. He had a look about him." She straightened up and met Maximov's gaze head on. "Yes. I do. Most definitely."

11-5-62, Monday

Fort Meade, Maryland

10:45 p.m.

Senior Analyst Ben Daniels had been part of A Group, the Operations Directorate at the National Security Agency's sprawling Fort Meade complex for going on seven years now. Over that time, he had seen his share of sensitive signals intelligence intercepts, like the time, just two years ago now, when an Agency listening post on Mount Eirath in northern Iran picked up radio traffic from PVO Strany MiGs trying to ram Francis Gary Powers out of the sky. That had been a hair-raising morning. The fact that an SA-2 had finally exploded right under Powers' U-2 shortly after he'd disappeared over the radio horizon didn't diminish the memory of the MiG threat at all. It had been a close-run thing from the moment the U-2 had gone wheels up at Peshawar, Pakistan.

Daniels had been on duty in A Group's Signals Analysis Branch for several hours now, snuggled in a corner cubicle of the secure Analytical Operations facility on the sixth floor. Daniels didn't have a window. Normally that didn't bother him. He knew the rules and the rules said you didn't do Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence work anywhere a window or a wall. The Agency had some pretty black magic going on a few floors down. The powers that be assumed the Soviets could probably snatch whispers out of the ether just as well. No sense taking any chances. But it was a beautiful cool, fall Monday morning and Daniels had been looking forward to lunch in the courtyard, where he could snack on his bologna sandwich and admire the changing colors of the leaves.

He had been looking forward to lunch until the duty courier from Signals Conversion dropped a pouch off on his desk an hour ago.

Less than twenty-four hours before Ben Daniels received and signed for the pouch of secure logs and transcripts, an RB-47 converted bomber out of Incirlik Air Base in Turkey had been probing the southern frontiers of the Soviet Union, its array of AN-UYK-23 antennas finely tuned to the precise known frequencies of air defense radars and military communications traffic. The RB-47 had taken off from Incirlik early that morning, before dawn, and flown north over the Black Sea, bearing on the Romanian coastline, before turning northeast, then due east, over international waters, but just barely. To men like Ben Daniels, the electronic order of battle information gleaned from such COMPASS CLUE missions was mind-numbingly routine, consisting as it usually did of frequencies used, bandwidth occupied, radiated power calculations, freq hopping schemes, and other signal characteristics. Mostly as a courtesy to the NSA, the Air Force also occasionally did a little eavesdropping on voice traffic in the skies and on the ground at military installations in the Ukraine and Moldavia. That little interagency back-scratching seldom produced anything that an intelligence analyst would lose sleep over. Once in a while, some obscure Party apparatchik's limousine radiotelephone would be picked up, usually setting up a date with various and sundry mistresses, but little more.

Until now.

Ben Daniels winced, sipping the last cold dregs of his coffee, as he scanned the printed translation of the COMPASS CLUE mission's voice traffic logs. The tapes had been flown by C-135 direct from Incirlik to Wiesbaden, West Germany, then directly on to the States, landing at Andrews in the pre-dawn hours. Couriered up to Fort Meade, they had been massaged through the big computers in the basement, enhanced, filtered and generally cleaned up enough to make a copy the translators could work on. Translation Section had done yeoman duty on this one, Daniels realized. They'd probably been up half the night. Now he knew why.

Among the normal operational traffic routine to military flight operations, Daniels' practiced eye quickly noticed some very unusual voice transmissions that didn't quite fit the mold. Ostensibly, voice transmissions between Soviet naval vessels operating close to shore along the northern Black Sea coast and a shore installation near Odessa, the traffic spoke of deployments and unit movements that Daniels immediately understood were far from routine. Ignoring the growling in his stomach, he cleaned his glasses, and reached behind his desk for several loose-leaf binders. The binders contained current intelligence on Soviet army, navy and air force order of battle in the Ukraine and Black Sea regions.

He settled in to work, tediously comparing current intelligence with the newly ordered deployments. The content analysis took several hours. By noon, he was sure. He reached for the interoffice phone behind him and called up the Section chief.

"Wes, yeah, this is Ben. I got something from yesterday's COMPASS CLUE you ought to see. I know it's lunch time. Come on up and take a look. And bring your bag."

Wes Guman, Section Chief for Signals Content Analysis, arrived three minutes later, bearing a sack lunch of his own.

"What have you got, Ben?"

Daniels showed him the passages he had highlighted, overlaid with scribbled notes from his own analysis. "This batch just came out of Signals Conversion two hours ago. It's from yesterday's job along the northern Black Sea."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, best I can figure, we got some rather unusual military re-deployments going on in the Ukraine. I think our friends in the Kiev and Odessa Military Districts are busy these days. Take a look."

Over the next ten minutes, Daniels showed Guman the results of two hours' work.

"First Guards Tank Army, headquartered in Chernigov, has detached two regiments, both from the Seventy-Second Motor Rifle Division to deploy a hundred and fifty kilometers south, here" Daniels pulled over a rumpled map of the Ukraine. "Rudinka. A VVS base. Soviet Air Force. And that's not all. Look at this." Daniels flipped several more pages, bringing Guman's attention to some more highlighted passages, transcripts of voice transmissions. "This one came from Rudinka itself. I don't know this fellow--must be some kind of dispatcher--but he's talking to Headquarters Odessa District. That's the Nineteenth Army, Kishinev is the location."

Guman frowned. "Babadzhanyan's area?"

"That's the one. They're sending two regiments of their own--tank regiments--also to Rudinka."

"Maybe it's an exercise. Although the Dnieper games are usually in the spring."

"We've never seen them exercise like this. Not right before Revolution Day. The big Red Square parades are coming up Wednesday. Normal practice is for most units to secure from the field and work on the spit and polish. You know, the local Party bigwigs like to get out and review the troops and such."

Guman was still puzzled. "You're going somewhere with this, I assume."

"Jesus, Wes, can't you see it? Look at the map. Something's happening at Rudinka, something big." Daniels flipped several more pages. "We even got the VVS involved. Here..." he pointed out some underlined dialogue. "At first, I didn't know what to make of this, especially the reference to 'Wolfhound'."

"That's Khrushchev. That's his call sign, when he's traveling. Remember, we got that from Langley a month ago, street intercept near Sheremetyevo Airport. The KGB and the services use that to communicate about Nikita whenever he's on the road."

"That's what I remembered. Look here, there's a reference to Pitsunda, too. Khrushchev's vacation palace on the Georgian coast."

"So, he's taking some time off at the beach. What's so unusual about that?"

Ben Daniels showed him the kicker, the passage of an intercept from Rudinka Air Base itself. "This baby's the key. It's apparently a transmission from Operations to Marshal Babadzhanyan in Odessa. Wolfhound--that is Khrushchev--isn't going to Pitsunda. At least not at first. His plane's coming to Rudinka. And look at this--" Daniels proudly pointed to a section of the transmission he had circled in red pen on his working copy. "Here's why all those regiments are on the move. They're setting up a defense perimeter around Rudinka. Either, this is a real unusual exercise or those regiments are setting up to defend something."

"Defend something...." Guman mulled over the possibilities. "And Khrushchev's coming to the base. Are they defending Khrushchev? Why do that?"

"The short answer is no, Wes. Those regiments Babadzhanyan is sending from Kishinev aren't keeping enemies out of the air base. They're keeping Khrushchev in."

Wes Guman took off his glasses and stared up at Daniels. "What are you saying?"

Daniels was growing exasperated. "The whole effect of all these deployments--" Daniels ticked them off--"First Guards Tank Army, Nineteenth Army, the Soviet Air Force with two Frontal Aviation air regiments posted to three air bases around Rudinka--is to do one thing: isolate and secure a space around Rudinka. We already know Wolfhound's coming to Rudinka and we know that's Khrushchev." Daniels fumbled around for a note, then flipped to the back of the transcript log. "If that's not enough, look at this. Here's Khrushchev's original itinerary, arrival at Pitsunda, departure time, everything. There's one transmission that really disturbs me."

"What's that?"

"Here," Daniels had it circled too. "It's from Marshal Koshevoy's staff. He's the commanding general, Kiev Military District. See the address: Kiev-21, Ulitsa Kirova, Dom 30/1. Koshevoy's headquarters. The Marshal sent a telegram yesterday, coded October cipher but we have the key to that one and decoding was easy. He sent the telegram to Marshal Borodintsev at Vnukovo, near Moscow. Borodintsev's in charge of Frontal Aviation in the Moscow Military District. See the sentences I've underlined. Koshevoy's talking about 'securing' the airspace around Rudinka, about preventing other units from 'interfering' with the operation."

"What do we know about this 'operation'?"

"Not much. Details are scarce. But we can make an informed guess."

Guman ran a hand through his blond crewcut. "Late last night, I talked with the Division Director. He said there's sigint on unusual troop movements in and around Moscow the last two days. Tank armies detaching platoons of tanks, some roadways blocked. It's not just the November 7 parades either. This is bigger."

"My gut tells me there's a coup attempt coming in the very near future, Wes. Maybe as early as the next forty-eight hours."

Guman suddenly didn't want his lunch. "You may be right. If you are, it's bad. Very bad. We're dealing with Khrushchev on getting missiles out of Cuba right now. Delicate negotiations. Missiles and bombers. If Khrushchev's kicked out, we'll have a whole new ball game."

"Maybe they don't pull any more missiles out."

Guman's eyes met Daniels'. "Exactly." He flipped through more pages of the translated transcript from COMPASS CLUE. "Something's about to break, Ben. Looks like the top dogs are going to try and kick Khrushchev out of the house. We gotta let McCone and Bundy know this."

Ben Daniels was already dialing the extension from memory. Raymond Allways was the Division Director for A Group. He had a corner office a floor above them. Daniels finished dialing and waited through four rings, with no answer.

"Let's pay the man a visit," suggested Guman. "We need to get the ball rolling on this one."

11-5-62, Monday

Lambert Field, St Louis, Missouri

11:45 p.m.

John Kennedy was glad to get out of Washington. Air Force One had left Andrews for Chicago Saturday afternoon and it felt good to be on the campaign trail again, good to get away from the hothouse of the Nation's Capital. When a man was President of the United States and the country was in the midst of crisis, he had to be a statesman and appear grave and resolute. On the campaign trail, though, a man could come out swinging and be forgiven a few excesses. Keating and the rest of the Republicans in Congress had pilloried him over Cuba for weeks. Now he could roll up his sleeves and give them back a few jabs.

The big blue and white 707, United States of America stenciled boldly on its sides, had dropped out of a clear, cloudless autumn sky into the airport at St. Louis, just for a few hours. Kennedy had a politician's dream of an itinerary: a luncheon speech downtown at a big hotel banquet, a visit to the McDonnell aircraft factory for photo shots of the President looking strong on defense, and a farewell address mid-afternoon at Washington University. Five hours, the campaign planners had given him, and no press conference, no reporters, just huge crowds, smiles and handshakes and waves and he'd be gone.

He had been looking forward to finishing the aborted Midwest campaign swing for a week.

The President was brushing off imaginary lint and primping his hair in the lavatory of the Presidential Quarters when Ted Sorenson stuck his head in.

"Phone call for you, Mr. President. The secure line."

Shit. Kennedy finished with his hair. The part just didn't seem right but it would have to wait. He went to his office and sat down, punching up the line with the blinking light. Outside, high school marching bands thumped and played enthusiastically, awaiting his appearance at the top of the stairs.

"This is the President."

It was McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor, at his West Wing office. John McCone, the DCI, was also on the line from Langley.

"Sorry to bother you, Mr. President, but we've gotten some intelligence data you should know about."

"Cuba?"

"Actually no, sir, it's Russia. Early this morning, the National Security Agency finished processing some signals intercepts from a mission along the Black Sea coast of the Soviet Union yesterday."

"They got shot down?"

"No, sir, nothing like that. But maybe just as bad. NSA's convinced the intercepts fit a pattern they've been detecting the last few weeks. They think there's going to be a coup in the Soviet Union. Maybe within the next few days."

Kennedy sat up abruptly. His eyes narrowed. "Coup? Are you sure? You mean Khrushchev? What does the CIA think, John?"

McCone's voice was grave. "Mr. President, we've seen the data too. We concur that the pattern is indicative of maneuvers unlike any we've seen, either normal deployments or training exercises. Initially, our Net Assessment people were reluctant to call this a coup. But we've pulled in some corroborating data from HUMINT sources. Ironbark is one of them."

Kennedy whistled softly. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph." He knew, from briefings, that Ironbark was none other than Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, recently arrested in Moscow. "John, you're sure about this?"

"Mr. President, in the intelligence business, you don't deal in sure things. I think the evidence points toward a coup. And soon."

Kennedy ran a hand though his hair, forgetting he had just spent five minutes setting it the way he wanted. He pulled a newly sharpened pencil from a desk holder and doodled on a pad of White House stationery. "The question, now, if you guys are right, is what do we do about this?"

Bundy had a thought. "Maybe we should use our back-channels again, Mr. President. Get a warning to Khrushchev. We need some stability now. We're in delicate negotiations at the UN over the missiles. The Il-28 bomber issue may just derail the whole thing. If Khrushchev gets canned, what happens? The new leaders'll need time to set up shop, consolidate their position, get rid of their enemies. I'm not so sure we'll see missiles coming out of Cuba while that's going on."

Kennedy was firm. "We've been through all this before. The missiles have to come out. One way or another."

"And there's this Cuban commando business, too, Mr. President. We play this wrong and both the Russians and the Cubans could have us in their sights."

"I think we have to deal with Khrushchev," Kennedy said. "Which means we have to make sure we have a Khrushchev to deal with. Where's Bobby now?"

Bundy went off line for a moment, and the President heard some shuffling of papers. "He's at the Justice Department. I've got a call in. We'll try to patch him into this line."

It took a few minutes but Robert Kennedy's voice soon burst from the speaker. The President filled him in, with support from McCone and Bundy, on the situation. When they were done, the President leaned forward, punching the air with a fist, as if the Attorney General were right in front of him.

"Bobby, go see Dobrynin. Right away. Tell him we've got intelligence indications of a coup. John, you can give him something, can't you? A fragment of our data, just so Dobrynin will know we're not blowing smoke, that we mean business."

"Certainly, Mr. President. I'll have a folder made up right away, have it dropped off at Justice within the hour."

"Don't go overboard," the President said. "I don't want any sources or methods compromised."

"Leave it to me," McCone reported.

"Okay, that's finished. Now, this commando business. Mac, what's happening in Washington? New York too. Do we have civil defense measures underway?"

Bundy's desk was littered with papers. He took a minute to retrieve the latest summary from McDermott's staff, at the Office of Emergency Preparedness.

"Here's the latest, Mr. President: Ed McDermott is working with General LeClair, who commands the Washington Military District. With your authorization, which I've already drawn up, the Third Infantry is being mobilized and deployed at key entry points and intersections around the District. Fort McNair's sending several companies of troops, for traffic control and crowd management, if needed. Working with the Metro D.C. police, and the Virginia and Maryland State Police, checkpoints have been set up at every bridge and at the District crossings of Highways 350, 244, 50, and 211 in Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island Avenues, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, plus Pennsylvania Avenue on the eastside, Suitland and the Anacostia Freeway. The Coast Guard is managing traffic control points south of Mount Vernon on the Potomac. And the Park Police are helping out in the Federal Triangle area."

"Any results from the blockade?"

"None, Mr. President. The FBI bomb task force people think that the bomb supposedly bound for Washington is already in the city. Hoover thinks so too. There's an intensive neighborhood and street search plan being set up now at Fort McNair. This operation gets underway around noon today, just a few minutes from now, in fact."

"Great," Kennedy said. "What about New York?"

"Similar arrangements," Bundy said. "McDermott's flown up there already, meeting the Mayor and the borough people. We assume Manhattan's the target. It's easier to secure, with all the bridges and tunnels. The Army's helping out. I've drawn up an order for you to sign, mobilizing the New York National Guard. Last word we had from Hoover was that there was no evidence yet the Cubans have made it to New York. If we can get the troops and the traffic control points set up, we should be able to isolate Manhattan. The other boroughs will be harder."

Kennedy snorted. "Suppose the Cubans just grab a boat and float across the Hudson? With an atom bomb, you wouldn't have to get too close. Any information on the bombs themselves?"

"Yes, sir, from the man the FBI caught in Miami, and the Russians assigned to the task force, we've got some preliminary specs. Best guess is the bomb they're trying to bring into Washington is a seven hundred kiloton device, called a K-12. The New York device is supposed to be a bit smaller yield, about two hundred kilotons. A K-5"

"Mac, that doesn't make me feel any better. Either one could do a hell of a lot of damage."

"That's correct, sir," Bundy replied. "The Civil Defense people are estimating half a million and up, direct casualties here. In New York, if that bomb goes off anywhere near Manhattan, we're looking at one to two million casualties, minimum."

"We've got to find those bombs, now," the President said. "This coup doesn't help matters either."

Bundy took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was tired, fatigued really. It wasn't even noon yet.

"Mr. President, Pierre told me this morning that some of the White House press corps have somehow caught a whiff of this new crisis. They've seen the Army and police activity the last day or so and they're asking questions. Pierre wants to know what's going on."

Bobby Kennedy spoke up. "Jack, I talked with Hoover less than half an hour ago. The Bureau's putting out a story we ought to use. They're saying the blockade and traffic control points around the District are a law enforcement exercise. Locating some escaped prisoners. The Bureau's tying it in with the story that broke on TV last Friday night, about the manhunt in the southeast."

"Good idea, Bobby. Use it. I don't care what we say. Stall, lie, do anything to put these reporters off. If this leaks out, there'll be mass panic the likes of which we've never seen."

The Attorney General continued. "Hoover had some more cheery news for me. The Bureau got some agents with local police to the safe house in Dayton, Ohio yesterday afternoon, apparently not too long after the Cubans left. Turned out to be an abandoned farmhouse outside of town. A team of Air Force EOD people from Wright-Patterson swept the area for radioactivity and their Geiger counter needles went right off the scale. The place is hotter than Hades. The Bureau thinks one of the bombs is leaking plutonium particles. They picked up the signature in Mobile and sometime before Sunday afternoon, the same bomb was in Dayton, Ohio. Looks like this one's headed for New York."

The President broke his pencil point. He had covered an entire page with circles and slashes and even a cartoonish mushroom cloud. He tore off the page in disgust. "Men, my instinct tells me to get back to Washington. I could have a 'cold' again, but we tried that one already."

"With all respects, sir," Bundy said, "the nation is better served, not to mention our cover stories, with you on the campaign trail."

"I suppose you're right, Mac. Politics waits for nothing, not even nuclear war. I'll finish up here in St Louis. But I'm telling Colonel Fitzpatrick to take us back to DC tonight. The election's tomorrow anyway. If there is a tomorrow. Events seem to be spiraling out of our control and I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. This coup could be the last straw."

"Mr. President," Bundy said, "I think you should consider your family now. I'd like to suggest they be evacuated from Washington soon, this afternoon if possible. They could be choppered to Glen Ora in two hours, maybe less. The First Lady loves the horse country out there. And they'd be out of the immediate danger zone."

Kennedy thought about it for a moment. If the reporters ever learned the First Family was being evacuated to a mountain hideaway, they'd be dancing on his political grave for generations. He could see the cartoons in his mind already.

"Okay, Mac. I'll have to think about that one. For now, I'll just have to decide not to decide. I can speak with Jackie and the kids when I get back tonight. We'll make our decision then."

11-5-62, Monday

Newark, New Jersey

12 Noon

Calderone pulled the truck into the back loading lot of Lazlo Freight just after dawn Monday. It was misty and cool and the smell of stagnant oily water wafted over the parking lot from the waterfront, across Doremus Avenue less than five hundred yards away, as the Cubans got out and stretched aching muscles. Jorge Aleman and Luis Gallegos helped Ortega out of the truck. Ortega was weak and his face was covered with red splotchy sores. Calderone watched grimly as the men carried him into the office.

Ernie Lazlo was a first-generation Pole, and a fierce gin rummy player. He got up from the dingy table where he'd been savaging one of the warehouse drivers in another frustrating match and stuck out a callused hand.

"Welcome to Newark, boys. You must be Calderone." He shook hands with the subteniente, who sized up the stocky, mustachioed warehouse owner.

"Password?"

Lazlo snorted. "What are you...Gestapo or something? I don't need that shit in my warehouse."

Calderone's eyes narrowed. He grabbed Lazlo's collar. "Password, amigo. That's your ticket to keep on living."

As if on cue, Aleman produced a black Makarov, its dull muzzle steel protruding from his jacket.

Lazlo shrugged out of Calderone's grasp and growled, "Fucking foreigners. Password's trago."

At that, Calderone relaxed a little, a faint smile on his lips. "My favorite drink, amigo. You should try it." To Gallegos, still holding Ortega up, he ordered: "Put Eduardo on that couch." There was a torn green naugahyde couch in the corner, beside a scuffed vending machine.

"You took long enough," Lazlo said. He shooed the warehouse driver, whose khaki shirt had a name patch reading Brezinski, out of the office and sat heavily in a creaking wooden chair on wheels, rolling back against the wall as he did so. "And I want the rest of the rent. Now, upfront."

Calderone glared at the Pole for a moment, then ignored him, opening the door to the warehouse storage building. Cold air blew into the office. Beside Lazlo, a steam radiator clanked. Calderone studied the layout of the storage shed for a moment, the location of the loading doors, ramps, everything. It would do. It would have to do.

"Luis," he told Gallegos. "Back the truck up to the last dock. I'll open the door. I want to get our cargo safely inside. You finish your work this morning."

Gallegos half saluted and left the office. Outside, the truck motor coughed into life. Five minutes later, Lazlo and the Cubans were hoisting up the rolling ramp door, Calderone guiding Gallegos back with hand signals. Gallegos cut the engine the moment the truck bumped the tire barrier of the ramp.

Lazlo watched in amazement, chewing on a pencil stub, as the Cubans set about the task of shoving and lifting the K-5 out of the truck. He found a metal dolly and rolled it over, and the Cubans set the device on the dolly bed. The wheels groaned under its weight. Calderone and Gallegos wheeled the bomb to the center of the huge storage room, beneath a bank of fluorescent lights.

"I need an outlet," Gallegos told them. "One-ten or two-twenty, I don't care. And a bench of some kind."

Lazlo didn't need reminding. He saw Aleman reach into his jacket again. "Sure. There's one over there." He dragged a wooden work bench from the tool crib, and a wheeled backrest too, in case the Cuban needed to get under the bomb. "You got the rest of the rent?" He held out his right hand, rolling thumb and forefingers. "Put it right here, pal."

Calderone was ready to squash this insecto for good but he didn't. They might need him for something. He went up to the truck cab and returned with a small envelope. Before Lazlo could take hold of the cash, Calderone dropped it on the cement floor, right in front of him. Swearing, Lazlo bent to retrieve the money. Calderone reached over and, grabbing the man's jacket collar, drove Lazlo's face into the cement, hard. Something broke. Blood seeped out from the Pole's squashed nose.

"I was once a wrestler in Havana, amigo. I learned a nice hold many years ago, called the Ugly Duck." Calderone slipped a forearm under Lazlo's neck, then grasped the man's black hair and turned his head hard. Vertebrae cracked, and Lazlo screamed involuntarily. "You know about this Ugly Duck in America, eh?"

Lazlo grunted, mumbled something incoherent.

"It's banned. Illegal. The Yanquis won't let a wrestler use it. Too dangerous, they say. But me...I kind of like it." He turned Lazlo's head another notch, more vertebrae cracked. Lazlo flinched, and whimpered, like a dog. "You like it, too, don't you, amigo? Remember this well: you have your money. Keep your mouth shut. Or you'll have to walk backwards, to see where you're going." Suddenly, he released the hold and Lazlo's face hit the cement again. He groaned, turned over, revealing a blood-soaked mass of flesh where his nose used to be.

Ten feet away, Gallegos set to work, unscrewing covers over the wireway conduits. He fished Kapitonov's diagram out of his pocket and smoothed it out over the edge of the bench, studying the schematic for a few moments, holding it up to the lights.

Lazlo got to his feet, holding his face with his hands.

"You have a car, amigo?" Calderone asked.

Lazlo dabbed at his puffy nose with a bloody handkerchief. He nodded. "Out front," he mumbled, through the rag.

"Give me your keys."

Lazlo pulled out the key ring and dropped it in Calderone's hands.

"Jorge, come with me. Luis, get the bomb working. Arm it here. And keep an eye on Eduardo. He needs water, and cool rags."

Lazlo led them back to the office. Calderone pulled out a crumpled map of the Newark and Manhattan areas, studied it for a moment. "We'll take a look around. Check out the scenery." He poked a finger hard into Lazlo's chest. "Don't be here when I get back, amigo. You've done your job. Take the day off." He and Aleman left.

Lazlo's car was a blue and white '61 Chevy Impala coupe, a few dents on the driver's side door, but otherwise serviceable. Calderone pulled out of the parking lot, and turned right onto Doremus, then went north, crossing the Pasaic River and circling back left toward Raymond Boulevard. They passed a tall brick cathedral--Trinity the sign said, then made the Broad Street intersection, navigating heavy mid-morning commuter traffic, and turned south. A few more turns put them onto U.S. 1, going north, toward the city. They drove for a few minutes, taking the Pulaski Skyway exit and headed through a commercial district of dingy brick buildings and factories, through Hoboken. The ramp to the Holland Tunnel narrowed to four lanes, and a toll plaza loomed ahead.

Calderone pulled the Chevy out of the traffic stream onto an emergency lane and stopped. Ahead, the toll plaza was blocked. A barrage of police cars and trucks had filled every gate, their red lights strobing in unison. Beyond the plaza, the approach to the tunnel was virtually empty, save for an occasional emergency vehicle or fire truck. Concrete barriers had been erected on the exit side of all but one gate. Through that gate, all traffic was metered into Manhattan through the Holland Tunnel. Most cars and trucks were being forced to turn around. Even as they watched, New Jersey State Police were setting up turnaround lanes along the leftside emergency barriers, creating a cordon for re-directed traffic back into Hoboken. The process was maddening, Calderone could see that, punctuated as it was with horns blaring, and shouts and curses.

"No way in, teniente," Aleman observed. "Maybe they're expecting us."

Calderone watched intently, wondering if the other tunnels and bridges were the same. They could backtrack here, head north and try the Lincoln Tunnel, or the George Washington Bridge. Even as he considered the alternatives, he saw a few vehicles allowed to pass the roadblock.

"Look, Jorge, look at those cars."

"Ambulances, looks like. They're letting them through."

Calderone smiled. Capitan had taught them well. There was always a way around any obstacle. Use what's at hand. Use the enemy's own weapons against him. "That's our ticket in, Jorge. We need an ambulance. And we can use Eduardo for a patient. Come on." He pulled out gingerly into the traffic stream, and by bumping other cars, swearing and making gestures, was able to get over to the opposite side emergency lane, heading westbound. Angry horns blared at him but he drove on, swerving against the traffic flow, fighting upstream until they made the last exit ramp, at 12th Street. The whole process took ten minutes.

Calderone stopped at an Esso station, and asked for the nearest hospital. That turned out to be Sisters of Mercy, west of Newark on Central Avenue, a block from the Garden State Parkway. Calderone jotted down directions. The drive took about fifteen minutes. At every intersection, the Tunnel roadblock seemed to be sending drivers off the freeways and onto the surface streets. Newark and northern New Jersey would soon be in gridlock.

Sisters of Mercy was an old red brick building, surrounded by parking decks and grimy factories. Calderone pulled up into the circular front drive. Signs pointed to two entrances: Emergency and Admitting. He cut the engine.

"Jorge, we need an ambulance. There's an empty one, before that crosswalk."

Aleman was already flexing his fingers. Hotwiring vehicles in the middle of a city in broad daylight was a skill the whole Moncada team had practiced a thousand times, until each man could do it blind, in his sleep. "I'm ready, teniente. Pull up right behind her. I'll get out on the sidewalk side and get in that way."

Calderone inched the Chevy forward until he was right behind the ambulance. It was a dark gray panel truck, bearing the red and white Sisters of Mercy crest on the rear and side doors. Aleman slipped out and crouched behind the vehicle, then stood up and extracted the hook rod from his pants leg. He rammed it around the side window of the right rear door, poked and pulled and had the door unlocked in under three seconds. He motioned Calderone on and the teniente pulled out, driving on around the circular drive, and pulling out onto Central Avenue. He pulled over at the far curb and waited.

Inside the ambulance, Aleman slithered over the front seat and lay on his side in the footwell, popping the plastic cover off the bottom of the steering wheel column. He squinted up at the wiring, found the ignition circuit and crossed it with a battery wire he found by feel. With a pen knife, he stripped off an inch of insulation, then tied the wires together. Sparks flew and the engine starter burped, but didn't catch. Swearing, he tried the cross again. This time, more sparks, showering his face. The starter kicked over and the engine caught. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Carefully, he poked his head up. A few attendants were lounging against a post two ambulances ahead. Behind, a nurse was striding quickly up the sidewalk from a parking deck. Aleman let off the parking brake, slid behind the wheel, and waited until the nurse had passed. She didn't see him. As she approached the main doors, the attendants' attention shifted to the nurse, whom she seemed to know. At that moment, Aleman, rammed the gearshift into Drive and pulled out, letting the high speed idle of the engine carry the car underneath the drop-off canopy. He held his breath.

The attendants paid no attention to the moving ambulance, content to chat with the nurse. In seconds, he was turning onto Central. Ahead, Calderone swung out from the curb and he followed the teniente closely, all the way back to Lazlo's Terminal.

Lazlo was gone when they got back. Calderone and Aleman went into the office. Gallegos was leaning over Ortega, covered with several jackets on the couch.

"Eduardo any better?" the teniente asked.

Gallegos shook his head slowly. "He died right after you left."

"What?" Calderone rushed over. Eduardo Ortega was little more than twenty. He'd come to Moncada as a rifleman, straight out of infantry school at Santa Clara. He'd just made sargento when he volunteered for duty with Ramirez. "What happened?" The boy's color had faded. His face, still pocked with angry red sores and welts, was pale.

"Lazlo called me in," Gallegos explained. He covered Eduardo's face with a jacket. "He was in pain, I think he was bleeding inside. He coughed a lot..." Gallegos indicated the bloody tissues on the floor--"coughing up blood. Then he said something. I bent down to listen but he was gone. I don't know what he was trying to say."

"Was it the poison? The radiation?"

"I think so, teniente. Look at his face. His arms too. He was throwing up blood this morning. That bomb's no good."

"You got your work done? The wiring, I mean. Will the bomb go off if we have to use it?"

Gallegos nodded glumly. "Si, she's done. It's the best I can do. I followed the ruso's directions. There's only one way to find out now." And I'll see you in Hell before that happens. Gallegos had managed to solder shut two wires that connected the battery to the high explosive detonator. There was no physical way for current to reach the HE layer. And if the special explosive composition that surrounded the core couldn't fire, there could be no critical mass, no chain reaction. The only question now was how long before Felix Calderone learned the truth.

Calderone was already rubbing his hands, thinking. "We can't leave Eduardo here. Put him in the back of the ambulance." He pushed Aleman over. "Help him. We'll use him as a 'patient', to get past the roadblocks. The police are everywhere, Luis. All the bridges and tunnels, everywhere. But they're letting emergency vehicles through. Jorge got us an ambulance."

They lifted Ortega's lifeless body and laid him to rest on a collapsed gurney in the back of the ambulance. Calderone then went over to the K-5. He bent down to examine the opened wireway panels, wires still hanging to the floor.

"I thought you said you were finished."

Gallegos didn't want the teniente poking around inside the panels any more than necessary. He might spot the sabotage.

"I was just replacing the wiring bundle when Lazlo came out. He told me about Eduardo. Here, it'll just take a second." Gallegos retrieved the panel covers. He laid the hanging wire bundle back inside its compartment, fastening the bundle down with a cable tie, then replaced the covers and screwed them shut.

"Is it armed?"

Gallegos nodded. He fingered a small switch panel, only three toggles mounted with screws on a half-foot square of plywood from the shop. Wiring ran from beneath the wood sheet into a conduit bundle riveted to the base of the warhead. Gallegos had taped the switches up with black electrical tape.

"I've bypassed all the relays the ruso told me about. Pressure sensors, acceleration sensors, timers, that sort of thing. This switch block's all we need now. One switch connects the battery to the high explosive layer. That's this one, on the right. The middle one opens a relay I made up, to get around the bank of inertial switches that close when the missile slows down in the atmosphere enough. Remember, this baby's designed to ride a missile to its target. The first switch, on the left here, is something the ruso told me about, a special design he was thinking up. This one switch bypasses a barometric pressure sensor, two sequential timers and the arm/safe circuit. Once you flip this first one, the bomb can't be unarmed."

Gallegos watched as Calderone felt carefully along each wire. Suspicious prick. But my work's inside, out of sight. A little present from Marti. The teniente studied Gallegos' makeshift control panel for a few seconds, then, looking at Gallegos, he tore off the tape on the first switch, the arm/safe bypass, and flipped it closed.

"What's the sequence, Luis?"

Gallegos said, "You've just closed the final electrical break in the firing circuit. Next is the middle one. The inertial switch bypass. After that, the one on the right. Battery power to the explosive layer. If you follow that sequence..."Gallegos shrugged, "no more New York City."

Calderone tore the tape off the second switch and closed the inertial switch bypass. He handed the panel back to Gallegos.

"Keep it safe for me, Luis. Now let's get our Christmas present into the ambulance and get going."

Gallegos handled the panel gingerly. Only the third switch remained taped open. He knew perfectly well that there was no way the bomb could go off. He had done the sabotage himself, only half an hour ago. Still, it was best to take care. Even the high explosives, what the Yanquis liked to call Composition B, could be deadly. He doubled the tape over the last switch, then fixed the panel to a small cradle he had fashioned with Lazlo's lathe. Then he taped over the entire panel. It wouldn't do at all to have that panel jostled around anymore than necessary.

Short one man, the three Cubans struggled with the weight and bulk of the K-5. After ten minutes of grunting and sweating in the stifling drafty air of the warehouse, they managed to wrestle the device into the back of ambulance. Aleman found a few quilts in the office and draped them over the bomb. The body of Eduardo Ortega was situated right next to it, face uncovered, still strapped into the collapsed gurney.

As a final measure, Calderone went back to the office. On a map of Manhattan, he picked out a hospital--St. Claire's at Fifty-First and Ninth Avenue--and scribbled a few lines about their patient and some cryptic directions to the clinic. He checked the note--it read suspected tuberculosis--fever and vomiting--emergency admitting--Sisters of Mercy--vitals stabilized at noon--Dr. (here he smiled, thinking up a name) Castro. It would have to do.

The three of them climbed into the ambulance. Calderone drove, and Aleman sat up front too. Gallegos stayed in the back, with Ortega and the bomb. Calderone added a final flourish to the subterfuge, hunting around in the back of the ambulance for some thin tubing. He found a coil in a cabinet.

"Stick this in his mouth," he ordered.

Gallegos winced. "Why, teniente? He's dead. He should be given a proper burial."

Calderone backhanded Gallegos across the mouth. His eyes flared. "Stupido! To make it look real! Don't you ever question orders again." He took Gallegos by the collar. "Look, I know it's hard. Eduardo was a good man. It hurts to lose good men. But war's like that. He can still help the mission. Now, do what I said." He waited, helped Gallegos fix the tubing just right, then told him to put on a white jacket thrown in the corner. Gallegos slipped into the jacket, though it was a size too small. The chest patch read Sisters of Mercy.

"There. At least you look like an ambulance attendant. If the police open the door, tell them this is life support." Calderone tapped the quilt covering the K-5. "Don't let them look underneath." He slammed the door shut and got in the cab, firing up the engine.

They pulled away from the warehouse and drove north on Doremus again. This time, Calderone decided to go a little further north, up to the Lincoln Tunnel. He had to turn west and drive through Newark itself to pick up the New Jersey Turnpike. From there, they could make the Tunnel approach.

Gallegos was sorry for Ortega. He died bad. There wasn't any honor for a soldier going off to Heaven the way he did, throwing up blood, gasping for air, his face muscles sagging like dried beef. I'm sorry, companero. Vaya con Dios. He deserved a lot better than that.

Gallegos knew the radiation had affected him too. The ruso was right. The bomb was a leaker. They'd damaged it somehow, carting the damn thing halfway across Cuba, out to sea on a tiny boat, banging around that oil rig, dropping the thing several times getting ashore at Mobile. Fucking rusos....they can't even make an atomic bomb right. Now they were like cockroaches, scuttling all over Cuba, poisoning the land and the people with their ideas, their Communism. But not for long.

Gallegos sat back, dizzy, as Calderone twisted and turned, looking for a way onto the Turnpike. He'd had some nausea himself that morning. And his gums were already bleeding. His hands and forearms burned. A few splotches had already formed. It was only a matter of time before he followed Eduardo. But not before he'd had the pleasure of seeing Calderone's pig-face, once he learned the bomb had been sabotaged, learned that he had failed the mission. In Gallegos's vision, the two of them would fight to the death, and die like men, hands on each other throats. A delicious vision, he imagined.

Soldiers should die fighting. Fighting for what they believed in.

It was puzzling, Gallegos thought. Through the rear windows, he could see the smokestacks and refinery columns, the industrial landscape of northern New Jersey. It was easy enough to shut his eyes and replace them with royal palm and limestone hills, thatched hut bohios and the cane fields of Cuba. He was certain beyond words that he would never see those places again, but the image was bright and warm and beckoning.

Puzzling that, after his call to the FBI in Atlanta, no one had been following them. No one had tried to stop them. What's wrong with the FBI? he wondered. Where were they? Why didn't the Yanquis try harder to stop them?

Maybe they didn't know. Maybe they were unsure what was really going on. Gallegos thought that unlikely but he couldn't ignore the possibility. The best plan, since he had fixed the bomb for good, was to get rid of Calderone and somehow publicly humiliate Fidel Castro. The Commandante en Jefe would be on the radio tomorrow, warning the Yanquis not to mess with little Cuba. His voice would issue forth from the bowels of Havana, tweaking the nose of the imperialist monster to the north, taunting Kennedy and the rich warlords here in New York.

Radio.

Now that's an idea, Gallegos thought. Every ambulance had a radio, didn't it? He groaned, getting up, to peer through the cab's rear window. Yes, there it was. Radio and mike, mounted on the front dash of the cab.

Gallegos returned to a more comfortable position, sitting at Eduardo's head, idly stroking his black hair. Just the exertion of getting up had made him out of breath.

Yes, the radio was the key. Gallegos began to mull over the possibilities, ways to both pull the FBI in and give Castro a black eye at the same time. For the first time, he began to smile.

11-5-62, Monday

Washington, D.C.

1:15 p.m.

MacGeorge Bundy usually didn't spend a lot of time reflecting on the geography of power inside the White House West Wing. To a casual observer, the size of an office might seem an indicator of one's status, or perhaps the view out of the window, or the number of lines and buttons on a phone, or perhaps even the acreage of a desk. These were just the sorts of physical totems that might interest some futuristic archaeologist, poring over the symbols and icons of power as if the White House were a Mayan temple. No, Bundy thought, as he paced restlessly in his ground-floor corner office, waiting for the Florida Congressman to arrive, the real geography of power was based on location, proximity to the Oval Office and ease of access. And the National Security Advisor had long found peculiar satisfaction, as only a former Harvard professor could, in knowing that twelve steps from his office door would put him at the outer door to the Oval Office, staring the Secret Service watch officer and the President's military aid and his "football" full of nuclear codes right in the face.

That what was power was about in this town.

An hour ago, Florida Congressman Stephen Jenkins had called the White House. He wanted to meet somebody. Jenkins had been firm, saying he had to talk to somebody about something to do with national security. After being transferred from Domestic Policy to the Economic Counselor's office to the President's Science Advisor, Bundy had finally taken the call, holding the phone out as if it were contaminated. The truth was he detested Congress and all congressmen as something akin to a nest of termites, eating away at the foundations of good government. He listened semi-politely to Jenkins' incoherent ranting, then suggested a quick meet right after lunch. Could he come by, say, about one p.m.? Northwest gate? Bundy promised to inform the guard. Jenkins had agreed.

Jenkins came in and shook Bundy's hand, right at the appointed hour. Bundy offered him coffee and a seat. He took neither, but remained standing, and opened a manilla folder right on top of the stacks of papers on Bundy's desk.

"This is nuts, Mr. Bundy. You and I don't know each other but I got your name from that Sorenson guy. He said you ran National Security."

Bundy smiled faintly and tried hard not to look too patronizing. "I advise the President on matters of national security. I assume you have something for me in that area."

"Damn right." Jenkins laid out some papers. Bundy didn't offer to read them but even from a distance, he could make out the official seal of the Joint Chiefs. Where had he gotten that? Bundy had been swamped that morning, details of the bomb search, civil defense meetings, intelligence on a possible coup in Russia. He really didn't have time for hand-holding obscure legislators looking for favors. He decided to help Jenkins along.

"Congressman, that's a lot of paper there. Why don't you just summarize your concerns for me?"

Jenkins laid one stapled report on top of the others. "I believe this is as good a summary as any, Mr. Bundy."

The National Security Advisor adjusted his glasses and scanned through a report labeled OpPlan 322. The report detailed the scenarios, tables of organization and equipment and strategy for a limited strike at the Communist leadership in Cuba. Bundy's frown deepened as he flipped pages.

"Congressman, where did you get this?"

Now it was Jenkins' turn to be abrupt. He seated himself without asking. "The Chair of the House Armed Services Committee still has a little pull in this town."

Bundy closed the report. "What you're showing me is a scenario, a planning exercise. There are dozens of these. Your committee has been fully briefed."

"Not on this." Jenkins extracted more paper from his attache case and laid the sheets on the desk.

Bundy saw right away the title: Current Status Log - Situation Desk. It was dated Sunday, November 4. He took off his glasses and began wiping the lenses.

"I see you've been by the Pentagon recently. That's a highly classified document, containing operational deployments and positions, readiness levels, inspection results, order of battle for all U.S. forces. I assume you have some reason for bringing that into my office. Assuming I'm even cleared for that kind of information."

Jenkins said, "Mr. Bundy, you're a busy man. So am I. I'll cut the bullshit and point out a few disturbing facts. If you study the OpPlan 322 report, it describes a military operation, supposedly limited in nature, to send the Marines and the Army into Cuba and get rid of Castro. Nice idea. Don't know of too many Congressmen who wouldn't like to see that happen. Trouble is, Mr. Bundy, this Current Status Log shows several units, well described in the OpPlan, already in position to execute the opening phases of this very OpPlan."

"Coincidences happen."

Jenkins then pulled out the kicker. "Is this a coincidence?" He pushed the action reports, culled from the Iwo Jima's sitreps back to COC at Homestead. Jenkins had threatened Colonel Potter, staff director at NMCC, with a full-scale Congressional inquiry, in order to get them. Barbara Shirley's Sunday morning research had pointed the way.

Bundy read quickly. "I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at, Congressman. These action reports are describing an exercise."

"To the contrary, what the action reports describe is quite real." Jenkins found the sheet Lieutenant Cedars had submitted to the DCOS/Logistics at Headquarters, USMC. "See here: a question about increased draws of body bags, whole blood, surgical equipment. Submitted by a young Lieutenant at Homestead, right to Marine headquarters. Hell, look at the big picture, Mr. Bundy. It's staring you right in the face. The documentation describes a wargame to knock off Castro. Several of the units described in the wargame are currently in the correct positions to start this operation, right now. You see the action reports, the casualties, the withdrawals, the air support, call signs, everything. Hell, if I'm to believe all this paper, you're missing virtually an entire Marine rifle company. Why don't you check with the Marines, see if they can give you a status report on Charlie Two-Five?"

"It's got to be part of an exercise."

"Then what the hell's this stuff doing at the Current Situation Desk?" Jenkins took off his own glasses and folded them up. His jaw tightened. "We got some kind of funny business going on down there in the Caribbean. The committee's already writing up a formal notice of inquiry. It'll go over to McNamara in a few hours. I want to know what's going on. Why hasn't Congress been informed? At the ExComm meeting two weeks ago today, the President indicated that he wasn't contemplating military action unless the missiles weren't removed. But the Russians have agreed to remove them. What's changed? What the hell's going on here?"

Bundy stared blankly at all the papers on his desk. He knew he couldn't tell Jenkins about the Cuban commandos. He couldn't violate a direct order from the President, even though a seven-hundred kiloton atomic bomb might be only a few miles away, already counting down, ready to go at any second.

"Congressman, I can assure you the President hasn't authorized any direct action. In Cuba or against Cuba. We've tried to keep Congress informed but sometimes events move fast. Deployments to support possible action and to support the quarantine task force have been authorized. Some reserves have been called up, like the troop carrier squadrons. That's all."

"Looks to me like activities have proceeded beyond 'normal deployment positioning. How else do you explain this request for body bags and whole blood, for an exercise? Why don't you call up McNamara now and see what he says?"

Bundy was already reaching for the phone. "I will." He dialed the SecDef on the STU secure phone. "Bob? Mac, over at the White House." Bundy explained the situation, describing the reports Jenkins had gotten. "Can you look into this right away? The Congressman already has a formal inquiry being worked up in committee. He says you'll be seeing a courier in about two hours." Bundy listened as McNamara promised to investigate, then described the documents Jenkins' formal request had produced. He nodded, then handed the phone over to Jenkins. "Bob wants a word with you."

Jenkins cradled the receiver. McNamara sounded like a Sunday School teacher, coming over the secure line.

"Congressman, I never saw any formal request for information come over my desk. How'd you get those documents from the Joint Staff, or the Situation Desk?"

"I called up your deputy, Bob. Ros Gilpatric helped me out. You were in a conference." It wasn't exactly the truth but it was close enough. Jenkins had no intention of telling them about Barbara Shirley.

"I'll check into the status of all Marine and Navy units. Be back with you in an hour. Maybe less."

Jenkins gave the phone back to Bundy. The National Security Advisor regarded Congressman Jenkins carefully. "How's the campaigning going?"

Jenkins smiled his best political smile. "Like gangbusters. We got the other guys on the run but good. People appreciate what Kennedy's done to the Russians lately. High time, they're telling me. I took a quick trip down to Homestead Saturday, just to see for myself, get some photos, you know, really talk to our boys." Jenkins pulled out a pipe, and began finagling with a pouch of tobacco. Bundy wasn't a smoker. "I learned a lot down there. And that's where I first started hearing about this little adventure on the coast of Cuba."

Bundy watched sourly as the Congressmen tamped the tobacco down and lit up. "I don't suppose the fact that tomorrow's election day has anything to do with your little inquiry?"

Jenkins puffed and smiled. His eyes gleamed behind gold specs. "Now, Mr. Bundy, you know as well as I do that Congress has the constitutional obligation to provide policy guidance on all affairs of government. How else can a hard-working legislator do his job if he can't get the facts straight. You know what I mean?'

Bundy's nose wrinkled at the acrid smell of the smoke. It reminded him of an incinerator he occasionally smelled near Harvard Yard in Boston, where he'd been a professor before John Kennedy called.

"I do indeed."

They chatted and sparred for half an hour, before Bundy's phone rang again. It was McNamara. The National Security Advisor put the SecDef on speaker this time.

The concern in the Secretary's voice was noticeable. "Mac, Congressman, looks like we have a little problem here. I went to the Situation Desk myself, looked over the traffic the last few days. Then I talked with Admiral Anderson and General Shoup. Bottom line is we do have some unusual sitreps that came in Sunday afternoon. I'm not sure exactly what to make of them. But the CNO and the Commandant are checking now. They'll have a full report for me within the hour, they promised. I call you back then."

Bundy's throat tightened. "What are we dealing with here, Bob? Some command misunderstanding? The President was quite explicit about what he wanted."

"I'm not sure, Mac. Let me get more facts. There's definitely been some limited combat on the Cuban mainland. Several units of Marines and Navy have been involved. I'm trying to find out whether the Cubans or the Russians or who exactly fired first. It may be a case of some local commander with an itchy trigger finger."

"Should I alert the President?"

McNamara paused, unsure how to word his concerns, then said, "Not just yet. I'll have more for you by three. By the way, I've got a meeting with all the Chiefs in a few minutes. I'm going to lay it on the line."

"You do that, Bob. Jesus Christ, whoever it is, our men or theirs, they're running a helluva of risk. We can't give Khrushchev or Castro any more reasons to stall. If the culprit's one of our men, you tell the Chiefs to yank him out of there right now. I'm contacting the President, if I don't hear anything from you by three."

11-5-62, Monday

Washington, D.C.

2:00 p.m.

Shortly after midnight Sunday, Rafael Ramirez had pulled off the Key Bridge and turned right onto M Street, heading east into Georgetown. He circled the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street three times before finally deciding to pull into a small shopping center, near the City Tavern. The streets were dark, save for antique gas lamps every few hundred feet, but the massive police presence was felt nonetheless. Ramirez had ducked into the back of the strip of shops, to avoid contact with police and Army vehicles roaming the streets of the District in increasing numbers.

The truck stayed behind the shops the rest of the night. Several times, Ramirez ordered Saguente and Arrantes out, to reconnoiter the area, and report back police activity. He was reluctant to venture out again in the Rent-All truck. The police had to know about the vehicle by now. He wasn't sure how much the police activity was a search for them and how much was precautionary. Listening to the radio as they approached the District, Ramirez had heard reports of police roadblocks and checkpoints at major intersections. He had managed to slip into the District anyway, by getting off Highway 29 in Roslyn, circling around the city for about fifteen minutes, then getting back on again long enough to cross the Potomac. No doubt the highway was now blocked behind them. But the Yanquis were too late.

For the time being, the truck was well hidden in the shadows of the brick shops, surrounded by garbage cans, empty wooden pallets and a huge truck trailer. Just before dawn, Saguente returned from a quick reconnaissance down M Street. He told the Capitan of a florist shop, called Worthy Flowers, two blocks east. There was a van there, empty, with a large cargo hold in the back.

"Big enough for the bomb?" Ramirez asked.

"Si, I think so, Capitan."

Ramirez decided then and there, that before the sun went down, they would transfer the bomb to that van.

The truth was that the K-12 device was more than powerful enough to obliterate the entire District from right where they were. But for Ramirez, the real target was the White House and John Kennedy. It was Kennedy who had hired Cuban bandits from Batista and sent them to the Bay of Pigs. It was Kennedy who'd killed Tomas.

And it was John Kennedy who would die at ground zero in a cataclysm the likes of which the Americans had never seen. Just the thought of it brought a smile to Ramirez' face. No, the White House was where they would have to be. Sometime before midnight Monday, in a florist van that Barracoa would hotwire, the Moncada team would park directly across from the north entrance to the White House, hard by Lafayette Park. There they would wait for dawn and Fidel Castro's ultimatum.

"Let's get going," he told them. "Angel, you and Miguel get that van up here. Watch yourself. If the policia come, hide. Don't get caught. Here." He gave Saguente his Makarov. Their eyes met and the young soldier understood that they were not to be captured alive. He saluted and disappeared out the back of the truck with Barracoa.

The Cubans made their way down M Street casually, admiring several shop windows, all the time keeping their eye on the van. As they approached, a dark-haired man emerged from Worthy's Flowers, bearing an armful of bouquets, which he placed carefully in racks in the back of the van. Before the Cubans could get there, the van started up and pulled away from the street. It slipped into eastbound traffic and disappeared down M Street.

Shit.

"What do we do now?" Saguente muttered.

Barracoa spied an unattended food vendor's cart on the corner. The proprietor was nowhere in sight. They went to the cart and started pushing it along the sidewalk, slowly, its chimes ringing gaily as they bumped over the broken pavement. In seconds, the proprietor appeared. He had ducked into a restaurant for a quick drink.

"Hey! Hey, you! That's my cart..."

Saguente was on him quick, wrapping the man in a bear hug, chuckling like an old friend. The man tried to twist away but Saguente's grip tightened. Several pedestrians walked by and Saguente smiled at them, looking up and down the street, still joking with the man, firmly steering him toward the 31st Street intersection. As Barracoa wheeled the cart around, they turned right and joked and swayed south, down the hill, toward the canal and the wrought-iron railings overlooking the walkway. Barracoa fell in behind Saguente and the man, checking to see if anyone were looking. No one was.

Just past the first lamppost, a parking garage entrance loomed. The cart owner twisted away for a second, then started to run. Barracoa stuck out a foot and tripped him. He sprawled headfirst to the cement. Saguente jerked the man upright by his jacket and embraced him again, like a long lost friend. He felt for the Makarov's trigger, found it, then pulled the man as tight as could toward the gun in his pocket. They'd done this a hundred times in Cuba, training. A poor man's silencer....

Saguente squeezed off the trigger, at the same time Barracoa slammed the cart door shut, momentarily muffling the pistol's report. The cart owner jerked, then slumped. Saguente dragged him quickly into some bushes beside the garage entrance, then checked his own jacket. Blood stains. He shrugged out of the jacket, then walked with Barracoa back up to M Street, pushing the cart. He helped himself to a frankfurter and some mustard.

Now they had some cover.

Barracoa and Saguente prowled the south side of M Street for twenty minutes, counting police cars and Army trucks as they barreled through Georgetown. They had reached Pennsylvania and turned about when they spotted the flower truck returning to its parking space. Quickly, they pushed the cart back toward the shop, crossing several side streets against traffic. The driver got out of the van and went into the shop.

Saguente pulled the cart alongside the van, blocking the curbside door, while Barracoa, grunting with shoulder pain, inserted the hook rod and popped the door. He slipped inside, pulling the door shut. Twenty seconds later, the van engine coughed to life and Barracoa revved it. Saguente was in the process of moving the cart to climb in when the van driver appeared.

"Hey! Hey...what the hell? Hey....that's--"

Saguente grabbed the driver, a tall lean fellow with a black crew cut and glasses and threw him into the van, forcing him facedown to the floorboard. Barracoa gunned the engine and swung out into traffic, causing a bus to slam on its brakes, squealing behind them. Barracoa headed east on M, then turned hard left at 29th, and headed north. Left again at N, then back toward the shopping center.

The driver's name was Cal Worthy, the flower shop owner. Saguente kept his foot on Worthy's neck, forcing him down.

"Hey, you're hurting my neck, asshole...get off my--"

Saguente pressed harder. "Amigo, I'll break your neck if you don't lie still."

Five minutes later, Barracoa had pulled the white van into the shopping center's rear service drive and parked behind the Rent-All truck. Ramirez came out.

"Good work, Angel, this looks like it'll do. Open up the back, let's check her out."

Saguente pulled Worthy out by the collar of his jacket and jammed the business end of his Makarov in the shop owner's side. Ramirez and Barracoa inspected the back of the van. Ramirez climbed in, paced off the dimensions. Kapitonov showed up, peering in as well.

"Ruso, this big enough?"

Kapitonov scowled. "She'll fit. Tight, but she'll fit." He went back to the truck.

Ramirez jumped down. He regarded Cal Worthy coldly. "This your van?"

Worthy nodded sullenly. "You can't just kidnap a guy in broad daylight, you know. Lots of people saw what happened."

Ramirez smirked at him, pulling Worthy's chin up with his hand. "And the police are on the way, eh? So where are they, compadre? I don't hear any sirens, do you?"

Worthy shook his head free, started to raise his fists, but thought better of it. Three Makarovs were trained on him. He dropped his arms glumly. "They'll be here. You can't get away with this. Besides, I'm not carrying any money anyway."

Ramirez stifled a laugh. "It's not your money I want. It's your van." The Capitan placed himself nose to nose with Worthy, so close that Worthy flinched from spit as the Ramirez spoke. "You wish to live another hour?"

Worthy said nothing. His eyes narrowed.

"You will die, here at my feet, if you don't do exactly as I say."

As if to emphasize the point, Saguente cocked the hammer on the Makarov. He placed the muzzle against Worthy's temple. There was a chilly breeze blowing behind the shops but beads of sweat broke out on Worthy's face. He started shaking.

"I--what do you want, mister?"

"Is this your van?"

Worthy nodded. "I'm the owner. Worthy Flowers."

Ramirez glared at Worthy, eyeball to eyeball. "You making any more deliveries today?"

Worthy swallowed hard, nodding. "There's one in about an hour. Mrs. Vandeventer wants her usual arrangement of poinsettias and roses. She's hosting a party tonight. She does one every other Monday in the fall."

"How far away?"

Worthy shrugged, flinching as Saguente's Makarov dug deeper into his temple. He closed his eyes. "Not far. A few blocks. Up on O Street."

Ramirez backed away. He nodded to Saguente, who dropped and pocketed the sidearm. "We'll go along." He went over to the Rent-All truck, opened the back doors. Kapitonov had his head buried in a wireway, and wiring hung out from the base of the warhead. "How long?"

The Russian poked his head up, switched off the flashlight. He wiped some sweat from his forehead. "Several hours. I've got several circuits to change, connections, terminals everything. Then I've got to check continuity. Plus the batteries are getting low. If I don't have twenty-four volts, I can't get current to the detonator. Or charge up the capacitor bank."

Ramirez rubbed the stubble on his chin. Batteries were the biggest problem. "Will the batteries hold until tomorrow?"

Kapitonov was wiping his hands with a greasy handkerchief. "Maybe. Right now, the voltage is good. Tomorrow--" he shrugged.

Ramirez was thinking fast. Damn this piece of junk! "We have to move the bomb. Now. The police are all around us, and they've got a description of this truck. It's just a matter of time before they find us. Get on your feet, ruso. You can help. We're moving the bomb to this van. Then, we'll make a special delivery."

Kapitonov shook his head and struggled to his feet. His left leg still throbbed from the flesh wound. Barracoa's field dressing was coming loose. He hobbled to the edge, then hopped down on his good leg.

Ramirez ordered Cal Worthy tied up and placed in the van front seat. Saguente found some cord and did the honors, making sure the man was securely stashed in the floorboard. Then he climbed in the other side, and started the engine. He maneuvered the van around in the cramped service lane, until the rear doors abutted the back of the Rent-All truck. He got out, locked the door with Worthy's keys and pocketed the chain.

Moving the bomb took the better part of an hour. Kapitonov buttoned up the wireway panels. Ramirez and Arrantes got on one end, and Barracoa and Saguente got on the other. The Russian helped in the middle. Alternately rocking the bomb, they managed to walk it to the edge of the cargo deck. Saguente had backed the van to within three feet of the deck edge. With a lot of grunting and pushing, rocking and walking, the five of them were able to shove the K-12 over the edge, across the three-foot gap and into the back of Worthy's van. The van shook with the eight hundred pound weight of the device. It was a tight fit. The doors scraped but shut and latched.

Ramirez helped out with the three wooden crates carrying the rest of their mission gear. Among the items they had brought along were a book of stencils prepared by the DGI. The stencils could be used to paint or mark emblems and logos on objects. One of the stencils had intrigued Ramirez from their earliest days of training. It was a design for the Central Intelligence Agency, a motor pool fleet emblem. He'd wondered how the DGI had gotten that one. Maybe from the embassy, before the Revolution. They had several buckets of paint as well, and he was sure they could get more locally. He'd left the Bolivar Barracks on the morning of the Bejucal assault with nearly a thousand dollars U.S. cash.

The barest hint of an idea surfaced in his mind.

It was nearly four o'clock when they found the Vandeventer townhouse--3055 O Street, midway along the block. It was typical Georgetown, four floors and a slate roof, with dark blue shutters and a massive oak door at the top of an ornate curving flagstone staircase. A narrow driveway crept back to the rear of the house, through an iron gate, that was closed. Ramirez ordered Saguente, driving the van, to back into the drive.

He got out, with Arrantes and Cal Worthy, and went up the stone stairs to the front door. He checked around. Light traffic on O Street that afternoon. In the distance were sirens. They had seen two small convoys of U.S. Army trucks on the short drive up. Traffic was halted at M Street and 30th, while the convoys rolled eastward. Ramirez had studied the operation closely. Infantry, he surmised. Maybe National Guard. As they crossed north after the convoy, he could see eastward along the street the beginnings of a roadblock being erected, perhaps four or five blocks away, about where Pennsylvania split off to the southeast.

Something was up. The Yanquis were building a cordon around the central part of the city, around the Federal District. Ramirez knew they would have only a short window during which they could slip inside the blockade.

He positioned Worthy in front of the peephole, then knocked on the huge oak door. A moment later, an older woman cracked the door to the end of the door chain, and peered out.

"Cal? That you?"

Worthy wet his lips. He knew Saguente had already cocked the Makarov. "Yes, ma'am. I've got your...uh, your poinsettias. And the roses. In the van."

Mrs. Vandeventer had a round face, already heavily rouged. Her hair was a white bun. Heavy gold dangled from her neck. She unlatched the door chain and pulled the door wide.

Ramirez shoved Worthy roughly inside, kicking the door open further. Saguente slipped in behind.

Mrs. Vandeventer fell back, nearly losing her balance. She grabbed a wooden handrail around the door landing. "Good heavens...what's...what's this....?"

Ramirez slammed the door shut and twisted the bolt down hard, locking it. He raised his own Makarov to her nose.

"Not a word, senora, not a single word from you...or I'll kill you right here. Comprehende? You understand me?" For good measure, he poked the muzzle of the weapon into her mouth. Mrs. Vandeventer's eyes widened, and she started to gag.

"You sit down in that chair for now." He pulled the gun from her mouth and dragged her by the arm to a red leather wingback chair in the den off the landing. "You too." He motioned Worthy over. "Tie them up, Miguel. There's cord. Use that." He indicated a sash bound with cord over an oil portrait along the wall. "I'll get the others."

Saguente set to work as Ramirez hunted for a rear door. He found it off the kitchen in the back. A key ring hung on a pin beside the door. He grabbed it, opened the door, and ran down iron stairs to the backyard.

A detached garage sat perpendicular to the house, connected to the rear door by a gravel walk and columned breezeway. The driveway turned ninety degrees left from the side drive and ran up to the garage doors, which were already up. Ramirez went to the iron gate and fumbled with the key ring. Finally, he found one that worked and pulled the gate open. Arrantes backed the van along the driveway, Ramirez closing the gate behind him, and made the turn into the garage. Ramirez motioned him to back completely into the garage. When the van was inside, he pulled the garage doors down, yelling, "Stay here. I'll be back in a minute."

Ramirez went back into the townhouse. The kitchen was tiled black and white. The smell of ham and roast was strong. Ramirez noticed two side by side refrigerators. He opened one. It was crammed with cold cuts, vegetable dishes, salads, desserts. Ramirez inhaled the aroma, lingering for a moment, savoring the view. Tonight, he promised himself, we'll dine like kings. Revolutionary heroes deserved no less.

In the den, stocked with Federal period furnishings and dark blue throw rugs and damask curtains, he found Worthy and the Vandeventer woman secured to chairs, facing each other across a low table. The cards of a solitaire game, partly finished, lay strewn about the table. A few had fallen on the floor.

Ramirez squatted down in front of Mrs. Vandeventer. Saguente had gagged them both with torn strips of the sash. He yanked the gag out. Mrs. Vandeventer jumped in her seat, shaking.

"Senora, what's your name?"

"My...my..name? My...name...uh, yes, Vandeventer. Celia Vandeventer. Who are you?"

Ramirez rubbed his tired eyes. He propped his chin on two fists, peering up at her. "Who I am isn't important. I am a soldier. A patriot. And you, Senora Vandeventer, you are very lucky."

"I am?"

"Si, you have a great honor and duty to perform tonight. Tonight, you serve the Revolution. You have the honor of feeding my men. I looked in your kitchen. In my country, such a kitchen we have not seen since the days of the patrones, the Spanish landlords. It's fitting, isn't it?"

Mrs. Vandeventer was shaking her head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, you will, Senora, you will. It's so fitting, so appropriate. We are the Revolution. Tomorrow, we strike a blow for Cuba, for la gente. The people's struggle triumphs at last. How fitting our heroes should dine in such capitalist splendor, the night before they die."

"Whatever are you talking about? Look, I have money. I have jewelry, we can talk--"

Ramirez stood up abruptly. "No. We won't talk. Not now. Later, perhaps. There's work to do." To Saguente: "Put them there--" he pointed to a closet below the stairs, a coat closet. "And barricade the door. Use these chairs."

"Si, Capitan." Saguente dragged Worthy, still bound hand and foot and threw him headfirst into the closet. He wasn't any gentler with Mrs. Vandeventer, at the end, half dragging her into the same closet.

"Watch them. And the street. You see police, come get me. I'll be with the van."

Ramirez went back to the garage. They had another hour and a half of daylight, maybe more. He found a side door and went in. Fluorescents were on overhead, casting long shadows in the garage. Kapitonov and the others had gotten out, stretching, sitting or pacing about the cramped space.

"Police are everywhere," Ramirez told them. "We have to hide for awhile, until it's dark."

Kapitonov came up. "I need some things. Twenty amp relays, for one. And some fifteen gauge wire, several rolls. There's screws here, on that bench, I can use. There's more work than I thought...the contact timer has to be bypassed and I forgot about that."

"You go with the ruso," Ramirez told Arrantes. "Find a store, get what he needs. You be back here before dark."

Arrantes headed out, the Russian limping along behind him.

"Capitan, you think we can get this van closer to the White House?" asked Saguente. "Through the roadblocks, all the police?"

Ramirez went over to one of the wooden crates and pulled out the stencil book the DGI had compiled for them. He found the one for the CIA motor pool emblem. He showed it to Saguente. "Our companeros in Havana have done their homework, Miguel. Get some brushes and I'll mix up some paint. We've got work to do. Where's Angel? We need him too. I want this van to look like a motor pool vehicle by midnight." He lay the stencil against the van door, trying different locations.

"Then we move into position."

11-5-62, Monday

Washington, D.C.

4:30 p.m.

Lieutenant Dale Dugway sat in the cab of the Rent-All truck, copying down the VIN on a precinct pad. He thought for a moment, wondering what it had been like carrying an atom bomb in the back of this thing, halfway across the country. Frigging Cubans are nuts, he decided. He hopped down to the pavement, looking for Captain Eddie Winston. He was by the side of the crime scene tape, yakking away for some TV news crew. Hell, this was a 7th Precinct show, not some beauty contest for Headquarters. But the Captain was just the kind of pretty boy the networks liked. He looked good on the small screen.

Dugway had gotten the call only half an hour ago, just heading into Jefferson House for a Coke and a sandwich, when Patrol South Two had lit up the radio with a bingo on that stolen truck from Roanoke, the one with the Cubans. Dugway did an about face, and ran to his unit parked in the no-park stripes along Wisconsin Avenue. He was at the scene, behind the Shops of Georgetown, in thirty seconds.

The next half hour had seen frantic activity around the intersection with M Street. DC police from several precincts had converged on the center of Georgetown, cordoning off the district with cars and trucks and tape and, in the process, creating a traffic jam whose effects rippled outward like some automotive tidal wave. No fewer than fifteen units had descended on the cramped intersection, parked on sidewalks, in the middle of the street, anywhere they could find space. Waiters and bartenders from the City Tavern had shown up too, curious, bearing plates and drinks, until Captain Winston shooed them out of the crime scene area. Somewhere in the midst of the melee, the FBI had been notified. Mike French and the rest of the bomb task force were already on the way, rocketing up Pennsylvania Avenue at over seventy miles an hour, dodging barricades and Army two-tonners at every intersection. They pulled up onto the southbound sidewalks at 31st Street, hopped out and jogged the rest of the way up to the Shops.

Seventh Precinct had rounded up several witnesses who claimed to have seen a kidnapping right out in front of Worthy Flowers. One was a middle-aged woman, who ran a jewelry store in a renovated walk-in next to the intersection. Her name was Rita Moscone and she was shivering, sipping hot tea served by the City Tavern, when Mike French walked up with Captain Winston.

French identified himself. Alexei Maximov was behind them, listening. Rita Moscone pulled a black fur coat tighter around her neck, as early November winds swirled leaves along the sidewalk.

"Tell me what you saw, ma'am," French asked.

"Well," she started, then sipped more tea, "it all happened so fast, I'm not real sure exactly what I saw. Cal--that's Mr. Worthy--runs that flower shop. Nice man, sweet really, but he's queer as a two-dollar bill, as my husband would say. But he was coming out, see, I guess carrying some flowers, making a delivery, I suppose. I happened to be working on the window displays, re-arranging them, Thanksgiving's coming up and I was doing a theme display...."

"Yes, ma'am...go on, please."

"Sure. I saw him run to the back of his van, right over there by that fire hydrant, and there were two other men there. They had a cart, in fact, that's the cart by the window. Hot dogs, sandwiches, you know. These men grabbed Cal and pushed him into the front seat of the van. Just threw him in there."

"Can you describe them? How tall, white, black, how old, heavy or thin?"

Rita Moscone scrunched up her eyes. "I didn't see them clearly. I was so shocked--I mean, really, this is Georgetown. We get a theft now and then and some shoplifting, but not this--"

"Were they Americans?"

Rita licked her lips. "They both had dark hair, black. I noticed that. They seemed average size. Both wearing dark jackets, jeans or some kind of trousers like that. One had a moustache, I think."

"Spanish-looking?"

Well, now that you mention it, yes. Kind of like that. Are they Mexicans?"

Mike French shook his head. "We don't know, ma'am. What happened next?"

"The van started up and went that way--" she pointed east along M Street--"toward town. That's all I saw."

Winston checked a clipboard chart he was carrying. "We put out an APB ten minutes ago, the whole District, with an advisory to Virginia and Maryland. It was fairly straightforward getting the plates and the VIN. Mrs. Moscone, you indicated to one of my officers that this happened about three-thirty?"

Rita nodded, cradling the cup of tea under her chin. "About. I didn't check the time at the moment. I was so shocked by what I had seen, you know. But that sounds about right."

Mike French checked his watch and did some quick calculations. "Three-thirty was an hour ago. Your APB went out at four-twenty. That's fifty minutes they'd had to get somewhere. The question is where?"

Eddie Winston surveyed the intersection, shut down completely by the police. Knots of officers were interviewing and taking identification from pedestrians in half a dozen places. ETs from the Crime Scene Unit were already measuring off dimensions of the now-disappeared van, prepping the street to take tire impressions.

"My guess is they're still in the area. No sense in them heading back out of town, I suppose. The Army's supposed to be blockading outbound as well as inbound. We've got a pretty good defensive perimeter already set up around the center of the city, centering on the White House and the Capitol. Every street with direct access to Pennsylvania between Fifteenth and Seventeenth is covered, as are all the crossing streets north and south of the Mall. The perimeter expands to a mile around Capitol Hill. Constitution, Independence, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, all of them are shut down. We're even diverting trains from Union Station."

French nodded. "Odds are they're outside your perimeter. But any defense can be breached, given time. If tomorrow's the deadline, then they don't have a lot of time. That works in our favor. I say we start from this point, and dragnet Georgetown, block by block. How long would that take?"

Winston already had a map of the area out. He opened it against a U.S. Mail box, holding it flat against the wind. "We need a search pattern and an outer boundary. I don't have a lot of men to spare right now. We could get the inner core of the city in a few hours. I'd recommend we put up a rolling roadblock, work north from M, and expand east-west block by block. Take each street, say from the University to Rock Creek, and go north. Clear one street at a time."

"Captain, we don't have a lot of time. The Bureau can get you some more men. And I'll get General LeClair on the line. Third Infantry can spare a few too. We need bodies and we need to move fast. If the Cubans are still here, I want to trap them. We've only got an hour or so of daylight left."

The search got underway in earnest shortly before five. Winston put Seventh Precinct in charge and search operations were nominally run by Lieutenant Dugway, following up each street sweep in an unmarked cruiser at the eastern end of the street.

It was a time-consuming process. Systematically, house by house, block by block, then street by street, expanding northward through Georgetown's alphabetic grid: M, N, Olive and Prospect, O, P, Q, and on northward toward Dumbarton Oaks. By dusk, the officers and recruited soldiers had already finished M and N Streets. In each case, the routine was the same. Two officers approached the front of the house, while a dozen more infiltrated side yards and walkways and garages, sealing off escape routes, looking for anything out of the ordinary, looking for the Worthy Flowers van. The front officers knocked on the door, talked with the residents, described the van, showed rough sketches a police artist had drawn up of the Cuban assailants, asked questions, and then left, moving on to the next house, and the next one after that. It was tedious, frustrating, and tense, all the more so knowing the Cubans had set tomorrow as a deadline. Something would happen in the Nation's Capital on Election Day, Tuesday, November 6.

At 3055 O Street, the parlor and front living room lights were dark, indicating to passersby on the street that Mrs. Vandeventer wasn't home. The truth was rather more ominous. Though several neighbors knew it was customary for the retired widower of a hotel magnate to host a steady stream of holiday parties and get-togethers in the weeks after Halloween, they also knew she sometimes left town for quick shopping trips to New York or Philadelphia. She had a weakness for antiques and was well known in the shops along New York's Fifth Avenue, especially antiques row in the vicinity of the mid-Thirties. So it wasn't all that uncommon for the mansion at 3055 to be darkened for several days at a time.

By the time Lieutenant Dugway's dragnet came to O Street, Arrantes and Kapitonov had returned from their own shopping trip. They had found a hardware store at the Wisconsin Avenue intersection--Kings Hardware--and Kapitonov had bought most of the items he had needed. They hustled back to the mansion when they saw police roadblocks steadily moving northward along Wisconsin.

Barracoa was still in the darkened living room, Makarov on a cherrywood table by the window, while the others worked to re-paint the Worthy Flowers van in the garage. He heard occasional groans and scuffling feet in the coat closet. Once in a while, he checked on his prisoners. Gagged and bound in the floor of the cramped and stuffy closet, Mrs. Vandeventer and Cal Worthy glared up in the bright beams of Barracoa's flashlight, jerking against their cords, angry protests muffled by the gags. Barracoa checked their cords, determined his guests were still quite secure, and shut the door again. More groans and feet scuffling. It happened every time.

Not long after Arrantes and the Russian had left to find a store, Barracoa had been surprised by an unexpected knock on the front door. Peering around the edges of the curtains, he had seen two children, a boy and a girl, standing on the stone steps. Not sure what to do, at first he had let the youngsters ring the bell and knock for a few minutes. Capitan Ramirez then came to the kitchen, seeking something to eat, and heard the knocking too. A quick check with Mrs. Vandeventer produced a surprising acknowledgement: the widower had been expecting two of her grandchildren that very evening. Tim and Terri, who lived just a mile or so away in apartments west on N Street. Learning that, Ramirez and Barracoa had quickly opened the door, startling the two kids, and yanked them inside the house. They were quickly bound and gagged and hustled off to the garage. Inside the coat closet, the feet scuffling grew louder and angrier.

Now, Barracoa was growing more and more nervous. The police had come to O Street. He slipped out the back and went to the garage, consulting with Capitan. What should I do? They're going to each house. Ramirez thought about that, as he watched Saguente apply more paint--the van's second coat and they were running out--to a door panel. They'd be through in another few hours.

"We'll let the anciana deal with the police." Ramirez took Barracoa back with him to the living room. They dragged Mrs. Vandeventer out and stood her up, untying her cords. Ramirez gave her a glass of water, which she sipped gratefully.

"You men won't get--"

Ramirez slapped her on the cheek, and she staggered back, until Barracoa caught her. A red welt bloomed beside her nose. "Mujer, listen to me and do exactly as I say. In a few minutes, the police will knock on this door. They're looking for criminals. There are no criminals in this house. You tell them that. You say you're alone and everything's fine. I'll be nearby and I've got good ears. You try anything else with the police and your little ones will be killed."

Mrs. Vandeventer started to cry. "Terri...Timmy...let them go, please let them go. They haven't done anything--"

Ramirez grabbed a fistful of her white hair, pulling her face closer to his. Her nose wrinkled at his breath and she screwed her eyes shut. "Not a word. Everything is fine and you're alone. Comprende?"

She nodded and Ramirez let her go. She found a swiveling mirror in the corner and primped her hair and face, dabbing cautiously at the welt on her face. Ramirez motioned Barracoa into the coat closet, where he could keep an eye--and a gun--on the queer Worthy and the kids. He checked out the window again. Yes, they were already on the sidewalk, five of them, uniformed cops and two soldiers, M-14s slung over their shoulders. Ramirez looked around the room, soon spying a decent hiding place behind some heavy brocaded curtains dividing a small parlor. He motioned for her to switch on a few lights, then extracted his own Makarov and made sure she saw it.

Mrs. Vandeventer swallowed hard. Her shoulders and hands were shaking so hard, she had to grab hold of the balustrade around the door, to stop. Footsteps on the stone steps outside. Then, came the knock.

She smoothed out her print dress and wiped a tear from her face. God, my makeup-- But it was too late for that.

"Just a minute--" She unlatched the chain and pulled the door open partway. In the yellow glow of the porch light, two D.C. police officers stood, their faces grim and hard. The soldiers hung back at the base of the curving stairs. She was dimly aware of movement in the shadows around the street lamps and along the side fencing. "Yes--?"

"Sorry to disturb you, ma'am. You're Mrs. Cecil Vandeventer?" The speaker was a heavyset sergeant from Seventh Precinct. His cheeks sagged like tired leather. The nameplate read Wilcox.

"Celia. Yes, that's correct. Is...is something wrong?"

Sergeant Wilcox produced a pencil drawing of two of the Cubans, as well as a likeness of the van. "There's been a kidnapping down on M Street this afternoon. We're looking for a van like this one, and two men, possibly Mexican or Cuban, something like these two. Have you seen anything the last few hours?"

Mrs Vandeventer took the sketches. They don't look like this at all, she thought. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the brocaded curtains move slightly. It was no breeze, though leaves clattered down the sidewalks. She started to step outside, then thought better of it. Timmy and Terri were in the closet. She couldn't do anything to harm them. Damn. Maybe, with my eyes, with my head....

In the end, she couldn't do it. She hadn't seen the kids in several weeks. Timmy loved to come over, loved her fresh-baked ginger bread and apple sauce. And Terri...

Celia Vandeventer prayed silently, willed the officer to push his way into the foyer and kill the bastards who'd done this. But nothing happened. Disgusted with herself, she slowly handed the sketches back to the sergeant.

"Sorry, officer, I haven't seen a thing."

Wilcox's eyes narrowed. Jesus, this lady's either nervous as hell or on drugs. "You're alone this afternoon, ma'am?"

"That's correct. I'm here by myself. Just me. There's nobody else here." She wondered what that would sound like. Wilcox looked dubious, checking his list. They had dozens of houses to go.

"Very well. If you do see anything suspicious in the neighborhood, or this van, or these men, you call the police right away. Here's the number." He handed her a printed slip of paper. "Sorry to disturb you." He turned and waved the others on, dropping down the steps two at a time. Out on O Street, two DC police cruisers crept further east, coming to a stop by the next house. Across the street, more officers were asking questions at the Reynolds house.

Glumly, Celia Vandeventer closed and latched the door. Ramirez emerged from the brocaded curtains, making sure the door was locked. He set the chain, then quickly switched off the lamp by the door. The room was dark again, and he pulled her back toward the coat closet.

She began to cry.
There was danger in standing still or moving forward. I thought it was the wisest policy to risk that which was incident to the latter course.

James Monroe

To Thomas Jefferson (1822)

Last week that perilous choice confronted another, younger President of the U.S. Generations to come may well count John Kennedy's resolve as one of the decisive moments of the 20th century. For Kennedy determined to move forward at whatever risk. And when faced by that determination, the bellicose Premier of the Soviet Union first wavered, then weaseled, and finally backed down.

To Kennedy, the time of truth arrived when he received sheaves of photographs taken during the preceding few days by U.S. reconnaissance planes over Cuba. They furnished staggering proof of a massive, breakneck buildup of Soviet missile power on Castro's island. Already poised were missiles capable of hurling a megaton each--or roughly 50 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb--at the U.S. Under construction were sites for launching five-megaton missiles.

Into early October, the Soviets proceeded covertly, masking their operations with lies and claims that they were sending only "defensive" weapons to Cuba. Then they threw off stealth, lunging ahead in a frantic, scarcely concealed push to get offensive missiles up and ready to fire. Their aim was devastatingly obvious: they meant to present the U.S. with the accomplished fact of a deadly missile arsenal on Cuba.

If the plan had worked--and it came fearfully close--Nikita Khrushchev would in one mighty stroke have changed the power balance of the cold war. Once again, a foreign dictator had seemingly misread the character of the U.S. and of a U.S. President. At Vienna and later, Khrushchev had sized up Kennedy as a weakling, given to strong talk and timorous action. The U.S. itself, he told Poet Robert Frost, was "too liberal to fight." Now, in the Caribbean, he intended to prove his point. And Berlin would surely be next....

There were some Nervous Nelly reactions in the U.S. The stock market, hardly a symbol of U.S. backbone, dropped sharply next day. In Tampa, sporting-goods stores reported a run on shotguns and rifles. In Dallas, a store reported brisk sales of an emergency ration pack of biscuits, malted-milk tablets, chocolate, pemmican, and canned water. In Los Angeles, a Civil Defense warning that retail stores would be closed for five days in the event of war or a national emergency sent housewives stampeding into the supermarkets. In one, hand-to-hand combat broke out over the last can of pork and beans. Said North Hollywood Grocer Sam Goldstad: "They're nuts. Another lady bought twelve packages of detergents. What's she going to do, wash up after the bomb?" Yet for all such transient evidence of panic, the U.S. was solidly behind Kennedy. As he himself had discovered on his election-year forays around the nation, it was the overriding wish of almost all Americans to "do something" about Cuba.

TIME Magazine

November 2, 1962
CHAPTER 16

11-5-62, Monday

New York City

10:05 p.m.

Much to their surprise, Calderone, Gallegos and Aleman were waved on toward the Lincoln Tunnel. The roadblock unit at the Tunnel approach had set up several rows of oil drums as barriers. All traffic was being funneled through two lanes, each lane covered by four officers. New Jersey State Police ran the operation.

The officer that stopped the Sisters of Mercy ambulance took one look inside the back, at Ortega's poisoned body, scanned the handwritten note Calderone showed him, and waved them through. Just after 10:00 that Monday night, Calderone dropped the ambulance into gear, cranked up the siren and went barreling down into the floodlit tunnel. There was almost no traffic ahead of them.

Calderone laughed out loud. They were in! He rapped on the glass panel overlooking the patient bay and gave Aleman and Gallegos a thumbs-up. Capitan would be proud. It was a glorious day for Cuba!

He drove out of the tunnel into an eerie fall evening in Manhattan. The streets were nearly devoid of traffic. He slowed, turning left out of the tunnel at Ninth Avenue, and killed the siren. The classical face of the huge Port Authority Bus Terminal slid by. Normally buzzing with activity at this time of the night, the sidewalks and ramps around the building were almost deserted. Calderone swallowed and his throat was dry. Were they driving right into a trap?

No doubt, the Yanquis were alerted to the bombs by now. He made a right turn, heading east, until they came to Fifth Avenue. He turned right and went south.

In the back of the ambulance, Aleman and Gallegos were fascinated by the glitter and lights passing by. To their right, backlit and frozen in stone, the gargoyle guardians of the New York Public Library rolled past. Ahead, Fifth Avenue was a canyon of light, flashing, throbbing red, white and yellow strobes playing on misty streets. Calderone slowed down to negotiate a convoy of cabs, nearly the only vehicles on the streets. As they drove on, he spied knots of people huddled in doorways, watching, fretting, anxious. He wondered if they knew of the bomb. What did they think of it? A weird thought came to mind: what if he slammed on the brakes, got out and threw open the ambulance doors, yelling 'Here it is, stupid Yanquis! Here it is! Come and see it!'

Calderone drove on for nearly fifteen minutes, wary, checking the mirrors. At the intersection with Broadway, police and security were thick, sprinkled with Army jeeps and trucks. New York's finest clustered in groups of four and five, on every corner, riot gear and face shields on, clubs ready. All along the sidewalks, pedestrians clung to cover, not from rain--there was only a cold mist falling--but from something else. Fear, perhaps? Like ants bundled in raincoats, a steady stream trickled north from one intersection to the next, moving as one, clots and clumps of people urged on by police and soldiers lining the sidewalks. An evacuation was underway--that much was plain to see. But evacuation to where?

Calderone had a crude map with him and he stole a glance at it, as he negotiated one intersection after another. The original Moncada plan was to put the bomb on Wall Street, right in front of the Stock Exchange. Calderone still meant to do that. He pulled the ambulance over to the curb, braking quickly and bumping up onto a sidewalk. He yelled through the glass panel.

"Luis...get up here! I need you!"

Gallegos slipped out of the back of the ambulance and climbed into the front seat.

"Si, teniente?"

"The bomb--she's ready to go?"

Gallegos felt naked, wondering if the Pigface could see right through him. "She's armed, teniente. Only the battery switch is left."

"You have the switch block?"

"In the back, secured with tape."

"Good. Pass it up here. I want to hold it myself." Calderone nervously massaged the old knife scar along his chin. "Luis, the Yanquis know we're here. Police are everywhere."

"They don't expect an ambulance. We're safe for now."

Calderone killed the engine. He squeezed the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. "Look down there. Hundreds of police. Army too. I've had this feeling ever since we made it through the blockade. Don't you feel it? Like they know where we are. Like they're waiting for us. I don't want to walk into a trap. We got to stay hidden until tomorrow."

"When does Fidel announce the bombs?"

Calderone shrugged. He stopped, eyeing a squad of soldiers striding along the sidewalk, weapons slung. Infantry, Calderone judged. Probably the Guard. He preferred an AK to the pea-shooters the Americans used. He felt the steel of the Makarov in his jacket. It was reassuring. The soldiers nodded at him and Calderone half saluted. They moved on north, poking into a nightclub still spilling revelers onto the street behind them.

"Capitan seemed to think it would be about noon. There's a radio station here in New York--" Calderone fished in his pocket for the piece of paper and eventually found it--"here it is. WRUL, in Harlem. Let's see if we can find it." Calderone studied the radio dial for a moment. The commercial band had controls and selectors on the left side. The emergency band was controlled from the right. Calderone powered the left side, twisting the dial to the frequency on the paper. AM 710. Static blasted from the speaker, then snatches of broken Spanish. Calderone looked up. Even Gallegos smiled. Calderone fiddled with the tuning, and turned the volume up. It was Iglesias, a tune they hadn't heard in years. Calderone burst out laughing, sinking back in the seat. Tears welled up in his eyes.

"I used to listen to CMQ in Havana. I got a little radio for my birthday one year. I stayed up late at night, had it under my pillow. And Julio sang songs like this, right through my pillow."

Gallegos was barely listening. He was studying the controls for the emergency band. If the federales wouldn't come to him, he'd come to them. Calderone closed his eyes, lost in a fog of memories. Gallegos figured out the band selector. Trouble was, he didn't know what frequencies the authorities used. He might as well leave it where it was. There was a decent chance the ambulance operator already had the thing tuned to the right channel, at least for ambulance work.

Calderone sat up abruptly, as Julio Iglesias's silky voice died off. He switched off the set. "We have to keep moving, Luis. Here--"he handed the map over--"look at this. Find me a route to Wall Street. We'll circle around for a few hours, then at midnight, we'll find us a spot near the Stock Exchange." He opened the door, started climbing out.

"Where are you going?"

"In the back. I want that switch block up here. Open the back window and I'll pass it up."

When Calderone was momentarily out of sight, Gallegos reached forward and powered up the emergency band. Static crackled through the speaker. That wouldn't do. He cut the volume, raising the WRUL side as he did so. Then he pulled out a piece of electrical tape he had squirreled away in his shirt pocket. He'd planned this for several hours; all he needed was ten seconds alone in the front seat. Now was the time.

Gallegos placed a tiny square of the tape over the mike thumb button. The static sound burped again, came on continuously, and he lowered the speaker volume even more. That was it. They were live to all Manhattan now. He didn't know who was on the other end, a dispatcher perhaps, an operator, maybe even the police. Listen up, you stupid federales. We're here. The bomb's right here, just waiting for you.

He had done all he could do for the moment.

He turned around and gingerly accepted the switch block as Calderone passed it through. Careful with the wires, he laid the wood block in his lap. Pigface reappeared, took the map, and studied it himself for a few moments.

"I'll go south to Washington Square," he thought out loud, "then cut over to Broadway, and go on from there. Looks like it goes by Wall Street." His fingers traced the route. "There's the Stock Exchange. Let's take a look at it. Then we'll drive around for awhile, and find us a dark spot. Maybe the Battery. Give me that." He took the switch block, and laid it in his lap.

He fired up the engine, and pulled out into the light traffic heading south on Fifth Avenue.

Several blocks away, in a red brick building at the corner of 29th and Seventh Avenue, Patrol Borough Manhattan South's Fourteenth Precinct House was in an uproar. The dispatch office was on the precinct's second floor, just down from an old squad room now filled with filing cabinets and shelves sagging with paper records. Second shift dispatcher Harvey Kleiner had been doodling on the edge of his crossword puzzle when the first snatches of conversation erupted into his earphones.

Kleiner had been on shift since four that afternoon, and it has been one thing after another, what with the Army rolling into town--some kind of exercise the bosses upstairs had told them--and every street cop the borough could muster called back from leave. Kleiner didn't know what was going on but he sure as hell wasn't as stupid as a lot of people thought. It definitely was not routine practice to conduct mass-evac drills and emergency procedures training with trucks and tanks of the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry patrolling the streets. Kleiner had traded scuttlebutt with a couple of desk sergeants from downstairs at his last break an hour ago. The word on the street was "you oughta see the old Lexington Avenue Armory. Sucker's all lit up like a Christmas tree tonight."

Yessiree, Bob, something was definitely up and it wasn't just practice for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade either.

Shortly after coming back from break, he had heard the first unwitting broadcast from the front seat of Sisters of Mercy One-Five.

Startled, he was about to send a call requesting the speaker to "say again, please", when more conversation came through. Kleiner fiddled with the tuning, and the volume on his own set, trying to grab something he could understand. He listened harder, squeezing his eyes shut. A bomb...had he heard that right? He keyed the mike, then listened to a faint, heavily accented voice talking, talking low. Kleiner jotted down every word he could make out, right on the edge of the crossword puzzle: Wall Street...Stock Exchange...circle for awhile. Castro's birthday....

Kleiner's blood froze. He knocked over his coffee cup reaching for the phone but he didn't care. Jesus Christ...he dialed up Lieutenant Yzerman, but no luck. He thought for a second, then he rang straight through to Inspector Gibbs, the borough chief himself.

Kleiner got Gibbs, apologized for the call, and hurriedly described what he was hearing on the Six-Sixty Cycle band, the emergency band the borough shared with New Jersey. Gibbs hustled down to Dispatch and was standing beside Kleiner, his own earphones on in less than a minute.

As the two of them listened, the signal faded in and out. The ambulance had made the turn at Washington Square and was winding its way into Lower Manhattan. At Gibbs' instruction, Kleiner rang up Fifth Precinct, down on Elizabeth Street. The dispatcher there was Pete Harker, an ex-street cop disabled out of regular patrol work in a bank shootout several years ago. Kleiner described what they were hearing and Harker twiddled his tuning dial until he too, could hear it.

By 11:00, every precinct house in Lower Manhattan was tuned in, along with 1st Battalion's S-2, cruising south on Park Avenue at 38th in a command jeep. The S-2, Major Wyndham, radioed back to the Armory for Company A's three rifle platoons to deploy immediately, south, to the Battery. There, they were to link up with bivouacked elements of the New York National Guard's 42nd Infantry. The 101st Cavalry's Company A had just motorboated over from Staten Island and was now encamped east of Battery Park, hard by the Coast Guard station.

For the next half hour, Kleiner, Gibbs, Harker and Wyndham, along with scores of others, listened carefully. Felix Calderone and Luis Gallegos carried on a light banter back and forth as Calderone twisted and turned around the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan. In half a dozen precinct houses, tape recorders were already running, catching everything.

The New York Field Office of the FBI had also been notified, soon after Inspector Gibbs put out an advisory on Emergency B. Special Agent in Charge Kevin Winans was just re-chambering rounds in his .45 at the Bureau's office at Third Avenue and 69th, when the radio room called up with an urgent advisory. Winans listened, swallowed hard, advised the bomb task force in DC and practically knocked over Millie Parsons, squad secretary who was staying late to help out, as he dashed down to the garage.

By midnight, close to a hundred people, NYPD, Newark and New Jersey State Police, FBI, and the Army and National Guard, were listening to every thought and reminiscence uttered by Calderone and Gallegos. On a big map in the downstairs squad room at 5th Precinct, the ambulance's general location was plotted and followed. A detail of squad cars was assigned to find it, which happened shortly after midnight. Calderone was running east on Fulton, toward the river, when two units from Fifth Precinct caught up. Both vehicles hung back a block or two, having orders to maintain surveillance but not to close.

The realization that the ambulance harbored the second Soviet atomic bomb wasn't long in coming. A task force command post was hurriedly set up, after some departmental wrangling and grousing, at 5th Precinct. Major Wyndham arrived at twelve thirty, a convoy of jeeps pulling over onto the curbs at Elizabeth Street, as he got out and went inside. Special Agent Winans came in ten minutes later. He'd just been patched through to the DC task force headquarters through the radio in his car, learning that Washington already had some big shots on the way. Can't leave anything important to the troops, he thought sourly as he shoved open the heavy glass doors. New York had been a pain in Hoover's ass for years, almost a Bureau unto itself. The Director didn't like any empires he couldn't control.

Just before one a.m., another man slipped into the precinct house and made his way to the radio room. Captain Will Hunter was fairly new to the Department, having come to the Special Operations Division straight out of the United States Army airborne forces. Still a Ranger at heart, Hunter was tall, thin, and poker-faced with a well-deserved reputation for ruthless efficiency and a keen "mission mind." He stood back from the cluster of men crowding the radio, and listened to staccato bursts of accented English chirping out of the speakers, mentally forming a picture of the enemy. That was always the first step, a step he'd taught time and again to the young troopers he'd taken all over the world. Know the enemy better than he knows himself.

In that knowledge lay the kind of victory any Ranger could drink a beer to.

Hunter checked the wall clock. Going on one-thirty. Studying the borough map of Lower Manhattan, he watched as sergeants stuck in push pins and colored markers, laying out the forces arrayed against the Cubans. The net was gradually drawing tighter. In a few hours, if the plan worked, the containment would be systematically drawn down to a few streets, maybe to one. Wall Street.

Will Hunter closed his eyes, imagining two things: an ambulance with an atomic bomb onboard, and the front façade of the New York Stock Exchange. His stage, his theater of operations. It was a cool, misty fall night in New York City. The evacuations were proceeding fairly well, up north, and with any luck, by dawn, all of lower Manhattan would be quietly sealed off. Then it would be time.

Time to move his men into position. Time to take down the Cubans and render safe the atom bomb ticking implacably toward zero in the heart of America's financial district.

11-6-62, Tuesday

The U.S.S.R., over the Ukraine

8:30 a.m.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev stared uneasily out the window of the Tu-104 as it banked slightly to east. The sun was just up, a pale dab of butter over the snow cover of the Ukrainian farmland thirty thousand feet below. The state aircraft-serial number V-1001 Nsh--was operated by State Security's Guards Directorate, Department Seven. The Aviation Department. More importantly, the pilot, Colonel Oleg Trofimenko, was a personal friend of the Khrushchevs, a long time resident of the Kolchuga dacha community, and a decorated combat pilot with Frontal Aviation.

All of these things were important to the First Secretary this morning.

Khrushchev sipped hot tea from a samovar the attendants kept nearby and tried to concentrate on the paperwork littering the small desk. But he couldn't. Today was the day the Americans had warned him about. After only a few minutes of reading, his mind was drawn back outside the window, appraising the somber beauty of the Ukrainian sunrise, as the aircraft flew on to the Black Sea coast, to Pitsunda, and a welcome few days of rest at the oceanside compound.

He was edgy and nervous, as well he might be, knowing full well that his new-found comrades, the Americans, had warned him the coup attempt would probably come Tuesday or Wednesday. Dobrynin had brought him the news just two days ago, Sunday afternoon, direct from President Kennedy. We have reason to believe...the letter stated, adding that, our intelligence sources have determined...and, in the end, concluding that the cause of peace between our two countries is best served by stable and predictable relations on both sides.

Khrushchev had snorted at that. After going eyeball to eyeball over the missiles that Operation Anadyr had secreted away in Cuba, Kennedy was now worried about his health and safety. What a difference a week makes, he thought. A week that history will never forget.

The Americans hadn't explained any of the details they had somehow gleaned about this coup attempt. That would have been convenient. Still, Khrushchev, after much discussion with a few colleagues and with Nina, had elected to keep to his original schedule. To change now would have tipped his hand too soon.

The First Secretary found himself glued to the window. He had no interest in the snowy fields five miles below. The Ukraine could take care of itself. He shifted around, trying to find the MiG-21s he knew had to be providing fighter escort for V-1001. He knew they were there, following at a discreet distance, lower in altitude, but able to dash up at the slightest threat.

From Kennedy's warning, the Americans were certain that something would probably happen during the four-hour flight down to the Georgian coast. They hadn't explained how they knew this, nor did Khrushchev expect them to. It was enough that Kennedy had seen fit to offer a warning.

Even as he mulled over the tone of the President's letter, Khrushchev saw a pair of MiGs rise up to nearly window level, just a few hundred feet off the portside wing. Ours or theirs? he wondered. He checked the other side, finding two more MiG-21's straight and level on that side too. He was about to phone Colonel Trofimenko up in the cockpit, to inquire as to their identity, when the MiGs announced their intentions in an unmistakable way.

Khrushchev saw the muzzle flash of the 20-mm cannon. A stream of tracer fire burned through the sky, as the portside MiGs fired off the first warning shots. The Tu-104 shuddered as Trofimenko banked slightly, then shuddered more. Khrushchev saw the speed brakes pop out on the Tupolev's wings. Trofimenko was diving, trying to duck out from under the unwanted escort. The First Secretary stumbled, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling. He decided to sit down again.

A chime sounded over the loudspeaker and Trofimenko's voice crackled with tension.

"Alert! Alert in the cabin! We're under attack! I'm trying to evade. Alert all passengers! Bandits in the air! Please be seated!"

Several more bursts of 20-mm fire ripped the air and Khrushchev held on to his seat. Trofimenko wiggled and dived again, then roller-coastered up, trying to scare the MiGs off, trying to carve out some maneuvering space. But the MiGs clung to their prey, peppering the sky just ahead with cannon fire.

The jinking and rolling went on for several minutes. Where the hell are they? Khrushchev wondered. Marshal Gerasimov had promised them four flights of MiGs for protection, as well as a coordinated hand-off all the way from Sheremetyevo down to Yevpatoriya in the Crimea. But there were only bandits in the sky for the moment.

At length, Trofimenko's strained voice crackled over the speaker. "Attention in the cabin! Unable to evade intruders. I am following. Repeat, I am following intruders."

Khrushchev had had enough. He snatched up the black phone and beeped through to the cockpit. Trofimenko answered gruffly.

"What do you mean 'you're following?'" the First Secretary thundered. "We've got protection. Keep on your course."

Up in the cockpit, Trofimenko glanced over at his co-pilot, Major Kidzhenko, and rolled his eyes. He thumbed the mike switch.

"Comrade First Secretary, the bandits have us surrounded. I don't know where our fighters are. I've gotten several radio warnings to reduce speed and descend to twenty thousand. Then I'm supposed to execute a course change to heading 265 degrees."

Khrushchev was determined. "I'm ordering you to ignore all threats. This is a State Security aircraft, on State business. Our pro--" his words were cut short when a loud crunch was heard outside. The Tupolev shuddered. Then came another crunch. The First Secretary peered out the cabin window, just in time to see the MiG easing in for yet another bump. Incredulous, he dropped the phone handset, and held onto the side of the desk, as the third bump rolled V-1001 twenty degrees over. Trofimenko fought back with reverse rudder and aileron. He nudged the twin Mikulin turbojets a notch forward, needing speed to maintain altitude.

For a minute, Khrushchev thought the MiG would ram them. He stared dumbfounded at the scene outside. First one, then the other portside MiGs took turns ducking under the 113-foot wing of the Tupolev and rising upward, slamming its own wing right into theirs.

Are they complete idiots? Khrushchev wondered. He steadied himself, as Trofimenko rocked the huge Tupolev, trying to shake like a dog, warning the MiGs off.

It was then that he saw the faint glint of something just above the cloudtops. Khrushchev squinted in the leaden early morning sunlight. Black dots like beads on a string popped in and out of the clouds. Soon enough, he could make out the rake of their wings. More MiGs! The question was: who's were they?

Trofimenko suddenly nosed the control yoke over, and the Tupolev dove steeply out from under the ring of bandits. In the First Secretary's cabin, Khrushchev lost his balance, and fell against the outer bulkhead, slamming his face against the side of the desk. Trofimenko was corkscrewing V-1001 down and away, dropping two thousand feet in less than ten seconds.

Four miles to the northeast, six MiG-21s of the Fourteenth Tactical Air Army approached the bandits line abreast. Flight Leader Major Viktor Blagonravov turned his squawk box to 455 megacycles and blurted out the attack signal to the rest of Zarya Flight. On command, each MiG peeled off, left or right, forming up into a standard flower-petal strike formation. As soon as Blagonravov was sure the Tupolev was down and clear, he salvoed two Atoll air-to-air missiles, hitting the pickle switch twice in rapid succession. The missiles leapt off the MiG's wing pylons and streaked after the nearest bandits.

The first missile, its heat-sensing guidance cap registering a point source of hot metal and engine plume, shredded the sky, laying down a thread of rocket engine smoke as it sought home. The intended target, a MiG 21 bearing the insignia of 8th Tactical Air Army, Dnieper Division, snap rolled away, and the missile flashed by, its proximity fuse detonating the fifty-pound warhead two hundred meters above and to the left of the bandit.

The pilot, two years ago a national Young Pioneers aerobatic champion, smiled in his face mask, thinking for a split second how long it had been since any human pilot had been able to best him in the sky. In the split second it took for the congratulatory thought to form in his mind, the second Atoll registered a point heat source, part of the exhaust nozzle of the jet engine, and swerved at Mach 1.2 toward the smiling pilot. It crossed the four and half mile distance separating them in less than a second, the proximity fuse detonating the warhead directly over the right horizontal stabilizer.

The MiG disappeared in a bright ball of red and yellow flame.

For the next ten minutes, while he nursed a swelling bruise on the side of his head, Nikita Khrushchev watched as a furious air battle unfolded outside the window.

As Trofimenko continued descending, the First Secretary craned his head to see out the window above them. Spider webs of missile plumes crisscrossed the sky. Twice, the Atolls found their marks and red and yellow blossoms of flame burst overhead, each explosion giving rise to dense black smoke. Wreckage cartwheeled out of the smoke as another MiG spiraled toward the Ukrainian farm country below. He could make no sense of the battle raging above them. Which side was winning? He couldn't even tell the bandits from the others.

The Tupolev slipped into the cloud cover for a few moments, then Trofimenko pulled them out of the descent. They leveled off at fifteen thousand feet, below the clouds, heading southwest toward Kiev. Below, the rich dark fertile chernozem was white with recent snowfall. Khrushchev waited a few moments, anxious to hear from the pilot. He sat down heavily in the high-backed chair, mopped some perspiration from his face and buzzed Trofimenko.

"Colonel, what's the situation? Where are we?"

Trofimenko's harried voice came on the line. "Comrade First Secretary, we're at fifteen thousand feet, a hundred miles east of Kiev. I just talked with the flight leader--Blagonravov--Zarya Flight's out of Ustansi Air Base. He says the bandits have broken off."

"Where are they from?" Khrushchev asked. "What unit, what base?"

"Unknown at this time, Comrade First Secretary. Given the MiG's range, I'd say either Rudinka or Uspenskoye is most likely. The MiG-21 has a combat radius of several hundred miles at most. Both bases are inside that."

"What's our heading, Colonel?"

"I've asked for a vector to Kiev Civil airport. We've got wing damage, aileron too, and I'm having trouble keeping her on a steady course. Right now, I got extra rudder cranked in and the rightside engine dialed up to eighty percent."

Khrushchev was thinking. "That's no good, Oleg Kaganovich. I've got to get back to Moscow. If there's really a coup, that's where the main action will be."

"We're low on fuel," Trofimenko protested. "I've got to keep the engines at eighty percent to maintain heading. We have poor directional control anyway. We need to set her down while we still have control."

"Do we have enough fuel to make Sheremetyevo?"

There was a moment of silence. "Barely, Comrade First Secretary. I don't recommend it. It's risky and, if there's any crosswind, the landing will be tough. We may not have enough fuel to go around if I miss the approach."

"Then don't miss the approach," Khrushchev said. "And turn this plane around now. Take us back to Moscow."

Trofimenko knew when to cease arguing. He switched off and got on the radio to Kiev Approach, requesting a new vector. Sixty feet aft of the cockpit, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was also on the phone, this one a secure radio circuit patched through State Security transmission towers. He needed to get a hold of Marshal Zakharov at the General Staff. Malinovsky couldn't he trusted, the lout. But Zakharov would know what was happening.

The flight back to Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport took two hours. Trofimenko found he had fuel to make several passes around the airfield, ostensibly to check wind. The truth was neither he nor the First Secretary was sure who was in charge. Khrushchev came up to the cockpit and got on the radio, asking for the airport director. When Anatoli Skironov came on the line, the First Secretary's relief was visible.

"Anatoli Pavlovich, it's good to hear your grumbling voice again. Things are happening in Moscow. I need to land and tend to business at the Kremlin."

Skironov was a short balding bear with a gravelly voice made worse by years of harsh Russian tobacco. "Comrade First Secretary, what the hell's going on? I've been getting phone calls every ten minutes. This marshal or that general wanting to use the base. I've had to call Marshal Vershinin for protection twice. Voenno Vozdushnye Sily won't give up this base without a fight, I can tell you that much."

"Glad to hear it," Khrushchev noted. So Vershenin was still loyal. Having the commanding general of the Air Forces could be useful. "I'll fill you in when we land." He gave Trofimenko permission to set the Tu-104 down.

Trofimenko put V-1001 down smartly on Runway 185 South. Even before the Tupolev had rolled to a stop, a caravan of military vehicles, ZILs and Chaikas had rolled up to her belly. Khrushchev bounced down the stairs quickly and spied Marshal Zakharov, chief of the General Staff, at the foot.

They embraced. Wind swirled around the flight apron and Khrushchev had to hold his fur shapka on his head. Zakharov wore a dark green greatcoat over his uniform. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, he was a keen strategic mind mixed with strong Communist convictions. Khrushchev drew close.

"What's the report, Marshal? What's going on in town?"

Zakharov led the First Secretary to the black ZIL limousine. Inside, Fyodor Levorin was at the wheel, Khrushchev's personal driver. Khrushchev smiled, squeezed Levorin's arm as he got in. The convoy, escorted by military trucks, picked up additional protection at the base gate in the form of four BTR-60 armored vehicles, two at the front, two at the rear. Overhead, two Mil choppers provided aerial cover.

Zakharov was nervous. "The situation's tense, Nikita Sergeyevich. Malinovsky's in league with the plotters, that much I know. I've got two reports placing him at Rudinka, where you would have been taken had the bandit MiGs succeeded. Another report places him at Vnukovo, just yesterday. Along with Larionov, too. Moscow Military District's responding to Malinovsky and Larionov at the moment. And Vedenin's in with this group."

Khrushchev was stung. "Vedenin?" The Commandant of the Kremlin was a key man in any power struggle. "Are you sure?"

Zakharov said, "Two witnesses reported to Dom Dva that he was seen at Vnukovo. There must have been some kind of last minute meeting there yesterday."

"At least we have State Security on our side." Khrushchev buried himself deeper in his own coat, watching the blur of suburban Moscow's wedding-cake apartment blocks roll by. "Brezhnev's behind this. I know it. But I've got a few tricks he doesn't know about. We need to get to the Kremlin. I have to find Semichastny, find out who's with us and who isn't."

"It's risky," Zakharov told him. "With Larionov behind the plotters, Moscow Military District has a lot of forces on the move. The bastard used that old training base on the Yaroslavl Highway, bivouacked a whole regiment of T-55s there for several days. They were on us before we could respond."

"What's their disposition now?"

Zakharov referred to a scrap of paper. "I talked with Marshal Plektovan and Semichastny just before you landed. Right now, the center of Moscow's up for grabs. State Security Guards Directorate has two tank battalions somewhere around Pushkin Square, near the Bolshoi. There've been running tank battles all along Gorky and Dzerzhinski Streets, but Plektovan's men can't break through so far. The Kremlin's isolated. Vedenin's got some Special Forces men inside, where exactly we don't know. Probably the Embankment side, in the Taynitsky Park gardens. One thing I do know: all the towers on the river side of the Kremlin are cut off by radio. It's a good bet they're with Vedenin."

"Damn," Khrushchev swore. "Losing Vedenin to the plotters makes it tough. I'll shoot him myself if we get through this. Who are you talking with inside the Kremlin?"

"A Colonel Andreyev, and your staff secretary, Kalugin. In fact, it was Kalugin who told me Andreyev was on our side. Right now, Andreyev's holed up inside the Arsenal Building, ground floor. We've got the Council of Ministers, and the Senate buildings, for now. Andreyev's got a tank and a couple of platoons of riflemen. He's established a perimeter north of the Palace of Congresses, on a line east to west, from Troitskaya Gate to Spasskaya Tower. It's touch and go, but so far, they're holding out."

"We can get in?"

Zakharov's face winced at the thought. "Possibly, but the whole area's under fire. Automatic weapons and some mortars in the area of the Alexander Gardens. Red Square too. So far, the bastards haven't dropped any rounds inside the walls. That may not last long. No, Nikita Sergeyevich, I don't recommend it. Even if we could force our way in

past the Ring Road, we'd still be under fire all the way down Kalinin. So far, we're holding Troitskaya Gate, but that could change. If Larionov brings in his tanks a little closer, we won't even be able to get that far."

"Helicopter, then. I could go by helicopter. Look, Nikolai Yeldovich, I've got to be in the Kremlin. It's the center of everything. As long as Brezhnev and Larionov and Vedenin can keep me away, they can say they're winning. Get me a helicopter."

Zakharov shook his head. "It's too risky. I can't guarantee your safety. And that's the most important thing."

Khrushchev wouldn't listen. "What's the matter, comrade? Lost your taste for adventure? Stop the car. Stop the convoy right here and we'll ride into town in one of your armored vehicles."

"Comrade--"

Khrushchev told Levorin to stop the ZIL. He did so and the entire convoy came to a halt on the side of the Kaliningrad Highway. A cement factory poked towers and tanks over a stand of scrawny birch trees next to the highway. Khrushchev got out into light snow and walked to the front of the convoy, Zakharov right behind him. He came to the lead vehicle, an eight-wheeled BTR-60 armored infantry vehicle, and rapped his knuckles on the rear loading ramp. Overhead, the main 14.5-mm main gun swiveled in its turret. The ramp dropped and a Ground Forces sergeant in face camou appeared.

"Good morning, Sergeant. Make room for two more in your cozy little crew there." Khrushchev hoisted himself up, much to the surprise of the sergeant, who grabbed an arm as the First Secretary wiggled his way inside. Zakharov climbed aboard as well. Two riflemen were displaced and found themselves by the side of the road, watching forlornly as the convoy started up again.

Six miles further, the Kaliningrad Highway gave onto Kutozov Prospect and a mile-long row of Stalinesque towers of nearly identical post-modern construction. Soon, the gothic spires of the massive Hotel Ukraina poked through the swirling snow and the convoy slowed.

"Larionov's men ahead," Zakharov told the First Secretary. Khrushchev was huddled in a front corner of the personnel compartment, right below the gunner's station. "Second MRD, we think. The Taman' Guards."

The convoy stopped momentarily. Zakharov got on the combat phone with the driver, then with several drivers. They discussed options and choices. In the end, Zakharov ordered up another BTR-60, so that two of the combat fighting vehicles approached the intersection with the Ring Road abreast of each other. Khrushchev heard several mechanical clanks above him. The gunner had chambered a round and traversed the gun, checking play. The BTR lurched forward.

Within sight of the American Embassy, the intersection of Kalinin Prospect and the Sadovoye Ring Road was normally a busy intersection. Now nearly deserted, the shopping district was eerily lit with neon signs and heroic panels, red and yellow banners streaming in the stiff wind, bunting placed for Revolution Day, still two days away. Somewhere in the distance, a sharp report, muffled, could be heard. Then a shrill whistling....

The round detonated twenty meters behind the BTR, and the metal slopes of the vehicles clanged with shrapnel and pieces of pavement. Khrushchev hunkered down further in his canvas seat, as the BTR lurched left, then right. Zakharov climbed over several riflemen to poke his head up inside the turret. The vehicle commander was frantically waving at something and Zakharov couldn't keep his balance, falling heavily right into Khrushchev's lap. Above them, the main gun barked, spitting a shell at some distant target. The vehicle lurched back, then turned again.

Inside of five minutes, the convoy had been scattered around the intersection. Two vehicles took cover behind a row of brick buildings, wheeling over a car parked in front. Khrushchev's vehicle slammed forward and pitched down. The driver had found a small culvert to hide in. As it rolled up the other side and stopped, the First Secretary heard another round chambered. Almost immediately, the gun fired and the vehicle recoiled.

Zakharov finally made it up to the turret. He talked over the situation with the commander. The major pointed out the T-55s sited further east, dug in behind barricades of smashed cars and trucks.

"We're outgunned, Comrade Marshal!" the major yelled. More cannon fire geysered dirt and concrete in front of them. Both men flinched and ducked involuntarily, as debris and shrapnel peppered the window. "We need to get out of here! They're walking shells right up the street! We'll be bracketed in a minute!"

Zakharov could see the man was right, but he knew there was no ordinary passenger below them. If he had too, Nikita Sergeyevich would climb out right here and walk the rest of the way to the Kremlin. And he would get the blame when some sniper picked off the First Secretary. No, Zakharov told himself, that's not going to happen. If he dies, we all die.

"Go around, Major! Back this clunker up and go south. Between those buildings. Use them for cover." He pointed to the twin towers cresting a small hill on the southeast side of the intersection. Apartment blocks from the looks of them. There was a small alley between them, a service road perhaps.

The major spun back out of the culvert, letting fly a few rounds of 14.5mm of his own. Tank rounds rocketed by, their whistle penetrating the thin shell of the vehicle. More booms, somewhere to their left.

"That's Pyotr, Comrade Marshal!" the major yelled down. "Damn them! A direct hit!"

Zakharov closed his eyes, visualizing the effect of a 100-mm armor piercing round on the paper-thin outer skin of a BTR. He shook his head, more explosions erupting too close, far too close. In the turret, the major yelled epithets. Zakharov could see his booted legs kicking, as if the machine were a horse. "Go, damn you! Go, go, go!"

The BTR wheeled about and spun south, running along the sidewalk of the Ring Road, smashing light poles and signs. At the service road, the major commanded a hard left turn. Khrushchev was thrown almost into the lap of a rifleman, who helped the Secretary back up, smiling apologetically. Khrushchev shrugged, smiled wanly and closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the battle outside.

Somehow, the BTR made it past the roadblock the Taman' Guards had erected.

"Enemy territory," Zakharov breathed. "With no recon ahead of us. We'll have to be careful." He climbed over two riflemen, to sit in the seat opposite Khrushchev. "Give me the phone, Major." A second later, the handset dropped into his hand. Zakharov cranked up the power, then pressed two buttons, getting on to the local comm net. Ought to work, he told them, unless the bastards have Central Radio and the rest of the transmitters.

Zakharov tried several channels, finally getting a command post in the Arbat, right outside the Lenin Library. It was a State Security unit, a rifle platoon of the Guards Directorate. He talked for a minute, then waited, getting a patch through to Dom Dva at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square. By some miracle, the KGB Chairman himself came on the line. Zakharov smiled. "We're not done yet."

Khrushchev took the phone. "Vladimir Moskovitch, what are you doing there? What's going on?"

Semichastny answered back. "I'm trapped, for the moment. There's a tank battle going on right outside my window. I can't tell who's who. It's crazy. Kirov's in our hands, Dzerzhinsky's in theirs. Nobody knows anything. Where are you?"

"Just inside the Ring Road. I'm going to the Kremlin."

"Not a good idea, Comrade Secretary. Larionov's got artillery dropping rounds right in Red Square. Can you believe that? And there's some kind of ground fight between the Arsenal Building and the Palace. It's too risky. We have occasional contact with a Colonel Andreyev. One of Vedenin's men in the Kremlin Kommendatura. He says they can't hold out much longer."

"I know the risk. But, damn it, somebody's got to be in charge. If I can broadcast a message from the Kremlin, the country'll know the plotters haven't won yet. Marshal--" he turned back to Zakharov, poring over a combat map in the poor light, "what about State Television? Gostankino? Pravda... those places?"

Zakharov shook his head. "I've got units of the 32nd Guards from Kalinin posted to defend all communications nodes. So far, the plotters haven't tried to force anything. But the battalion commander defending Central Television reports small-unit movement in the area, just in the last hour. Larionov may be getting ready to try something."

"You better get this thing moving, Marshal. To the Kremlin."

Zakharov started to protest but Khrushchev's face told him: don't argue with me. He passed a few orders up to the major and seconds later, the BTR lurched forward.

It was a small convoy, just four armored fighting vehicles that rumbled down Kalinin Prospect. The streets were clear. Only the Ground Forces moved, and then only in convoy. Ambush lurked at every corner and the major slowed approaching the intersection with Karl Marx Prospect. A fierce firefight was underway. Rifle, machine gun and rocket fire streaked through the air, punctuated with occasional booms of mortar rounds dropping into the streets. The Taman' Guards held the northeast and northwest corners of the crossing, and Zakharov's 32nd Guards riflemen held the opposite side.

The BTR convoy stopped short of the main intersection, taking cover in the lee of the Moscow Polyclinic Building, now dark and surrounded by trucks and tanks, great piles of rubble strewn along the front sidewalks. Zakharov popped up into the commander's cupola for a look. He exchanged a few words with the major. Below, Khrushchev was becoming impatient.

"A few more moments, Comrade First Secretary. We've got another T-55 platoon coming up. They'll wipe this area clean."

Moments later, the staccato roar of the T-55's 100-mm guns reverberated through the outer skin of the vehicle. The entire platoon, units of the 15th Guards from Gorky, salvoed armor-piercing rounds up and down Marx Prospect, laying waste to the facades and sides of several state buildings.

"Now!" yelled Zakharov. "Give her the gas, son!"

The BTR shuddered as the driver geared up for a speed run toward the western wall of the Kremlin, sighting through the smoke on the dully glowing red star atop the Troitskaya Tower, less than half a mile ahead. Khrushchev and the rest of the rifle squad, now assigned protective duty for the First Secretary, cringed as shrapnel spanged off the hull. The driver began swerving left and right, seeking a clear path through a blossoming forest of exploding mortar rounds, kicking up cobble stones and debris everywhere.

Two hundred meters shy of the Kutafya Tower, as the convoy came abreast of the Manezh\--the Central Exhibition Hall--a mortar platoon opened up and plunked rounds right into the midst of the convoy. The driver swerved, and Marshal Zakharov fell from the cupola, landing hard in the lap of a soldier. At that same moment, a mortar round detonated just off the back ramp of the BTR.

The round exploded, shredding the wheels and lifting the rear of the vehicle. The ramp door was torn from its mount and a soldier fell from the back, dropping to the pavement, as the vehicle reared liked a startled horse and came down sideways. The driver lost control and the BTR crashed headlong into the brick portal of the tower, spinning around backwards.

When it came to rest, on its side, Khrushchev and Zakharov found themselves piled on top of a writhing, groaning mass of men. Arms and legs were gingerly untangled. Zakharov pulled the First Secretary up and away.

"We better get out of here. Squad, dismount! Form a screen around the ramp--what's left of it! I'll get the First Secretary down and we'll make a run for it!"

The squad sergeant was still extricating his weapon. He chambered a round of 7.62-mm and leaped to the pavement, checking around, looking for muzzle flashes. A mortar round went off seventy meters behind, and he ducked, waiting for the rain of pebbles and pavement to stop.

"Excuse me, Comrade Marshal, which way shall we run?"

"Into the Kremlin, you idiot! Inside."

Khrushchev felt a twinge of pain in his back, and let Zakharov and a husky soldier help him out of the vehicle. The squad, with the sergeant, whose name patch read Avdevsky, and Zakharov leading, formed a barrier around the smoldering wreckage of the BTR. The rest of the convoy had stopped too, shielding the entrance to Troitskaya Tower, blocking the cobblestone path through the Alexander Gardens. Squads were dismounting from their vehicles. On either side of the path, high brick walls made a perilous passage. On the ramparts overhead, soldiers peered down.

"I hope they're ours," Zakharov wondered. "Come on. Let's get moving."

Inside the gate, they sprinted, Khrushchev in the middle surrounded by twenty riflemen, weapons at high port, armed and ready. Just at the massive iron doors to the Troitskaya Tower itself, staccato machine gun fire swept the cobblestones, and Zakharov pushed the First Secretary headfirst to the ground. Khrushchev's nose smashed into the stone and blood spurted out. He reached for a handkerchief, and held it tight to his nose, stanching the flow. Even as he did so, the rifleman next to him took a hit in the face, his head nearly exploding. Blood and brains sprayed the First Secretary and the handkerchief was useless.

"Get moving!" yelled Avdevsky, yanking the Marshal to his feet. "Spread out and keep their heads down! We can't stay here...we're like damn pigeons, getting picked off."

The squad surged forward, sweeping the bushes of the Gardens with fire. Dragging Khrushchev with him, Zakharov stumbled forward. Tracer fire echoed in the gatehouse. There! To the right...a statue. Zakharov pulled Khrushchev with him and they dove headlong for the feet of a statue. Cleaning dirt and snow from his bloody eyes, Khrushchev stared up at the stern visage of Czar Alexander himself.

"Give me a rifle, Marshal! I can use a weapon too!"

Zakharov stared over at the First Secretary, incredulous, but before he could respond, Khrushchev had inchwormed and bellied his way over to a fallen soldier, tugged his AKM assault weapon free, and checked the magazine. He grinned, half blinded with blood, and pointed with the muzzle.

"What are you waiting for...the Bolshoi Ballet? Let's go!"

Surrounded by the squad, Khrushchev and Zakharov bolted from one post to the next, dodging sporadic rifle fire volleying through the tunnel. Sergeant Avdevsky sent several men ahead. They came back a few minutes later and reported that beyond the gate itself, in the brick and cobblestone courtyard between the Palace of Congresses and the Arsenal Building, a free fire zone existed. Colonel Andreyev and the loyalists held forth on the north side, dug in firm in the ground floor offices of the Arsenal and spotted on the grounds, beneath bushes, behind trees and monuments. Opposite the courtyard, the coup forces held entrenched positions behind a stone wall and concrete planters all along the northward face of the Palace Building. Both structures had suffered extensive facade and ground floor damage from small-arms fire and mortar rounds. As yet, the two sides had refrained from tank battles or tube artillery inside the Kremlin grounds.

Meter by meter, Zakharov, Khrushchev and the rest of the rifle squad, made their way into the courtyard. For a harrowing three minutes, they were pinned down by murderous crossfire, caught like flies in a fierce web of machine gun and small arms action. The men lay prone against a stone curb, face to the pavement, while bullets streaked by inches overhead. Avdevsky and two privates crabbed their way beyond the curb, then squatted upright, and lay down heavy covering fire. They yelled for the Marshal and the First Secretary to move and Khrushchev rolled to his feet, stumbling on loose gravel and fell staggering toward the mustard yellow walls of the ancient Arsenal Building. Twenty meters from the columned entrance, three soldiers from Andreyev's Guards Directorate burst from cover and ran to Khrushchev's side. Each grabbed an arm and they half carried, half dragged the portly politician into the building. Inside, Khrushchev fell to his knees on the blood-stained cream carpet, and gasped for air. He sucked and heaved for a few minutes, then looked up grinning. His face was streaked with sweat and blood. Another sergeant produced a rag and Khrushchev wiped his bald pate and face dry.

"Thanks, boys,...that's hard work!" He rolled over to sit up, back to the wall and gratefully accepted a canteen of water. He gulped down a few swallows. He gave the canteen back and got help getting to his feet. His suit jacket, a gift from Paris and President DeGaulle, was torn and covered with dirt and melting snow. Khrushchev shrugged. "I suppose I'm not really dressed for combat."

"Let's get you upstairs, Comrade Secretary," Zakharov said. He snapped a finger and a trio of Guards Directorate troopers appeared. "Keep him away from windows, men. The Secretary's office is on the third floor. And watch the stairways. Andreyev's got men at every entrance but we haven't screened the whole building. Larionov may have sappers inside."

Khrushchev followed the troopers, still clutching the AKM he had scooped up from the dead soldier on the street. At each stairway, the troopers followed their urban combat training. One scurried up the stairs, assault rifle ready, sweeping left and right, crouched and poised to fire. When he gave the all clear, the other two carried Khrushchev up with them. Each trooper kept his weapon pointed outward, always moving. They made the third floor without incident.

"There's my office, boys," Khrushchev told them. They came to a set of double doors, flanked by a bust of Lenin on one side, Karl Marx on the other. Khrushchev nudged the doors open, went into the outer ceremonial office, and was about to unlock the door to his own inner office when one of the troopers stopped him.

"Comrade Secretary, it's not safe. Let me check..." He shoved by, easing the door open. The light was off but pale light from outside filtered in through gauzy curtains. Gold brocade swags were pinned back. The trooper checked around the office, tried several doors locked to one side, then peered out. Khrushchev's office gave onto a view of the brick path and tiny wooden park between the Arsenal Building and the Council of Ministers Building next to it. He motioned Khrushchev on in. "Seems clear. But stay away from this window." He unpinned the swag curtains and let them drop. "Now try the desk light. We've had reports of snipers on the roof. Keep the overhead lights off."

Khrushchev thanked the troopers. At Andreyev's orders, they stationed themselves in the corridor just outside the First Secretary's suite, joining the busts of Communism's founding fathers. One of the troopers used Lenin's forehead to strike a match, sucking nervously on a papirosi tube full of foul-smelling tobacco.

Khrushchev leaned his assault rifle against the desk and spent a few moments in the washroom off the office, cleaning up his face and hands. He had to think for a few minutes, get a speech together. There was a radio room in the building next door. A short speech was all he needed, broadcast to the people of the Soviet Union. A reminder that he was still very much alive and in charge and the enemies of the people would be hunted down without mercy. A quick radio address, his own words, his own voice, would be a spear in the side of Larionov and all the other scoundrels who'd signed on to this treason. A radio address and more tanks from State Security.

He left the washroom and was startled to see a shadow in the corner of the office. It moved, but too late. The door to the small conference room started to open. Khrushchev snatched up his rifle and aimed.

"Halt, there! Halt right there!"

The shadow stopped. He was a short man, squat, longish arms. Wearing a suit with the jacket unbuttoned. In the wan light, Khrushchev could see a tie unknotted, slightly askew. The desk light caused a slight glint off glasses on the man's face. Khrushchev cocked the hammer back.

"Come out into the light."

It was Anatoli Vendenin. Commandant of the Kremlin. The commanding general of the guard force responsible for security. Vedenin started to reach into his jacket.

"Keep your hands where I can see them, comrade." Khrushchev motioned the man over into a small pool of light cast by the desk lamp. "I don't suppose you've come to surrender? You have others here?"

Vedenin smirked. "All around us, Nikita Sergeyevich. In the walls, in the ceiling, everywhere. You won't escape. The people have had enough."

"I've had enough," Khrushchev said. "Zakharov told me about you. I could hardly believe it. You were at Vnukovo yesterday, weren't you? You and Brezhnev and Larionov and the rest of the conspirators?"

Vedenin held his hands out, not sure what he would be allowed to do with him. He was damned if he'd raise them, like a common prisoner, in front of this Ukrainian pig. "Your time is up, Nikita Sergeyevich. All the generals are against you. Admirals too. You can't gut the army and expect the heroes who crushed the Hitlerists to have any respect for you, now can you? The people are sick and tired of your hair-brained schemes. Turn yourself in and you won't get hurt."

Khrushchev laughed in spite of himself. "Turn myself in? But I have the gun, Anatoli Vladimirovich. And you are my prisoner. The question is what to do with you." Khrushchev reached for the phone, hoping it still worked. "Turn you over to Zakharov, I suppose. Or State Security, perhaps. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

As Khrushchev moved to lift the phone, Vedenin made his move. His right hand slipped into his jacket. Khrushchev dropped the receiver and brought the rifle up with his free left hand. He squeezed the trigger just as Vedenin was extracting a sidearm.

The 7.62-mm shells stitched a bloody seam across Vedenin's chest and face, slamming him back against the wall. Khrushchev fired a short three-round burst, then safed the weapon and hustled over to inspect his work.

Vedenin lay on his back, his mouth open, dribbling blood onto the remains of his shattered face. Several gaping wounds had opened up his chest. He gasped for air and expelled a wheezing final breath.

Khrushchev shuddered in spite of himself. It had been too close. He found Vedenin's pistol--a Makarov PM 9-mm--and gingerly pocketed the weapon. Behind him, the telephone handset crackled with a voice. The First Secretary answered it, finding Zakharov, a field patch through the Kremlin phone system with the makeshift command post on the ground floor of the Arsenal Building.

"I found Vedenin," Khrushchev told him, then described the encounter, and the Kremlin Commandant's final desperate move. "Who can we trust, Marshal? I didn't even know Vedenin had slipped into my office. Another few moments and I'd be on the floor here, riddled with bullets."

Zakharov said, "I've been going over strategy with Andreyev. The Kommendatura's mostly with us. Only Vedenin and some of the officers went bad. For the moment, we've got a pretty good perimeter around the Arsenal and Senate Buildings. I just talked with Marshal Akhromeyev. The Byelorussian District's still loyal and the 103rd Guards Airborne already has transports on the way. Akhromeyev's putting a full regiment on the ground in a field near Gorky Park. Light anti-tank and some infantry, with helicopter support from Plektovan's State Security forces. A tactical communications nightmare but we're working it out."

Khrushchev had mixed himself a straight vodka, cut with water. He gulped it down. "What's our next step, Marshal?"

Zakharov sighed. "We've got to secure the Kremlin and the streets around it. Also Sheremetyevo Airport, Vnukovo if we can, but that's where the plotters are strongest."

"And Central Television," Khrushchev reminded him. "State Radio too. I'm going to compose a message to the people. I'd like to broadcast some time tonight."

"Very well, First Secretary. But I'm assigning a platoon from Andreyev to be a personal guard. They're already watching the elevators and stairs. You'll see a squad outside your office doors in a few minutes."

Khrushchev started pouring more vodka but stopped. No, I need a clear head tonight. While I still have a head. "Level with me, Marshal, can we defeat this coup?"

Zakharov was precise in reply. "We can, First Secretary, but it'll take time. And force. Akhromeyev's airborne will help a lot. That gives Larionov and the plotters another front to worry about. Our biggest need, after securing the Kremlin--and that's going to take time--is to connect up with Plektovan's Guards Directorate men and Akhromeyev. We punch a hole through to either or both, and the plotters will be finished."

"You get some men working on securing a line to State Radio," Khrushchev ordered. "I'll be here in my office, composing an address." He hung up, then decided to go for another glass of vodka anyway.

Battles raged around the city of Moscow for the next six hours. The 103rd Guards Airborne, from a base near Vitebsk in Byelorussia, made several combat drops into the fields around Gorky Park shortly after seven that evening. The drops were unopposed--a testament to the nominal air superiority gained over the city by State Security's Guards Directorate and their fleet of Mil helicopters. As yet, the Air Forces had yet to commit anything substantial to the coup in Moscow itself. Borodintsev was rumored to be planning something at the plotters' camp at Vnukovo airfield. But the 8th Tactical Air Army had divided loyalties and the Marshal wasn't about to chance any operation he couldn't be sure of.

Three battalions of paratroopers in an armed convoy of BTR-60s and GAZ trucks, fought their way out of the lodgment at Gorky Park in a series of small skirmishes, crossing the Moscow River at the Kropotkin Square bridge. Larionov's 75th Tank Army blocked their way north and east, holing up in the narrow streets of the Arbat, sweeping 100-mm cannon fire up and down the narrow lanes of the olds artists' quarter. A running firefight ensued, pitting anti-tank companies from the 103rd against the entrenched positions of the T-55 tanks. Block by block, the airborne troopers, with rocket fire from the KGB's Mil helicopters, systematically reduced each tank position to flaming, smoldering ruins. Steadily expanding the perimeter north and east, from the river, the troopers turned east at Kalinin Prospect, and cut off Larionov's men inside the Ring Road.

By midnight, the heaviest engagements were over and central Moscow was dense with smoke and fire, every intersection along the Sadovoye Ring blocked with burning tanks, trucks and wreckage. Coordinating with an all-out assault from Red Square itself by three companies of the KGB's Guards Directorate infantry, airborne troopers of the 103rd methodically squeezed the last remaining pockets of resistance, burrowed in the dark warrens of Gorky, Dzerzhinsky and Kirov Streets, between Karl Marx Prospect and the Ring Road. Anticipating fanatical defense, Marshal Zakharov ordered the Mil helicopters to sweep the plotters' known positions with RPG anti-tank rocket fire, the handheld weapons mounted by elite special forces operatives of the Kommendantura's Special Purpose Battalion. Normally reserved for special security duties in and around the Kremlin and Red Square, the battalion had dueled with Larionov's tanks for hours, and knew their tactics well enough. Zakharov put their hard-won knowledge to work in the helicopters.

Twenty minutes past midnight, Marshal Zakharov received word over the combat radio on his makeshift desk in the Arsenal Building that the final units of Larionov's 75th Guards Tank Army had surrendered to airborne troopers at the corner of Novoslobodskaya and the Ring Road, a stone's throw from the Moscow State Circus building and the Hotel Minsk. Zakharov scribbled a few notes, tore off the sheet, and ascertained that only sporadic fighting remained, near the Ukraina Hotel, outside the center of the city. Already, an assault on the plotters' headquarters at Vnukovo airfield was being prepared. The assault would utilize loyal elements of the Taman' Guards as well as 103rd troopers. It was set to go at dawn.

Zakharov dashed upstairs to inform the First Secretary.

Khrushchev was deep in thought, spectacles pushed back onto his forehead, when the Marshal entered the office suite, nodding gravely at the Kommendantura special forces soldiers standing watch in the hall outside.

"Nikita Sergeyevich, we'll have the line to State Radio open in about half an hour. I've got signal troops setting up microphones and transmission lines in the conference room on the first floor. Andreyev's State Security troops secured the station about eleven o'clock. A Colonel Dudenko led the final assault."

Khrushchev looked up. "Excellent work, Marshal. You're all heroes of the Soviet Union. I intend to see your patriotism rewarded." He indicated a nearly empty bottle of Stolichnaya on the desk. "I'd propose a toast but as you can see, I've been working. After my address, I'm calling an emergency meeting of the State Defense Council. Sit down, Mikhail Gurevich. Let's discuss things. You'll be an important part of this meeting, since Malinovsky's revealed himself as a traitor."

Zakharov obliged as Khrushchev hunted among a pile of papers for his meeting notes.

"Here they are. I've also been working on another message, this one to President Kennedy. The Council will approve this message tonight." Khrushchev fixed his spectacles, scanned and summarized the message for the Marshal. "I thank President Kennedy, in my message, for warning us about the plot to overthrow the government. I assure him that we have heightened the readiness of our armed forces only as a precaution, a necessary step to ensure that the attempted coup doesn't damage our defense preparedness. I assure him further that such increased readiness should in no way be taken as a threat to the United States. We are not intending any provocation."

"Comrade First Secretary, I've seen no orders about increased readiness."

"You will, at the meeting. Here's what I want." Khrushchev handed him more paper, on which he had scribbled a general description of the military posture he wanted. "You translate these requirements into specific units and orders and be ready to present them to the Defense Council."

Zakharov rose. "I'll go to the Ministry right away, First Secretary."

Khrushchev rose too. The two men embraced. Khrushchev slapped the Marshal on the side of the arm. "Take care, comrade. We've both been through a lot tonight. Just make sure some disgruntled sniper doesn't get off a few rounds at you on the way."

Zakharov left the office. When he had gone, Khrushchev poured the rest of the vodka and padded over to the frosted window, peering out. Harsh floodlights shone on the hammer and sickle flag snapping in brisk November winds over the Senatskaya Tower. Just beyond the tower and the wall, the mausoleum of Lenin fronted the ancient cobblestones of Red Square, seat of empire for centuries. Khrushchev sniffed the acrid vodka and knocked it down.

Vladimir Illych, what are you thinking tonight, you old goat? That you'd never see Communists fighting each other in Red Square? Sad so much blood had to be spilled on the very steps of the tomb. But even Marx said revolutions were messy affairs. Better next time to spill a little more capitalist blood, and less of our own.

Khrushchev breathed out a frosty wreath of steam on the window glass. The last two weeks had been a time of grave challenge, to say the least. It was amazing, when you thought about it, how far relations had come between the superpowers in that time. Khrushchev made a mental note to check with Semichastny about the Americans' investigation into the stolen warheads.

His greatest concern was simple: how to keep the Americans from examining the warheads in any detail, if and when they recovered the devices. That was going to be tricky. Khrushchev watched snowflakes swirling in the brisk winds, imagining as he did how each member of the State Defense Council would react to the meeting.

Khrushchev knew he had enough information to formally accuse two Presidium members, Kozlov and Shelepin, with masterminding the attempted coup. And he knew he had enough influence to make the accusations stick. The problem was, he well knew, the extent of the plot hardly stopped there.

No, Comrade Leonid Illych Brezhnev is the real culprit, Khrushchev told himself. He swirled the last drops of the vodka and downed them. No matter what happened at the Defense Council meeting, or the Central Committee plenary sessions to come, no matter how many heads rolled and careers ruined, the weeds were still firmly planted and his own position would never be secure until the ground around him was fully excavated and plowed under.

He had in his coat pocket all the documents he would ever need to send Kozlov and Shelepin to internal exile, somewhere in the vastness of Siberia, reassigned as postal clerks or livestock inspectors in some Godforsaken backwater in the middle of the taiga forest. That would be easy enough to do. Comrade Brezhnev had thoughtfully seen to provide him with all the evidence he would ever need.

But Brezhnev himself had powerful friends in the Central Committee. Kosygin, Suslov, perhaps, Malinovsky, and others. Maneuvering him out of the Presidium wouldn't be so easy.

Khrushchev angrily jerked the curtains shut, cocooning himself in the office once more. He went about the room, switching on every lamp and light he could find. Vedenin's ghost still haunted him. It had been that close. And if Vedenin, the Commandant of the Kremlin Kommendantura, could turn sour, who might be next? Khrushchev half expected Brezhnev himself to pop out of a filing cabinet.

He would see about Leonid Illych, in the weeks and months to come. Khrushchev sat down heavily in the leather chair and steepled his hands in thought. Josef Vissarionovich Stalin would know how to handle this, he thought. Now, we are somewhat more civilized. A pity.

If Kozlov and Shelepin were weeds in the Presidium, Brezhnev was a small mountain, not so easily moved. How to undermine a mountain? Khrushchev shrugged. The only way to move a mountain was to chip away at the base, a little bit at a time. That would have to be the answer.

Chip away at Brezhnev's base, the source of his power. And the real source of Leonid Illych's power and influence came from his connections to the defense industry, to the Ministries and the tank plants and the design bureaus. Start severing those connections, one by one, and over time, the mountain would crumble of its own weight, its own peculiar frailties.

For the first time in several days, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev began to smile.

11-5-62, Monday

Washington, D.C.

11:00 p.m.

The Oval Room of the White House, a gold-carpeted second floor space clad in off-white walls, had only one redeeming quality as a meeting room, thought MacGeorge Bundy. It did have a commanding, even inspiring view of the white obelisk of the Washington Monument. That alone might count for something, given the kinds of deliberations that had been conducted there over the last week or so. Bundy checked his watch. Nearly eleven p.m.

Right on cue, he saw through the windows giving on to the South Lawn, the blinking lights and whirring rotors of Marine One. The black shape of the huge Sikorsky glided by almost at eye level, wheeled about and set down on the helipad. The President had come home again, Bundy thought, as he headed for the elevators. If this place could be called home. More like a prison for many of the men who had occupied the place. Bundy went out on the ground level of the South Portico to greet John F. Kennedy.

The President was haggard and worn, with none of the usual bounce to his step after a campaign swing. He carried a heavier overcoat slung over his shoulder and shuffled like a man twice his age as he climbed the stairs into the house. Bad back, Bundy surmised. He told the President that the men he had asked for were all assembled in the Oval Room. Kennedy, preoccupied, in obvious pain, nodded grimly. Inside the mansion, he handed off his coat and jacket to a Secret Service man, then loosened his tie. They walked side by side, in silence, to the elevators, and rode up to the second floor.

As usual, the Oval Room was stifling and crowded. Kennedy nodded, mumbled a good evening, and made his way to a padded seat in the center of the table that was far too big for the cramped room. He sat down, wincing, adjusting himself, waving at his National Security Advisor to begin.

MacGeorge Bundy spent the next fifteen minutes briefing the ExComm on the status of the warhead search.

"Our best indications," Bundy said, leaning over folded hands on the table, "are that one of the warheads, the larger K-12 device, is now within the district limits of Washington. Exact whereabouts are unknown at this time. Needless to say, the FBI, Metro Police, the Army and the National Guard are conducting a very thorough search. Mr. Hoover here has informed me that best available evidence places the bomb somewhere in northwest Washington, at this time, perhaps Georgetown or surrounding areas."

J. Edgar Hoover, invited to the meeting at the express orders of the President, added, "We're now working on an hourly basis with General LeClair of the Third Infantry, out of Fort McNair, to coordinate both a block by block search and to secure the immediate downtown area, primarily the Federal Triangle. Many of you undoubtedly saw the checkpoints and barriers on your way in."

George Ball, Undersecretary of State, asked, "Any idea on what the Cubans plan to do?"

Hoover consulted some notes. "Nothing definitive, George. I should add that we have quite a different situation in New York, which I'll get to in a moment. As far as Washington goes, we have interrogative evidence, from a suspect being held in Miami, that Castro means to issue some kind of ultimatum tomorrow, which is Election Day. We're going on that assumption now."

"How do you plan to locate this bomb?" Robert Kennedy asked.

"We have some equipment, experimental and not fully tested, that can detect neutrons emitted from the bomb's core. Kind of a super Geiger counter, but somewhat longer range. Several experts are here from the Atomic Energy Commission, Los Alamos to be exact, with that equipment. Also, we're counting on the Cubans attempting to penetrate the Federal Triangle area, perhaps tonight. We've isolated and secured an area bounded by 23rd Street on the west, by the Lincoln Memorial, to K Street on the north, by 1st Street on the east, by Independence Avenue, the Tidal Basin and the Washington Channel to the south. Every road and street crossing that boundary is controlled and secured, either by Army or National Guard units. Inside the perimeter, we have additional control points surrounding the White House here and Capitol Hill. Metro D.C. Police, the U.S. Park Police, the Capitol Police and other agencies are all contributing. Some of our investigators think that the real target is the Capitol Building. Of course, with a seven hundred kiloton bomb, proximity isn't so important. But we have investigative evidence suggesting the Cubans are going to try to get as close to a meaningful and symbolic target as they can. Frankly, Mr. Attorney General we're counting on that. We may not be able to find the bomb in time, otherwise."

There was a moment of awkward silence, interrupted only by a steward with a tray bearing cold soft drinks and coffee. The President accepted a cup of hot tea. He stirred the steaming liquid thoughtfully.

"Mr. Hoover, you mentioned the New York situation was different."

"That's correct, sir." Hoover described the open radio circuit and the stolen Sisters of Mercy ambulance. "We're not sure whether this is just pure luck, whether we have a saboteur among the Cubans, which is a real possibility, or whether this is deception or disinformation, which they've pulled before, with the bomb in Miami. In any case, the ambulance is currently parked directly in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Six blocks around the Exchange have been isolated and sealed off. The local task force commander is with NYPD, Fifth Precinct, and we have agents on the task force as well. They're making plans to storm the ambulance at dawn."

President Kennedy sat up at that. "Isn't that a bit dangerous? What if the Cubans detonate?"

Hoover held up a piece of paper. "New evidence, Mr. President. From the Los Alamos people. We think it's reliable. What they're telling me is that the neutron flux detected from this device, which is a smaller yield warhead, indicates the casing's cracked. The bomb's a leaker. The core is disintegrating. I don't understand all the technical details but Los Alamos is telling us the data indicates the bomb can't sustain a critical mass, can't sustain a chain reaction, at least not enough for a full burst. I've asked for clarification but haven't gotten too much."

Robert McNamara, the SecDef, observed, "Even if it's not a full burst, it could still do a lot of damage. We've had duds occur in Nevada and the Pacific, Mr. President. They still explode and sometimes the radioactivity is even worse."

"So we still have a major problem," Kennedy said. He rubbed his eyes. They were red with lack of sleep, fatigue and worry. "I want the final say on any assault tonight. Has anybody tried contacting the Cubans, getting a message to them? Telling them we know what's up? Give 'em a chance to stand down, like we did with Khrushchev?"

J. Edgar Hoover answered darkly, "My agents say the Cubans are fanatics. It's doubtful they'd respond."

Kennedy wouldn't accept that. "I want the effort made. My God, gentlemen, were talking about potentially thousands of casualties here. We're not going to go eyeball to eyeball with the Russians, and get out of that only to piss off Castro and get New York blown up. Mac, you work with Dean here and get a negotiating position worked out, and a statement we can get to those Cubans in New York. Here too. I want some options tonight. By two o'clock."

"Yes, sir," Bundy said. He was scribbling furiously on a legal pad. To Dean Rusk: "We can use my office."

Kennedy was visibly angry. "I don't see Ed McDermott here. What about civil defense measures?"

Bundy shuffled some papers. "On the way, Mr. President. McDermott's been out inspecting facilities. I've got a preliminary report here: Civil Defense has already verified all District fallout shelters open and stocked with basic provisions. That's not been easy with all the panic buying going on. Area hospitals have been alerted to prepare for mass casualties. Extra blood supplies are being trucked in right now from surrounding cities."

"There's been a lot of footdragging on this issue," Kennedy said. "If my directions had been followed last year, we'd have a viable system in place. What about security? Mr. Hoover, Bob, anything else we can do for physical security?"

The SecDef spoke up. "I need some more planes, helicopters, any air asset I can get a hold of. Especially helicopters. I've already talked with Wheeler and the Army's sending a couple of squadrons up from Fort Rucker. They'll be here tomorrow morning, staging out of Bolling Air Force Base for the moment. We need round-the-clock surveillance of the controlled areas, ground and air. I can't get enough."

"Good idea. You get any resistance, you call me right away." Kennedy shook his head wearily. "I thought two weeks ago we'd been through hell and back with the Russians. Now this...Bobby, Mac, any ideas on the press?"

Bobby Kennedy was drumming a pencil eraser on his teeth. He tapped the table with the pencil for emphasis. "No question the press has a scent of something. We're getting questions at Justice about all the FBI activity. Plus the roadblocks. Now the Army and the Air Force are visible in the area. Mac--?

Bundy said, "The best cover story we've been able to come up with is to call all this police and military activity a training exercise. Some kind of extended Civil Defense wargame, making use of the missile crisis. I don't know if it'll fly or not."

"Me neither," Kennedy said. "I can already see Scotty Reston and Joe Alsop drooling over their typewriters. Is that the best we can do? Any better ideas."

Scenarios were discussed for a few moments but the consensus was that Bundy's story would have to do.

"Okay, then," the President told them. "Pierre Salinger gets this story at eight tomorrow morning. Better come up with some details to shoot down the questions. Poor Pierre...he'll never know what hit him."

"Mr. President," Bundy added, "I have additional intelligence from McCone and from NSA on the attempted coup in Moscow. Just got some translated intercepts an hour ago. And our Embassy's cabled a dispatch too."

"Good news or bad?''

"Mostly good, I suppose. Turns out our intel was accurate on the coup." Bundy went over the events of the attempted assault on Khrushchev's plane, the military actions in and around Moscow and in the Ukraine. "The situation's very fluid, and the outcome's not clear now. But best evidence we have is that the pro-government forces are gradually isolating the coup forces in Moscow. The Embassy reported extensive artillery and small-arms fire in the center of Moscow, right around the Kremlin. Some tank action as well. The place must be a battlefield by now."

"What about Khrushchev himself?"

Bundy handed the President a new cable. "Just came over the teletype at ten tonight. Seems the First Secretary is alive and well."

Kennedy scanned the cable, another long and rambling message from Moscow. A wry smile spread across on his face, as he read. "Now we're best buddies, it looks like." Kennedy summarized the letter for the others. "If only we can grab those bombs before we have a disaster. We should have tried harder to get rid of Castro last year. Still, at least we have a known quantity in the Kremlin. Khrushchev seems to have regained control of the government. We know who we're dealing with."

"He owes us one," Bob McNamara said.

Bundy was stirring uneasily at the end of the table. The President noticed.

"What is it, Mac? Something else?"

"There is something else, Mr. President. On my own authority, I've asked a member of Congress to come by tonight. He's in my office now. Congressman Stephen Jenkins, Democrat of Florida."

Kennedy's forehead furrowed. "Jenkins? I don't know him. I did a little campaigning for Smathers but not this fellow. Why is he here?"

"It's probably best if he explains it himself, Mr. President. I know this is a controlled meeting. But the Congressman has some information that bears directly on the Cuban situation. I'd like to have him come up."

Kennedy rubbed his face nervously. "I had the leaders of Congress in my office the day I spoke to the country. They practically tripped over themselves criticizing me for being too timid with Castro. Is that what this fellow wants?'

"No, Mr. President, not at all. Jenkins has a story that you need to hear, right now, if possible. It could have the gravest implications for the bombs and the Cuban response to what we say or do."

Kennedy waved at the air. "Bring him up."

Bundy made a phone call. Ten minutes later, Congressman Stephen Jenkins was shown into the Oval Room by a uniformed Secret Service guard.

Kennedy rose and went to shake hands. "Welcome to the lion's den, Congressman. Mac Bundy here tells me you have something important for us. Sit here, by me." Kennedy scooted another chair from the windows up to the table, squeezing in between McNamara and Rusk.

Jenkins nodded grimly at the assembly. "Mr. President, what I am about to tell you is something that I myself have a hard time believing. You all have to bear with me for a few minutes...it's rather complicated."

Kennedy ordered a steward to refresh drinks and snacks. Jenkins leaned forward in his chair, subconsciously clenching and unclenching his fists.

Slowly, at first, then with greater and greater emphasis, the Congressman related the story that began with an innocent campaign stop at Homestead Air Force Base. Jenkins talked without stopping for twenty minutes, explaining what he had found out about OpPlan 322, Operation Sierra, without naming sources. The Oval Room fell into dead silence.

Jenkins borrowed a glass of water from the table and gulped it down. "Bottom line, gentlemen, Mr. President, is that we have a very serious situation in the Caribbean right now. This General Haley has gone off and launched some cockamamie invasion, trying to get rid of Castro. I can't speak for the whole Congress but for myself, I say fine and it's high time, but not this way, not going outside the chain of command. The damn fool's going to wreck everything."

The President was stunned and dumbfounded by Jenkins' report. His eyes narrowed. "Bob," he asked the SecDef, "you know something about this?"

McNamara nodded. "Mac Bundy called me this afternoon. The Congressman was in his office downstairs. He told me the story then. I didn't believe it at first, but I said I'd check. So I got on the phone to the Joint Staff and pretty soon, verified everything he said. We've got a wargame scenario that's mutated into a real operation and General Haley's not only bypassed the chain of command, he's actively deceived the National Command Authority."

"Isn't that treason?" the President asked.

Bobby Kennedy spoke up. "Insubordination, at the very least."

"It's a court-martial offense, for sure," the SecDef admitted. "I've already sent orders through the Secretary of the Navy for this operation to be terminated at once and all forces disengaged. I sent the orders at four-thirty this afternoon." He passed a piece of paper across. "Here's the written copy of what was telexed by Secretary Connolly. Telexed right to the Dearborn, Task Force 132, Admiral Stone commanding."

Kennedy scanned the document. "Where is General Taylor? His authority should be added to this."

McNamara said, "Taylor's at Fort Bragg today. I checked. He's due back in Washington tomorrow morning."

"Contact him," the President ordered. "I want him back here right now. Send a plane if we have to."

"Yes, sir, Mr. President."

Kennedy's face was dark. "Congressman Jenkins, let me see all your proof. You've got documents?"

Jenkins opened a manilla folder and spilled several sheets on the table. "It's all here, Mr. President. That's the OpPlan scenario itself--" he pointed out a stapled sheaf of papers--"and here's the situation reports posted to the NMCC from the Iwo Jima. Also, the request for additional whole blood, body bags, and so forth, appended to Lieutenant Cedars' routine requisition forms. And his follow-up inquiry with the Deputy Chief of Staff. The sitreps are the important things."

McNamara looked on with Kennedy, explaining the language of the sitreps, the forces deployed, dispositions, action reports, casualties. Kennedy's eyebrows went up at the action report on Charlie Two-Five's force recon mission.

"Is this correct? The whole company wiped out?"

McNamara nodded. "We think so, Mr. President."

Kennedy was furious. He slammed a fist on the table, nearly knocking over his tea cup. "Dammit, this could wreck everything! Castro or Khrushchev gets wind of this and the whole missile withdrawal could be off. We could be right back where we started two weeks ago, maybe even worse off."

McNamara said, "The Cubans already know. It's a safe bet Castro directed the defense at La Esperanza. The Russians, I don't know. But the situation's damned ticklish enough. Cubans steal Soviet warheads. We invade Cuba. Khrushchev's nearly overthrown. We're in a minefield here."

"Yeah," said Bobby Kennedy, "and the mines are atomic."

Kennedy could sit no longer. His back was killing him. He got up, gingerly, and started pacing the room. Outside, the Washington Monument shone like a brilliant spear pointed to the heavens.

"Any of you men ever read The Guns of August? Barbara Tuchman?"

No one replied, so the President went on.

"I just finished it last month. It's about the first month of World War I. How the big powers stumbled and bumbled their way into the greatest holocaust the world had ever seen to that time. It's quite a tale, kind of a story of collective stupidity, poor judgment, rigid thinking. A sobering story, with a lot of significance for us today. The great powers had been posturing at each other for years, and painted themselves politically into positions they couldn't retreat from. When the balloon went up, the generals said the war would be over in a few months. Just like Korea. 'The boys'll be home by Christmas.' But it didn't happen that way. It didn't happen that way at all."

Kennedy turned back from the window. He supported himself with the back of his rocking chair. "Events are spinning out of control here. We've got to get control of the situation. It's scary, really, the parallels with The Guns of August. We've got atomic bombs. The Russians have atomic bombs. Now Castro has atomic bombs. And men like this General Haley are just the spark to set everything off. All it takes is one misstep, one misjudgment, one threat too many. How do we keep control of all this power? Somebody please tell me how we keep our fingers away from the buttons and our minds focused on making this a livable world? Maybe Barbara Tuchman was right. Maybe there are times in history when men just have some kind of perverse death wish."

The room was deathly silent.

Kennedy stared ahead at the wall, summoning whatever strength he could gain from the portrait of Jefferson crowning the mantelpiece.

"Bob," he said to the SecDef, "we can't wait a single minute longer. I want you to go to Florida. I'm sending Taylor too, when he gets here. Get yourselves down to Homestead and get a flight out to the Iwo Jima. I'm issuing a Presidential order, right now, for all U.S. forces in the Caribbean and Atlantic to cease active military operations and pull back to a safe defensible position."

"What about the quarantine, Mr. President?" asked McNamara. "We need the Navy on station to verify the missiles are being taken out."

"I'm not ending the quarantine. Just a little re-positioning, just get the forces apart enough so there's no chance a mistake can touch off a nuclear war. I especially want those assault ships and Marines away from Cuba. I want them back in port immediately. This order is to be carried out at once, exactly, without delay and with no questions. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Mr. President. I'll arrange it with the Chiefs."

"Secretary McNamara, you and General Taylor will fly to Florida and confront this General Haley at once. Tonight. I'm authorizing you both to have the general arrested and detained, if necessary. Mac here will work out the wording of the order. Get yourself down to Andrews and on a plane. Use one of mine. You'll have specific written orders from me and the complete services of my staff at all times. Use my direct Oval Office number--you know the one, if you need to call me. Don't even use your own cars. Take Marine One. It's faster."

"Mr. President," the SecDef said, "the Chiefs have been wanting to have a separate meeting with you for some time. To explain their positions on Castro and the Caribbean situation."

Kennedy rolled his eyes. "I know their positions, for God's sake." McNamara shrugged and the President relented. "Very well. I'll call General Wheeler tomorrow morning, if there is a tomorrow. In fact, I'm going to give them a dose of their own medicine. Mac, ring up the White House switchboard right now. I'll call the Chiefs at home. Wheeler, Shoup, LeMay, Anderson, the lot of them. They've ruined my schedule often enough. Now, we'll see how they like getting a call at two a.m."

The meeting broke up and clumps of people hovered in the room and in the hallway by the elevator. Kennedy was dog-tired and begged off several questions and discussions. He went down the hall to the living quarters and found Jackie in the small tiled kitchen, slapping together a ham sandwich. He stood in the doorway for a moment and their eyes met.

"Where are the kids?"

Jacqueline Kennedy finished spreading mustard on the bread. She hitched up her pink terrycloth robe and took an experimental bite of the sandwich. A glass of cold milk had already been poured.

"Trying to pretend they're asleep. Not very convincingly."

Kennedy went to her and they hugged lightly. "I'm sorry. We have meetings up here at night to try and throw the press off the trail. You know how they are: lights on late in the West Wing equals trouble. I don't think it matters anymore."

The First Lady peered into his eyes. "Jack, what's going on? I thought this crisis was winding down. I thought we were through the worst of it. Now, look--the Army's patrolling the streets, roadblocks everywhere, people emptying store shelves, stocking up. Castro--Khrushchev--I don't know what to think. Or what to tell the kids."

Kennedy held his wife tightly, speaking through her hair into her ear. "I want you and Caroline and John Junior to pack a few bags tomorrow morning, when they get up."

"Why?"

Kennedy shrugged. "Mac Bundy and some others think it would be a good idea. There's an atomic bomb loose somewhere in Washington. No sense taking any chances. Hoover tells me the FBI can grab these jokers, but I'm not so sure. We're in for a very long, trying day tomorrow and I'd feel better if I knew you were safe."

Hyannisport?"

"No, go on to Glen Ora. It's just a short flight. You'll have the horses and the children will have wide open spaces, no media spotlight. The house is almost finished. And the prevailing winds--" He stopped, not wanting to go any further.

Jackie looked up. "What? What were you going to say?"

"Nothing. It wasn't anything. The air's nice and crisp in the mountains, this time of year."

The First Lady was skeptical, frowning. "Are you coming with us?"

Kennedy let her go, and she returned to her sandwich, breaking off half for him.

"Jackie, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. They want me to go to Camp David tonight. Secret Service's all up in arms. They're practically begging me. Either there or Mount Weather, the underground command post."

"Are you?'

Kennedy ran his hand through his thick hair. It felt greasy, dirty. "I honestly don't know. The country needs visible leadership now. I really need to stay here, in the city."

11-6-62, Tuesday

Washington, D.C.

2:30 a.m.

Less than four miles northwest of the White House, Rafael Ramirez checked his watch. He was tired, yet edgy and nervous, pacing the narrow Vandeventer garage from the workbench area to the door and back. In the center of the garage, the Worthy Flower Shop van was going through a complete makeover, courtesy of Jorge Arrantes and Miguel Saguente. Each man had a paint brush and a pail of white paint. They had bought extra paint at a hardware store around the corner. The green and white rosebush logo of Worthy Flower Shop was gone, replaced by neutral white. The beginnings of a Federal Interagency Motor Pool logo and ID number were just forming below the driver's and front seat passenger's windows. The rest of the van was already drying in its new 'U.S. Government' livery.

Inside the van, sweating under powerful floodlights, the Russian Dmitri Kapitonov probed and felt with his fingers, trying to tie off a few loose cables in the tiny wireway at the base of the K-12 bomb. Periodically, Ramirez climbed in over his shoulder, peering in, breathing down his neck, just to satisfy himself the arming procedure was going according to plan. Kapitonov willed his fists to be still. He'd have loved nothing better than to plant a hard right into the pimply, greasy face of the Cuban commando. For the moment, his better judgment, not to mention his instinct for survival, had won out.

Kapitonov knew perfectly well that his usefulness to the Moncada team was rapidly slipping away. It was a shame, really. He had always taken great pride in the peculiar craftsmanship needed to babysit an atomic bomb, from the first moments of its birth in the core assembly areas at Glavatom-16, born in the infinitesimally small latticework of concentrated plutonium spheres, to its tempestuous childhood as the critical masses were machined and joined, then finally growing into full adulthood in the mating of the core with its beryllium initiator and dense uranium tamper. Only in the maturity of its last days, would the fizik package seek marriage with a high-explosive detonating layer and the electrical wiring to make the union work together.

Kapitonov had long thought of each bomb, as he shepherded it through the meticulous production and assembly process, as an old friend. He had taken to giving them individual names.

Ramirez, for his part, continued to pace. Occasionally, he went back into the townhouse, checking on Celia Vandeventer, Cal Worthy and the two grandchildren, still tied up in a coat closet off the living room. He shined a flashlight into the darkened closet. All were still there, nice and secure, gagged tightly and huddled together. Ramirez shut the door, and for good measure, dragged a heavy wingback chair over to block the door.

Back in the garage, the paint job was nearing completion. Now the van was a neutral white, still shining wet from the paint, and the motor pool stencil was ready for application.

"How much longer, compadres?"

Saguente wiped some paint from his eyelids. "An hour, maybe more. We have to let the base dry before the stencil goes on. Then she'll be ready, though still wet."

"You're using the CIA identifier plates, too?"

Saguente motioned Ramirez to come around and see for himself. "The DGI made up this license plate. Supposed to be a code for the CIA. Plus we have decals for the front and rear window." He pointed to the open wooden crate on the floor. "There's paperwork too. When we're all done, this truck will be a courier vehicle for the Yanqui spies. Guaranteed to pass any inspection the police make."

"Excellent, Miguel. Keep at it." Ramirez hopped up into the back of the truck, and found Barracoa. Kapitonov had his head buried in a tangle of wires. Ramirez jerked his thumb, indicating Barracoa should step down. Come with me, Ramirez mouthed.

A safe distance from the truck, Ramirez asked, "How long?"

Angel Barracoa shrugged. "He says a few more minutes."

"Will the damn thing work? Can you follow what he's doing?"

Barracoa spread his hands in a gesture saying I don't know. "Capitan, I ask questions. Sometimes I get answers. I threaten him but he knows I can't kill him. He says he's bypassed all the atmosphere and acceleration sensors that tell the bomb where it is. Now, he's re-routing those wires to a special switch block, energized by the battery, to arm everything. There are many stages to detonating this bomb. Each stage is activated by a separate circuit and the circuits are interlocked so that they have to occur in the right order."

Ramirez was nervously rubbing his mouth, twisting the ends of his black moustache. "Describe it to me, Angel, in simple terms."

Barracoa tried. "There are several timing circuits, to provide set delay periods. They take information from these sensors that the ruso has bypassed. The delays are designed to account for the flight of the missile that this bomb would normally be on. Where it is in flight, how high, falling how fast, that sort of thing. After all those relays are made, the arming circuit for the explosive lenses has to be energized, which means the battery connection has to be made. Once that's done, she's ready to go. The ruso told me he had to improvise a signal to replace the barometric switch. That's the switch that, when it closes, sends electricity from the capacitors to a set of exploding wire detonators. The detonating wires fire the high explosive lenses. And then--" Barracoa formed a mushroom cloud with his hands--"the big bang."

Ramirez' face darkened. "If the bomb doesn't go, I'll kill him with my bare hands." He glared at Barracoa. "Angel, I want you to come with me. We're going to do a little reconnaissance of the enemy." He gathered Saguente and Arrantes around in a small semi-circle, by the garage door.

"Compadres, Angel and I are taking the mujer's car out for a little cruise. Reconnaissance patrol. We'll be back in an hour or so. I want you both to keep the ruso under surveillance. I don't want him sabotaging the bomb. Switch off from the paint job, one at a time. But keep working on the van too."

"Si, Capitan. Take care out there."

Ramirez half-saluted. "Patria o muerte. Come on, let's go."

He had grabbed Celia Vandeventer's keys from her purse. Opposite the Worthy Flower van was a late-model Lincoln Continental, black with a beige interior. Saguente pulled the garage door up and Ramirez backed out into the turnaround. Ahead of them, Barracoa opened the wrought-iron gate, then after Ramirez had driven up to the street, closed it and hopped in. Capitan turned right on O Street and rolled eastward. At 29th, he turned south. Three blocks ahead, the first Army checkpoint loomed and Ramirez quickly turned east on M Street, gliding slowly by the barrier of Army jeeps, two-ton trucks, wooden horses and scattered soldiers.

"Yanquis in force," he told Barracoa. "Don't stare at them."

"Jesu Cristo, it looks like the whole damn Army."

Indeed, the further they drove east on M, the more the District came to resemble an armed camp. At each crossing intersection--beginning with 26th Street at Rock Creek, on through Thomas Circle all the way to New Jersey Avenue and beyond, all points south of K Street were blocked. Each time, the same barrier was set up. Half a dozen Jeeps, several trucks, sometimes a halftrack or armored personnel carrier--always twenty or so soldiers, infantrymen looks like, Ramirez muttered--completely blocking all southbound traffic, a checkpoint and pass control station. It was dark and deserted on most of the streets. Car traffic was light, save for an odd cab. More police vehicles than anything else. Pedestrian traffic was nonexistent.

Ramirez continued east to 1st Street and the tracks north of Union Station. Not a single break in the perimeter. He swore and fidgeted, pulling out a map. He stopped the Lincoln beside a red-brick church on New Jersey, and studied the page with a small flashlight.

By fits and starts, they made their way north, then east again, finding the defensive perimeter gone. Ramirez swung south on 4th Street, crossing Massachusetts at Stanton Square. The brightly lit stone edifice of the Casualty Hospital lay off to their left, a few blocks east.

Further reconnaissance probed the eastern and southern boundaries of the Yanqui's defenses. Half an hour of driving, turning, cutting back, dodging onto side streets, and parking by the side of the road, lights out, as Army convoys rumbled past, made clear the precise dimensions of the perimeter. The eastern boundary seemed to be 1st Street, a block east of Capitol Hill. The southern boundary seemed to be Independence Avenue, and where it intersected the Lincoln Memorial, the river itself. The northern boundary had clearly been K Street. All in all, an enormous rectangle, centered on the White House and the Federal Triangle.

Every crossing street was barricaded.

Ramirez pulled the Lincoln to a stop at the north lot entrance by the Tidal Basin. Opposite across the water, the reflection of Jefferson's monument cast rippling lights on the water. Despite the cold crisp night, he was sweating.

"Angel, the Yanquis aren't going to make it easy on us. Did you see any vehicles let through any barriers?"

"Only Army trucks, Capitan. And only twice."

"Then the van will be our ticket to the show. We've got to make her look official, urgent business for the CIA."

"You think it'll work?"

Ramirez twisted around in the seat. "Of course, it'll work. I developed the Moncada plan to anticipate everything. Why do you think we have those stencils, the paperwork, the courier passes?"

Barracoa had a pained look on his face.

"Your shoulder, Angel?"

He shrugged. "Some pain, si. But--well, it's just that the bomb, she's so powerful. We could wipe out the whole city, just setting her off right where she is. Do we really need to get in so close. It's a risk, Capitan. We risk everything...I'm not questioning your orders but--"

Ramirez lay his head back against the headrest. He cracked the window to get some air. "It's okay, I understand. There is a risk, true. All combat is a risk. But there's something you don't understand too. It's a lesson I learned last year, at the Playa Giron--what the americanos call the Bay of Pigs."

"Where your brother was killed?"

"Si, that was the place. It's a lesson about combat, about striking the enemy where he doesn't expect you, striking at a time and a place that so paralyzes the enemy, he can't respond. That's how a smaller force, even a poorly equipped force, can defeat a mighty enemy. Like the wrestling holds Calderone has shown you. Just the right force, at the right place, and you can throw a man twice your size."

"Your brother, Tomas, he was a special man."

"He was, Angel, very special." Ramirez closed his eyes, hearing in his mind the booms! of the shells even over the gentle lapping of the Tidal Basin waters. "It was April, and I had just come back from Russia. I was with the Brigada Rivera, at Camp Columbia, and we got word the bandits had started bombing places all around the Zapata Swamps, towns, villages, the coastal guns. We knew an attack was coming. Raul had told us to be ready and we had practiced repelling invaders, getting our tanks and guns into position, laying down fire on the beaches, coordinating everything.

"It was fierce, really touch and go, for a few days. I remember that. But we couldn't figure out why the Yanquis didn't send in more planes. We had the roads clogged with equipment, all around that area, from Largo to San Blas, just packed in so tight we could hardly move. Jesu, we were like ducks, the norteamericanos could have chewed us up for good, right there in the mountain passes. But they didn't, Angel. For some reason, they didn't. And that was Kennedy's biggest mistake.

"I was an officer in the Brigada's Plans and Operations office. I was in Havana, at first. I helped Del Valle and Madrigo get orders out, mobilization orders, get this unit ready, get that unit on the roads, hurry up! It was chaos for two or three days, Fidel ranting and raving like he does. One of the units was the Tenth Armored Regiment, Somoza's old outfit, from the Central Army. Tomas was a loader in a T-55, the Second Platoon. We sent them right into the battle, no delay, no warning, just threw them in. I remember praying Tomas wouldn't wind up cannon fodder like so many of the first ones."

"That's when our air force came in, wasn't it?" Barracoa asked.

"Yes. The bandits had a few old B-26s. They were American but they had Cuban markings. We knew what they were. DAFAAR put up a force twice that size in less than a day. We had some trainers, no MiGs back then, and we shot the -26's down like pigeons. It was sad, in a way. I was still in Havana, at Brigada headquarters, sleeping on a cot in the war room.

"It was on the third day of the attack that I got some news. Good news and bad news. The good news was that the bandits had been decimated, I mean just chewed up on the beaches. Seventy percent casualties, something like that. They were surrendering by the dozens, whole companies, what was left of them. Pathetic animals, traitors, we shot some of them right there."

"And the bad news?"

Ramirez swallowed hard, remembering. "I got a phone call. It was a division commandante's adjutant, somewhere near San Blas. I remember his name: Gillardo. He told me a Tomas Ramirez was listed as a casualty in a fierce firefight near the beach, on the second day of the assault. I was just sick, when I heard the news.

"I got permission to go down to the battlefield. Most of the casualties had been taken to a warehouse in Cienfuegos. And Tomas was there. I rode down in a truck with several other officers from the Brigada--it was a MINFAR truck, belonged to the Ministry--and saw all the damage, all the equipment destroyed, the corpses rotting on the beach. The warehouse in Cienfuegos was just a makeshift morgue they were using, for identification."

"You saw him?"

Ramirez nodded silently. "It was him. His body was riddled with bullets. There was no mistaking him. They said his tank had broken down and been overrun by bandits. He died outside, on the turret, defending it." Ramirez' mouth was a tight line. "Tomas died at the hands of Cuban traitors. But it was the Yanquis who killed him. Yanquis trained the bandits, equipped them. It was Yanqui bullets in his body. Ever since that day--"

"In training," Barracoa remembered, "you once said you swore death to Kennedy over Tomas' body."

Ramirez smiled. "Something like that. I decided, when I got back to Havana--this was after the funeral, after Mama broke down at the burial--that I would make the Yanquis pay. Somehow. I got back to the G-3 office and started thinking. I had just come from Russia, I had seen their missiles, their atomic bombs. It wasn't until a year later, this May, that Anadyr came along and the Russians brought atomic bombs to Cuba. That's when I started to get the idea for Moncada. But the basics, I had worked out last summer.

"I was doing action reports on the Playa Giron assault, and I kept thinking about this Strategic Rocket Force officer I had met in Russia. Mironov was his name. Also Madrigo, the Brigada commander at the time, had a saying: 'Surprise the enemy. Do what they don't expect; be where they don't anticipate you can be' A lot of things were running through my mind. Rockets. Atomic bombs. Kennedy. Tomas' body. Mama's collapse....

"I guess I was distracted most of the rest of the year. I just couldn't get that image of Tomas' body out of my mind. His skin was black, shriveled, he had dozens of bullet holes, in a line from his right leg all the way to his face. It was horrible. When we were boys, Angel, when we played like Montaneros, Mountain Boys, we used to have a special signal to pass notices to each other from a distance, when we were stalking other gangs or raiding farms or stores in Santiago. It was like this--" Ramirez made a fist, with his index and little fingers extended. "It meant vamos ahora\--we go now--together! That was what we told each other...."

Ramirez paused for a moment, collecting painful memories. "When I was at the warehouse at Cienfuegos, I made that same sign over Tomas' body, before they covered him up. And later, at the burial at our family granja near Santiago, before he was laid in the ground, I crossed his hands and made the same sign with his fingers. He was buried that way. I made sure of it by peeking in the casket at the last moment. And, God willing, he makes that sign to this day."

"You think of him a lot," Barracoa observed.

Ramirez had fired up a cigarette. The tip glowed red as he inhaled. Smoke soon filled the front seat. "For many weeks after the funeral, the weather was bad in Oriente. Cloudy, rainy, stormy, that sort of weather. I thought of little else. Nowadays, I see him in my mind like he was right next to me. He's in the clouds, and it's sunny, bright, warm, like it is after the fall rains. That's the way I see him now."

"In training, you always said he told you about Moncada. About the plan."

"Si, on a plane ride back to Havana. He spoke to me--vamos ahora\--and I started thinking about a plan I had already worked up. Granma, it was called. It was a plan to infiltrate saboteurs and assassins into south Florida, to get rid of some of the anti-Castro elements there. I grafted parts of this plan with what I had learned in Russia, about atomic bombs. Right before Raul told us the rusos were bringing bombs and missiles to Cuba, that's when Tomas spoke to me. Somehow, he knew. I just put the pieces together after that."

Barracoa opened the door and got out, to stretch. A chill wind whipped across the Tidal Basin. Ramirez got out and leaned over the door, finishing his cigarette.

"Capitan, when Fidel makes his speech, what do you think will happen? Will we die with the bomb?"

"I don't know, Angel." Ramirez tossed the cigarette, unfinished, into the black water below the car. "That's up to Fidel. And God. For me, it's enough that the target is in sight. You see it, don't you? Through the trees--there--the White House."

"I see it."

"We have to get the bomb there. I know we can destroy this city from where we are. But it wouldn't be right. It was Kennedy who killed Tomas. If I could put this ruso bomb inside the White House, I would. But outside the gates somewhere, maybe Lafayette Park, that should do nicely. And then, if Fidel gives the word and the bomb goes off, I will take Kennedy by the neck and carry him myself into heaven, right to the very feet of Tomas Ricardo Ramirez Radrigo. And then, we will see what kind of justice there is in the world."

Barracoa shuddered, as the breeze picked up. He got back into the car. Ramirez did the same.

"Vamos ahora, eh Angel? We go now--together."

"Si, Capitan. I'm ready. Let's get back to the house and finish up."

Far from the command posts of the threatened global war and from the negotiators who sought to stave it off, people knelt calmly in defensive posture or in prayer. In a take-cover drill at the Elysian Heights elementary school in Los Angeles, children crouched in a corridor under the watchful eyes of their teachers, shielding the backs of their necks with their hands. It was a scene to be repeated in many places across the U.S. as Americans braced for what might yet come. In a church in Miami, a young woman from Bogota knelt to pray for her homeland, Columbia, and for the other Americas threatened in the crisis.

Washington and its military and civilian agencies were on a status of "def-con"--defense condition--with skeleton staffs stationed at undisclosed places out of the city to be able to run the government after any attack. The capital's famous Cathedral School staked out an air raid shelter for its children under the tomb of Woodrow Wilson in the cathedral crypts. In Key West, the people closest to Castro's guns saw the crisis build and then recede--and gave way to neither panic nor jubilation.

Clergymen of many faiths and in many cities exhorted their congregation to stand united with the President. There were dissents, of course: pacifists paraded and vocalized far out of proportion to their numbers. On the eve of the election, there was debate about the President's action, but almost all of it concerned whether he had gone far enough. In Bellevue, Ill, a machinist named James Polk summed up the feelings of millions of fellow countrymen: "Before it was just like putting your head between your legs. Now you know you can hold your head up."

LIFE Magazine

November 9, 1962
CHAPTER 17

11-6-62, Tuesday

Aboard the U.S.S. Dearborn (DD-915)

5:30 a.m.

Admiral Jack Stone stubbed out the cigarette in a tray overflowing with butts and got up to pace. The Dearborn's CIC was no bigger than a good size diner, and crammed with radar, sonar and communications gear. As flagship for Task Force 132, she had electronic fingers into every corner of her assigned area of operation: the Florida Straits and the Bahamas Channel. Trouble was, at Stone's expressed orders, the ship was no longer exactly on station.

By 2300 hours Sunday evening, the 485-foot destroyer had taken up position just eighty-five miles off the northwest coast of Cuba, about nine minutes' flying time on a direct line from Puerto Esperanza for any MiG pilots brave enough to try a frontal assault on the fleet, thought Stone. The fact that the Dearborn was well screened by three other destroyers, the Mitchell, the Capers, and the Bristol, each with four quad-mount 70-caliber anti-aircraft guns apiece, did little to ease the growing knot in his stomach. The truth was that a determined Cuban or Russian pilot could make it through the AA screen, if he was willing to die in the process.

Stone knew that H-Hour was fast approaching and the decision was almost upon him. Everything was in place. Olin Haley had radioed a final readiness report from Iwo, just an hour ago. Three companies of the U.S. 2nd Marines were already bivouacked in assault quarters, full combat gear, full rations, locked and loaded for bear. Stone winced, hearing the General's voice. He sounded liked a child the night before Christmas.

Now the ball was in Stone's court but the commanding officer, Task Force 132, U.S. Navy Second Fleet, Atlantic Command, didn't want to play the game. The next phase of OpPlan 322, the Air/Strategic Bombardment and Tactical Neutralization Phase, was set to pop in less than ten minutes. Stone knew that he need only step outside the secure confines of the CIC and walk twenty feet to a wing bridge on Dearborn's starboard side. Ten minutes after he gave the go-signal, the skies overhead would be filled with A-4 Skyhawks and F-4 Phantom II jets, forming up for the first assault on Target Package One. Just over the Dearborn's horizon lay the Independence, embarking the Mighty Marauders of VFA-82, and ten miles beyond her, the Enterprise, with VFA-86's Sidewinders. Both carriers had catapults primed, and wind over their decks, ready to launch the first waves toward western Cuba.

They awaited only the go-signal from Jack Stone.

Stone mentally reviewed the tactical plan. The first wave would be designed to suppress enemy air defenses. The F-4s would sweep in at mid-altitudes, below twenty-thousand feet, looking to draw AAA and SAM fire, dueling with the ground batteries in a deadly game of cat and mouse. When Cuban or Russian radars painted the Phantoms,

the next wave would close in and hose the unfortunate Reds with anti-missile fire. A separate force would deal with any MiGs the enemy was brave enough to put up. Two sites, in particular, would have to be dealt with: the airfields around Santa Clara, near Havana and another complex at San Antonio de los Banos, in the eastern half of the island. Stone and Haley had figured the duel for air superiority might take a good half a day or longer, depending on weather and sortie rate. Key targets were the SA-2 and SA-7 SAM complexes, around the missile sites and airfields, as well as a select list of some fifteen Soviet and Cuban airfields, each one a potential MiG threat.

Only then, could the A-4's launch, and the next step, the ground attack, take place. There were three 'target packages' in the OpPlan. Each package was a list of sites, ranging from FAR (Cuban Army) tank depots to port facilities at Havana, Mariel, and Cienfuegos to communications centers at Campo Libertad and Camp Columbia to infantry and artillery marshaling yards along Highway 1 to Pinar del Rio. The ground attack phase was allotted thirty-six hours to achieve eighty percent destruction of assigned targets. Stone figured that was about half what it would really take. But Haley was determined to get his Marines on the beaches and force the tempo, regardless of the cost.

Three target packages, known as TP 1, 2, and 3 in the OpPlan, each a substantial portion of Castro's military might, each to be eighty percent destroyed or neutralized in less than a day and a half. All on paper, of course. TP 1 comprised the La Esperanza/Mariel/Havana set of targets. TP 2 covered Santiago de Cuba and the Guantanamo area, in the east. And TP 3 would see the naval facilities and port infrastructure around Cienfuegos reduced to smoldering rubble.

Only then, when the Air phase was done, would the air assault forces from Bill Cox's 101st Airborne make their drops around Havana, Mariel and Cienfuegos, seizing and holding key objectives like bridges, road intersections, and airfields until Haley's Marines could make their amphibious landings on the third day. The two ground forces would link up, expand the lodgment south and west of Havana and march on the capital. Castro, if he had any sense behind that greasy beard of his, would cut and run, like any good tinpot dictator.

All like clockwork, Stone thought. At least on paper. But the presence of thousands of Russian troops would complicate things a bit.

Jack Stone stepped up to the tactical console and studied the orange sweeping fanlines of the AN-UYK 25 "Able Ranger" radar plot. His eyes swept over the board, noting the surface plot was dotted with ships of the task force, the ships he had detached from their assigned station for this little adventure off Cuba. Ten in all, counting the two carriers. The sky plot was clear, revealing only light returns, the overhead eyes of the Airborne Early Warning guys in their E-2s, circling at twenty-five thousand feet, giving Stone longer-range eyes and added warning time in case the Reds tried anything.

"Radioman, send the command: 'Sierra Nevada Bravo'. All units, the assault command frequency. Send it twice, and get confirmations."

"Aye aye, sir," said the radioman, just off to Stone's left. He dialed into the command tactical net and issued the orders.

Jack Stone remembered, at that moment, that he still needed to breathe. His head was pounding. He thought about coffee, but he'd already downed half a dozen cups. Or a cigarette, but the ashtray was full and the air was already rank. Fresh air sounded better.

"Yeoman, I'll be on the bridge deck. Advise me when all confirmations are in."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Stone left the Combat Information Center, and went outside. It was dark, cool, partly cloudy, the wind whipping small whitecaps on the ocean. He looked up, spying a few stars peeking in and out of the clouds. In minutes, the skies would be full of American aircraft, forming up in squadron order, F-4's gathering for the storm that was about to hit Cuba, a storm unlike any tropical disturbance.

He expected they'd encounter fairly stiff AAA and SAM resistance. That was to be expected. The Cubans were notoriously trigger-happy and they'd already shot that U-2 out of the sky two weeks ago. The real question was the MiGs. Haley's Force Recon mission had been an abject failure. The OpPlan had counted on good ground intelligence about the air defenses over western Cuba but the Marines had been ambushed and cut to pieces. Damn this all to hell, Stone muttered. The leathernecks had died needlessly, just because they hadn't had the air support ready, hadn't seen fit to have a few Phantoms standing by off the coast, ready to dash in and keep the Reds at bay so the boys could be extracted. The whole damn thing had gone to hell in a handbasket just because OpSec was so tight and Haley wanted to keep it that way. Screw operational security, Stone said out loud. Now, we're going in dumb and blind. We damn well deserve whatever we get.

Stone knew he'd have to get an advisory off to the Iwo, and let Haley know Phase II was underway. He found the prospect both exhilarating and frightening, at the same time. Haley would whoop with joy, right over the command net, just like a kid at play. Yet the words "Sierra Nevada Bravo" were like cannons going off in the back of the Admiral's head, each one a bell tolling finality, an audible reminder, if he needed one, that they had now set in motion a perhaps irretrievable situation. In a matter of hours, Washington would know what was going on and would be demanding answers from commanders in the field.

Haley and Stone had anticipated this, of course. The General was certain he had covered his tracks with enough paperwork to confuse a regiment, at least for the first critical few hours. Emphasizing that Sierra was merely a training exercise, Haley knew that he need only stall the National Command Authority for those first hours and events would then take on a life of their own.

Jack Stone lit up a cigarette and savored the aroma for a few minutes. He drew the collar of his peacoat tighter against the early morning wind chill. Both he and Olin Haley were betting on some pretty dicey things. The biggest bet of all, the one they were gambling their careers, maybe even their lives on, was the forbearance of the President and the SecDef, when they got the first action reports from Cuba. Haley was convinced John F. Kennedy just needed a little "coaxing" to do what he knew needed doing.

"He'll rant and rave and scream for a few hours, like any good boss," Haley always said. "In the end, he won't have much choice. We may get our hands slapped, but Kennedy's a realist. Any politician worth a damn can smell an opportunity. Hell, read the papers. Americans want Castro's neck in a sling. It's sheer coincidence Sierra pops during the elections. But it's sure as hell works in our favor. No, after the President's through cursing us to the moon and back, he'll let the Marines do their job. And when we're done and we've saved his sorry ass from Communism in this hemisphere, he'll be

glad we did it."

Stone tossed the cigarette overboard. He'd always been a fatalistic mirror to Haley's gung-ho enthusiasm. But Haley was right, damn it! Sierra had to move forward now or the advantage would be lost.

Jack Stone knew, even if Haley wouldn't admit it, that OpPlan 322, Operation Sierra, would be world news in twelve hours or less. And at that point, it was an even bet whether the President would let the operation proceed to its logical conclusion. They both knew there were plenty of people in the DOD and the CIA who wanted something like Sierra to succeed. Hell, they'd been trying for two years, even under Ike.

The question was whether their views would prevail in the finger-pointing and name-calling hysteria to come.

Stone decided he'd better get back to the CIC. The first waves of F-4 Phantom IIs would be forming up over the Independence and the Enterprise about now and he wanted to be around when they entered Cuban airspace. The curtain was going up and inside the secure and darkened theater of the Combat Information Center, he'd have one of the best seats in the house.

He hated to give up the fresh air but American boys would be dying in a few hours and some hard decisions would have to be made. He lingered for a moment, on the Dearborn's bridge deck, watching the sun come up over the eastern Caribbean.

He wondered if he'd see many more sunrises.

11-6-62, Tuesday

Near La Esperanza, Cuba

6:00 a.m.

It was drizzling slightly as Major Yuri Poskribin hopped out of the GAZ truck he had been riding in for the last hour. The ride from army headquarters at the Torrens Reformatory outside Havana had been bumpy, rainy and generally miserable. Poskribin was always glad of the chance to get out of the hothouse that was Pliyev's command post. The Rocket Forces and the regular Army fought like cats and dogs every day, arguing and backstabbing and plotting against each other. It was embarrassing, especially in front of the Cubantsy they were supposed to be teaching. Regular officers on field assignment should be models of socialist propriety and comradely respect.

Poskribin snorted as he walked into the command tent of the 33rd Rocket Troops, encamped in a forest clearing six miles southeast of the beaches of La Esperanza. At Group Headquarters, you were lucky not to get hit by flying objects, like the place was some kind of school playground. So much for comradely respect.

The 33rd had taken up station two nights ago, re-assigned to coastal defense in this sector of the province, after General Dankevich's warning about the Americans. Dankevich had held a late-night intelligence briefing, sharing the latest from the Ministry's own sources and sanitized State Security intercepts. The American Navy was on the move again, this time back toward Cuba. It was all very confusing. Some of the fleet had been detached to provide surveillance of Soviet freighters, the ones removing the missiles. Other parts of the fleet seemed to be maneuvering in some kind of tactical pattern, as if a training exercise, or wargame were underway. The intelligence officers could offer no explanation but Dankevich had thought up one anyway.

"If the Americans can play games, so can we." He had ordered the entire Rocket Army to disperse to prepared defense positions. The Luna regiments and the FKR (cruise missile) regiments would cover the northern coast, backing up Castro's FAR and civilian militia in case the Americans made a feint at an attempted landing. "It a very dangerous situation, men," Dankevich had thundered. "While we get our long-range missiles out, we're vulnerable. We've got men and equipment moving on every highway on the island. That makes them pigeons for the American aircraft. I want extra coverage in the northwest, around Havana and Mariel, so we aren't surprised."

The 33rd had drawn an assignment covering the mid-coast region, La Esperanza to Minas de Matahambre. Poskribin had dropped by to check out the setup and positioning of the Luna launchers and the regiment's 122-mm tube artillery.

Scattered about the clearing, covering maybe half a mile, camouflage netting and brush the troops had cut from the nearby woods was stacked and ready, awaiting only the final positioning of the launchers. Poskribin walked across the clearing, from one launcher crew to the next, as the loaders stacked munitions carriers and cleaned and traversed their mounts. At the far end of the clearing, a small field tent had been erected and floodlights were on inside, the only lights allowed in the camp. Under the tent, heavy metal boxes were being winched down from the back of a GAZ transporter-truck. Poskribin watched from just outside the pool of lights, as the two-kiloton K-15 implosion-type atomic fusion-fission warheads were extracted from their carriers, safed and inspected, then loaded onto field dollies for transport to the Luna rockets.

Poskribin was sanguine about the warheads, considering them little more than extremely powerful artillery rounds, albeit with ranges approaching twenty miles. The men of the 33rd had practiced several times, since last summer, with the rockets, transporting them, setting them up and securing precise position, traversing and elevating the launchers, handling and loading the atomic shells, arming the rocket's igniter charge, even firing the weapons. They were confident in their abilities--hadn't they won a regimental citation for tactical excellence in the Dniester Winter Games at the Semipalatinsk testing grounds last year?--and Poskribin, not to mention General Dankevich, expected no less this time, in the heat and humidity of tropical Cuba. Their spirits were high, despite the conditions and hardships, and Poskribin had every reason to be proud.

The mid-coast sector would be well-defended in less than two hours. If the Americans tried anything in the La Esperanza sector, they'd get a bloody nose they wouldn't soon forget.

Major Poskribin walked the "main line of guns" back up the small hill to his truck. At each gun and launcher platoon, he checked the same things: proper positioning for the terrain, spacing with the other guns, general readiness and morale of the gun crew and stocks and supplies of rounds. He was generally pleased with what he saw. True, there had been some troubles with a few of the troops, with so many distractions in this tropical hellhole. Still, discipline had been fairly good and morale was high

At each Luna mount, he added some extra encouragement.

"Look alive, men. You've got a big job here. Any problems?"

Platoon Sergeant Valery Nizhin saluted, thumbing sweat from his dark, mustachioed face. "Comrade Major, the atomic shells are giving us one headache after another."

"What's the matter, Sergeant?"

Nizhin indicated one of the field dollies bearing a K-15 charge. "They're a bitch to handle, sir. They're heavy, and the men know they're not supposed to hold or touch the casing except at the handholds. The mud's not helping either. We almost dropped one a few minutes ago. If she'd fallen arming panel down, I don't know what we would have done."

Poskribin went over to look at the device. It was cradled in the dolly, strapped down, with its riveted "pop-panel" secure. Inside, he knew, were the arming switches and relays. The chief gunner of the platoon would have the dubious honor of removing the panel, setting the switches and relays in the right sequence and the right position, then inserting the final "plug" of fissionable material into the very center of the device core, through a special plughole next to the arming box. Once that was done, the device was armed and cooking. The manual said the rocket was to be erected to launch position and the firing crew behind their field revetments in two minutes. Otherwise, Poskribin remembered from the text, "the firing crew may receive an unacceptably high dose of alpha radiation."

Poskribin grimaced at the prospect. They'd lost whole platoons to poor safety and lackadaisical handling before General Dankevich had come in. Dankevich was nothing if not a fanatic about safety and following procedure.

"Tell the men to follow the book," Poskribin reminded the sergeant. "Each step, to the letter. And take time to be careful. This Luna's vital to coastal defense. Don't forget how badly the Americans outgun us here. How far behind are you?"

Nizhin shrugged. "Maybe half an hour. But we'll make it. Oh seven hundred hours, at the latest."

"Do that," Poskribin ordered. "I want the launcher loaded, armed, primed, trained and ready by then. "Forward spotters are already moving into position along the beaches north of here. There's a platoon at Cayo Levisa now, watching for the Americans. You understand the rules of engagement, Sergeant?"

Nizhin nodded, quoting from memory. "Perfectly, sir. We're supporting coastal defense in this sector of the province. Cuban Revolutionary Army and our own 74th Motorized Rifle Regiment, backing up the Cubans. This platoon is to target amphibious formations and supporting off-shore forces of the enemy, if they attempt a landing in our sector. We are not to fire the Luna missiles until correct authorization is received from General Dankevich, using the proper code phrase for the day."

"Very well, Sergeant." Poskribin lit a cigarette. "I hope the joint training we've had with the Cubantsy was worth it. Good thing we have spotters at the forward posts with them. The Cubans see enemies everywhere. They shoot before they know what they're shooting at."

Nizhin said, "Begging Comrade Major's pardon, sir, but the best thing the Cubans could do for their own defense is get out of the way."

Poskribin suppressed a laugh. "No doubt you're right, Sergeant. Just don't let the zampolit hear you. Political officers aren't known for a sense of humor."

"Understood, sir." Nizhin sniffed. "I wonder if the Americans will really come? Will they really try to invade a fraternal ally?"

"I don't know, Sergeant. I hope not. I don't want to think about using these bastards in actual fighting." Poskribin flicked the cigarette away after only a few puffs. Smoking was forbidden around the solid-fuel rockets.

"If they do come, we'll give them a fight like they've never seen."

11-6-62, Tuesday

Washington, D.C.

7:00 a.m.

The control checkpoint at 17th and Pennsylvania Avenue was manned by two platoons from Company A of the U.S. Army Third Infantry. Mike French, Cliff Hostetler and General Alton LeClair, Commanding General of the Third, could see even from a hundred yards away, the layout of the pass control and access barriers the platoons had set up. Erected on the principle of layered defense in depth, the checkpoint was in reality designed in the shape of a huge "S". The top, middle and bottom crosses of the S were mobile metal grates anchored with short cast iron beams on quad feet on the street pavement. The crosses were set twenty-five feet apart, providing a curving path just barely wide enough for a car or small truck to negotiate.

Each cross was sandbagged and braced for good measure. The bracing wouldn't be enough to stop a speeding vehicle for very long. But having to negotiate the curving path, hemmed in on both sides with further metal and wood frame barrier fencing, would expose the unwanted intruder to a volley of small-arms fire from two sides and ahead, making it much more difficult to penetrate the checkpoint without sustaining a lot of damage.

The idea wasn't so much to completely stop a determined assault. That was impossible anyway, given the armament the platoon carried. Rather, the principle of good pass control checkpoint design was to impede the unwanted and make any attempted penetration as costly and lengthy as possible.

General LeClair nodded approvingly as he returned the platoon leader's salute. He was proud of the Third. The Old Guard, as it was traditionally known, was the oldest active-duty infantry unit in the entire Army, having served the nation with distinction since 1784. Since World War II, the Old Guard had served as the official Army Honor Guard and Escort to the President. Soldiers from the Third had long conducted military ceremonies at the White House, the Pentagon, national memorials, and elsewhere around the Nation's Capital. It was an Old Guard unit that maintained the twenty-four hour vigil at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

LeClair knew that today, the Old Guard would have its stiffest challenge in many years. Providing security and crowd control in the midst of a city on the edge of panic was not his idea of the perfect military mission. But the President had insisted and orders were orders.

The Old Guard consisted of eight companies. Company A, whose First and Second Platoons manned the checkpoint just northwest of the White House grounds, was stationed at Fort McNair. Company A had the distinction of being known as the Commander-in-Chief's Guard. Companies B through D were line companies with ceremonial and field-training duties.

Each company normally had a marching platoon, a casket-team platoon, a firing-party platoon, and a headquarters or support section. Company E, along with being a line unit, included the Continental Color Guard. The U.S. Army Drill Team, sentinels for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Salute Gun Battery, Caisson Platoon, and an MP company comprised Company H.

General LeClair acknowledged more salutes as he inspected the barriers of the checkpoint.

"How many men have you got deployed around the District?" Mike French asked.

LeClair spoke from memory, having read the Operation Order from SecDef half a dozen times. "Over fifteen hundred soldiers from the Third are on post, at twenty-four pass control stations. The outer perimeter units are equipped with M-14 rifle squads, M-60 machine gun squads, and M-79 grenade launchers. Between the outer perimeter and the inner barriers, like this one, we've got four platoons of M-48 Patton tanks deployed, approximately one platoon per quadrant. The tanks aren't tied to any particular point. Right now, they're on circulating patrols in their sectors."

"Virginia and Maryland National Guard are also here, Mike," said Cliff Hostetler. "They're cooperating with the State Police on securing the main highways into the District. If we don't get control of the commuter situation, we're going to have a real disaster on our hands, with or without an atom bomb. You heard about that jackknifed truck on the Baltimore Highway?"

Mike French grunted. "I heard. Five dead, or something like that. All lanes closed. Jesus, the city's in an uproar. Have you heard all the rumors today? 'The Russians are invading. The Martians are coming. Khrushchev's reneged on the missiles.' I don't know how much longer we can keep a lid on it. The "story" the White House put out yesterday's got a helluva lot of people mad. The President needs to make a statement."

The three men walked through the 17th Street post, and continued east on Pennsylvania, passing the International Visitors Center and Blair House. The street was closed to vehicle traffic. DC police had set up an inner defense command post at the southwest corner of Lafayette Park, in the shadow of the Rochambeau statue. Knots of police officers and detectives, mingling with Park Police and uniformed Secret Service, clustered along the curb, some helping themselves to hot coffee from a mobile Army canteen parked at the corner.

"If the Cubans have any sense, they'd just detonate from where they are." French said. The coffee smelled inviting and the three of them made their way to the canteen. It was chilly in the pre-dawn darkness and the extra light towers that had been trucked in and erected in front of the White House did little to dispel the cold. "They could probably flatten the District from across the river, if they really wanted to."

Hostetler stirred the coffee with a small straw. He tasted it, and found the brew strong and scalding hot. "Why are you so sure they won't?"

"Miguel Munoz," French reminded him. "The courier in Miami. And what Alexei said, too. They're both convinced this Ramirez guy is a Class-A fanatic. It was Alexei who finally convinced me, I guess. Takes a Communist to know one. Alexei said he met some Cubans on a military assistance mission to Russia last year. Not the Ramirez, guy, he thinks. They were all self-righteous assholes, he told me. Holier-than-thou attitudes. He convinced me, and the Munoz guy kind of corroborated it, that the Cuban leader is some kind of revolutionary diehard zealot with a grudge against Kennedy and he'd stop at nothing to get as close as he could to the White House. That's why I pushed for the really heavy security right around here."

"When do you leave for New York?" Hostetler asked.

"Hour and a half. There's a plane holding for me at National."

"Any more word from Kevin Winans or that Army Major?"

French refreshed his coffee from the mess sergeant's new pot. "They know where the ambulance is. Parked about half a block east of the Stock Exchange building." He checked his watch: 7:15 a.m. "By now, the Army's got all of lower Manhattan sealed off. Twelve square block area, they told me. I don't think the Cubans realize what's happened. Unless it's a trap, or another deception. That's what worries me. We could be walking smack into the biggest diversion since Hoover Dam."

"How do you mean?"

French shrugged. "Overnight, Winans sent me some of the transcripts of the conversation the two Cubans--we think there's just two--were having. It's seems a little too arranged, for my taste. Like it's being staged, a performance, even. Apparently, Munoz was right. Today is the deadline. And the tamales are waiting for some kind of word or announcement from Castro himself. Probably an ultimatum. The thinking is Castro'll get on the radio about noon or so today. That gives us about five hours."

"So this Ramirez guy, if he's half the fanatic you think he is, will be trying to crash our little party sometime this morning."

"Exactly. If he's not already here, somewhere inside the perimeter. That's possible. But we're still looking. Apparently, we lost him in Georgetown, somehow." French shook his head. "For the life of me, I don't know how. Jesus, we were right on that florist van. Not half an hour after the kidnapping."

French, Hostetler and General LeClair continued their inspection of the inner defensive perimeter. Centered on the White House grounds, the inner zone covered several blocks, bounded on the west by 19th Street, on the north by H, on the east by 12th and on the south by Constitution. Each checkpoint was ready, manned with Third Infantry troops and a few DC police officers as liaison to the task force command post. Each station had a description and license number of the Worthy Flower Shop van. The same information was provided to all police, state patrol, National Guard and other security forces through out the District. Involved with the defensive planning with General LeClair and the DC Police Commissioner all night, Mike French had tried to get the largest possible exclusion zone cordoned off. Estimates of the yield of the device had varied from a few tens of kilotons to a megaton, according to the Russians. By two a.m., Alexei Maximov was sure they were facing a seven-hundred kiloton K-12 device.

It was Maximov who had described the bomb most graphically: a ground burst detonation would yield an explosion equivalent to fifty-four Hiroshimas. Everything within a radius of three to five miles would simply cease to exist, ionized into an infernal plasma hotter than a thousand Suns.

Remembering that, Mike French wondered if any of the elaborate defensive system they had been inspecting would really matter.

There was no question that for the security forces in the two cities, the greatest problem was dealing with the growing sense of dread and panic. A full-blown crisis was upon them. Already, National Guard troops had arrested scores of looters in the neighborhoods east of the Capital. Traffic outbound on the major highways--Baltimore-Washington, Suitland Parkway, Highway 350 to Arlington and Virginia--all of them reported massive jams, scattered fighting and great difficulty holding back the rising tide of panicked motorists, fleeing the city. With orders to turn back every vehicle, the Army had brought up heavier vehicles of its own, tightening the noose on the city, at every checkpoint. Just that morning, a DC radio station reported a crowd of pedestrians, estimated at several hundred, had simply abandoned their vehicles and were hiking south east on foot, toward Seminary Road in Fairfax. A company of Virginia National Guardsmen was in hot pursuit.

For radio and television stations, not to mention the local papers, the ostensible "civil defense exercise" was a bonanza topping even the missile crisis itself. In the eyes of many an editor and columnist, the two events were part of a whole, leading to speculations on everything from a plague virus let loose in the local water supply to extraterrestrial landings on the Mall. One enterprising TV station had even shown re-runs of The Day the Earth Stood Still, over and over again, all night long.

Though the White House had declined to elaborate further on its prepared story of a civil defense exercise, criticism from the press and from Congress was growing more strident every day. One Congressman, a newly re-elected Republican from New York, offered the opinion, in a press conference on the front steps of the Capitol, "that this government ought not be conducting such an exercise in such a tension-filled time. It's irresponsible. It's a smokescreen for something, sure as I'm standing here." When pressed for more, the Congressman had politely declined further comment.

Every road and highway into and out of the city was clogged with pedestrian and vehicular traffic, further compounding security problems. Thousands of the curious had gathered at the perimeter of the security zone, staring silently at the encamped soldiers of the Third Infantry, waving or shaking fists at the steady stream of convoy traffic barreling around the city. Members of Congress and several national columnists, among them Scotty Reston of the New York Times, had publicly called on the President to make a statement, to assure the public, or just to elaborate on what was going on. But Kennedy had made no public announcement since his campaign speeches in the Midwest two days ago.

Mike French left Hostetler and General LeClair at the Lafayette Park command post, and located the Bureau car with his packed bags on Fifteenth Street. The driver had moved the car to accommodate the Army's need for more curb space on Pennsylvania. He got in, for the short ride over to National.

It was startling, when you thought about it, how different was the response of New Yorkers to the crisis, from the way DC had reacted. Part of the difference was due to the heightened communications discipline in New York. The Army and NYPD had imposed a near-total blackout on news, once the ambulance radio had been detected. When the import of what was being said over Emergency B sunk in, the New York task force had imposed tight control over the situation. True enough, all boroughs and precincts of NYPD had been mobilized and the Army had taken control of the streets of Lower Manhattan. But the crisis was more contained, more isolated, and thus easier to deal with.

Or maybe New Yorkers are just that much more jaded, French thought. The Bureau driver headed across the Memorial Bridge, right past a trio of massive M-48 tanks clanking across the bridge, then took the loop to the George Washington Parkway at high speed. They made the trip south to the terminal and squealed to a halt in front of Ticketing and Baggage Check-in. French climbed out.

As he hustled past the security checkpoint at the gate, Mike French flashed his FBI badge at the agent and took the stairs three at a time, heading out onto the ramp for the small Bureau plane just beginning to warm up. It was a short flight up to LaGuardia and he was glad of that, not wanting to be out of touch with events any longer than necessary.

He climbed into the Cessna and got himself situated. The props whined louder, gaining speed and the plane turned about at the ramp and headed out for Runway 340 North. As he sank back in the cramped seat, the fatigue of the last few days washed over him. He closed his eyes and felt a growing sense of dread, knowing in some unfathomable, unexplainable way, that this was the day; today would see the climax of this crisis, one way or another.

If you had asked him to explain it, Special Agent Mike French wouldn't have been able to put exact words to it. But the feeling was strong, so strong he could taste it.

Something, he wasn't sure what, was going to happen today, Election Day, November 6, 1962. He was as sure of that as he had been of anything the last two weeks.

11-6-62, Tuesday

Homestead Air Force Base, Florida

7:30 a.m.

The sky was cloudy and thick with fog when the USAF C-135 jet transport, aircraft number NE7101L of the 1254th Air Transport Wing, completed its instrument approach and made the last turn onto final, eventually kissing the tarmac at a hundred and forty knots indicated just like the manual said. In the front cabin, SecDef Robert McNamara glanced over at General Maxwell Taylor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Their eyes met with meaning and McNamara took one last look at the blue leather case he had carried in his lap all the way from Andrews Air Force Base. He didn't open the case for its contents were known to him all too well. He'd stood behind the President himself, in the Oval Office, last night, while the Commander-in-Chief had initialed the arrest orders.

Now they had come to do a sad but necessary duty. Removing a line officer from duty in the midst of action was never easy, always fraught with risk, but occasionally necessary. When the line officer was the Commanding General of the U.S. 2nd Marines, the duty was especially tricky. On the flight down from Andrews, General Taylor had described Hellacious Haley to the SecDef in the most graphic terms imaginable.

A dark blue Air Force station wagon was waiting at the ramp when the C-135 rolled to a halt. McNamara and Taylor exited the aircraft and were immediately met by Colonel Howell Raines, base commander.

"Welcome to south Florida," Raines said. He exchanged salutes with Taylor and shook McNamara's hand. "Your first trip to Homestead, Mr. Secretary?"

McNamara acknowledged that it was. "To be honest, Colonel, I had never heard of the place until the missile crisis. Now, you guys are in the eye of the storm."

"We're theoretically a TAC base. In fact, General Sweeney was just here yesterday, looking over the basing and facilities that have sprung up. Before Cuba, you could have said we were a bit off the beaten track. Our major tenant is a couple of Voodoo squadrons of the 357th. We did a lot of exercises with Atlantic Command and Southern Command. Ground support in Panama and Puerto Rico, that sort of thing. Anti-tank missions, suppressing enemy air defense, the usual stuff. After Cuba--"

"Looks like you're in the big leagues now, Colonel," McNamara said. "I looked over the list of facility improvements authorized just in October. Good thing Congress already agreed to our budget."

They climbed into the car and headed off to the Operations Building, a low V-shaped brick structure with a glass control tower at the apex of the V.

Raines pointed out the Combat Operations Center. "Used to be an old school building, Mr. Secretary. Converted into a COC in about three days."

McNamara appraised the work critically. "What's the barbed wire for? Extra security?"

Raines chuckled. "General Powell, Continental Army Command, ordered that. The COC has a closed-circuit TV system, connecting it with the Pentagon and other places. Powell was here, supervising all the details, and a Major Vaughn, Army Pictorial Center, told him electronic emissions from the TVs could be detected five hundred feet from the building. Powell got pissed and ordered the barbed wire. Seven hundred feet in radius, all the way around. The men have been calling the place 'Stalag 17.'"

The men climbed out of the car. Raines was about to open the glass doors to the ground floor entrance when McNamara motioned him off to one side. He explained why they had come to Homestead.

Raines listened cautiously, then skeptically. "Olin Haley? Are you sure of your facts, Mr. Secretary? No disrespect, sir, but I'm pretty close to all the flag officers coming through this base. Haley strikes me as pretty typical Leatherneck. Rambunctious, maybe. Flamboyant. But hell, sir, so was Patton. I can't believe it."

"There's plenty of proof. In fact, a lot of the evidence comes from within this very building, so I'm told."

Raines admitted, "Now that you mention it, I did think it odd that the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would pay a visit to Homestead without advising the base CO. I didn't know you were coming until you were on final approach. Otherwise, I'd have arranged a better--"

McNamara put up his hand. "We came in quietly, on purpose, Colonel. Do you know if Haley's here?"

"He should be. The General's been wearing out a path from the COC to Iwo Jima and back. Makes several trips a day, seems like. The last I heard, he was headed back there this morning. But that wasn't supposed to be for another few hours."

McNamara clutched the leather case a little tighter, aware of the contents. Contents that would destroy a Marine Corps legend. He glanced over at General Taylor. The CJCS found this duty just as distasteful. "General, we may as well get this over with."

Raines said, "I'll show you in. The Marines have a corner of the Navy section. It's in the back."

Raines and Taylor saluted their way into the COC, past several guard stations. McNamara followed, keenly aware of staring eyes all around them. Upon seeing Taylor's four stars, all duty personnel in the main command center, and adjoining code room and radio shack, came abruptly to attention, sending papers and coffee cups clattering to the floor. Raines led them through a maze of cubicles and consoles. Rows of flickering TV monitors hung from the ceilings. Huge wall clocks detailed times in half a dozen time zones. Between the clocks, tactical maps lined the cinder-block walls.

They entered a narrow makeshift corridor, the walls little more than flimsy stained plywood paneling. Three doors from the end of the hall, the men came to an oil painting of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. Behind one door, partially open, came the sound of furious hammering. Raines knocked and entered.

General Olin Haley was inside, standing on a low bookcase at the window behind his paper-filled desk. He had a hammer in one hand, and a flat-head screw driver in the other. Behind him, the molding of the window had been prised free from the wall, and hung down by several screws, slightly askew. Haley looked around at his visitors.

Colonel Raines stood in the doorway, arms crossed. "General, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were planning an escape. What on God's green earth are you up to now?"

Haley went back to his work, pounding the blade of the screwdriver around the window seal with the hammer. "Making me a separate door to the office, Colonel. So I can come and go to the flight line without getting lost in that damn rat's maze up front. Frigging Army's got this building so chopped up you need a map to get in and out. This'll be faster and easier on everybody."

Raines had to suppress a smile. "Whatever you say, General. But the Continental Army Command's not going to like you messing with their handiwork. They worked hard on his building."

"Yeah," said Haley, sarcastically, "it shows. Where else could I get such a great view of a parking lot and barbed wire?"

"Not to change the subject, General, but I've brought some distinguished visitors for you." The Colonel stepped aside and McNamara and Taylor entered.

Haley turned slightly, caught sight of the acre of medals on Taylor's uniform and almost fell off the bookcase. He saluted quickly, dropping the hammer and screwdriver to the floor.

"General Taylor, I didn't expect--"

Taylor was grim, returning the salute brusquely. "General Haley, this is an official visit. Please come down here. The Secretary and I need to have a few words with you--" he glanced over at Raines--"in private."

Haley then saw the SecDef. "Mr. Secretary," he nodded. He squatted and jumped to the floor. He composed himself, and retrieved his jacket from the back of the chair. "This is unexpected. I didn't see you on the day list this morning."

McNamara said, "Is there a room we can use, Colonel? A meeting room?"

"How about my office, instead? It's on the other side of the building."

"That'll do," the SecDef said. "We'll need some privacy."

"You'll get it."

They followed Colonel Raines through several narrow corridors, past a secure equipment room humming behind locked doors and a narrow alcove crammed with filing cabinets, all secured with red bars and tagged SECRET. Raines' office turned out to be a corner affair, slightly larger than Haley's, with a view of the flight line and a nearby hangar. Besides the typical government-issue steel desk was a rectangular wooden table, well worn with scuffs, chips and coffee stains.

Raines closed the door behind them.

Nobody sat at the table. McNamara started off.

"General Olin Haley, by direction of the President of the United States, I order you to issue all commands and instructions necessary to put an immediate end to military operations on Cuban territory. The President has instructed me to inform you that these are his direct orders."

Haley stood framed by the flight window, hands behind his back, a kind of modified parade rest. His face was impassive but a slight flutter in his eyelids betrayed suppressed anger.

"Mr. Secretary, are you accusing me of something? If so, I'd like to be informed of the details."

McNamara opened his leather case on the table and waved the President's orders in the Marine's face. "You know perfectly well what is going on here, General. There's no point in hiding the obvious."

"Which is, exactly what, Mr. Secretary?"

Taylor spoke up. "General, I've already read the sitreps from Iwo and Charlie Two Five. So has the Secretary. My God, man, an entire company!..." He shook his head. "I went back over CINCLANT's briefings the last week, re-read his op orders, I even talked with Dennison and Corky Ward early this morning. Nowhere, is there any authorization to conduct force recon, especially in Cuban territory. General Haley, you have far exceeded your authority."

Haley remained immobile. But his eyelids fluttered faster. He leveled a hard gaze at Taylor. "Begging the General's pardon, but perhaps there's been some misunderstanding here. The sitreps you read were for a training exercise. That's all. They're simulations, General. To exercise the whole chain of command, just like we always do."

"This exercise is called Sierra, is that right?" McNamara asked.

"That's correct, sir. If you read the entire sitrep, including my appendices and notes, you would know this is an exercise."

"The sitreps were filed in your name, with the NMCC, at about 1500 hours, Sunday afternoon. There were no notes, as you described them. When I checked with the Current Status desk, they informed me that the Iwo Jima, the Enterprise, the Independence, the Dearborn, and half a dozen other ships of Task Force 132 had re-deployed to less than a hundred miles off the northwest coast of Cuba. Neither CINCLANT nor Corky Ward ever issued any such orders. You have an explanation for this?"

Momentarily, Haley's resolve seemed to falter. He squinted, looked down, then steeled himself again.

"I issued orders that the sitreps on these deployments were to be accompanied by notes detailing the conduct of the exercise. Standard procedure, General Taylor."

"The sitreps were forwarded from this building. In your name. Direction to Lieutenant Roy Cedars. It's all there, in black and white. There was nothing about an exercise. And then, I found these." Taylor held out a clipped set of papers. Haley didn't need to look any closer to know they were action reports and casualty lists, from the Iwo. The whole record of Charlie Two-Five's destruction at the hands of Cuban infantry and Russian tanks.

"Simulated traffic," Haley muttered. "Part of the exercise."

"These are not simulated traffic!" Taylor shouted. "Your Lieutenant Cedars has been a busy man, it seems. Maybe a little confused by your exercise." Taylor extracted another paper and handed it to Haley. The Marine scanned the sheet, his face darkening the further he read. His shoulders slumped noticeably as he handed it back.

Taylor went on. "A little inquiry, to Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps. You recognize it?"

"No, sir, I never saw that before."

"Why is the Lieutenant making an inquiry, dated Friday, 2 November, about body bags and whole blood? And why, General Haley, has an extra requisition for said body bags and whole blood been forwarded and approved, and the items picked and shipped from stocks at Camp Lejeune? This must be some exercise you're running down here."

Haley scowled at both of them. "The Lieutenant is a little confused. He's also disobeyed my direct orders."

"And you, General Haley," said McNamara, "are guilty of insubordination, sedition and possibly treason. I want to know what this Sierra is really about. For instance, are there not several battalion landing teams of 2nd Marines embarked on the Iwo, preparing even as we speak, to make an amphibious landing on the Cuban coast at La Esperanza?"

"That's preposterous."

"And are there not, even as we speak, several squadrons of F-4s and A-4s in Cuban airspace right now, attacking SAM sites and other targets, to soften up the defenses for this amphibious landing?"

"The Secretary has imagined things. This Sierra you speak of is nothing more than an exercise. All the paperwork you're showing me is part of that exercise. We're exercising all parts of the command structure."

"Is it normal procedure to write up sitreps detailing casualty lists in such an exercise? I've never heard of such a thing"

Haley didn't blink an eye. "Part of our new philosophy on wargaming, Mr. Secretary. We simulate traffic so that all operations in the division can participate."

General Taylor snorted. "General, that's the biggest crock of horse-piss I've ever heard. I talked with General Shoup this very morning, on the way down. He assured me the Marines are engaged in no current exercises. Especially the ones chopped to CINCLANT. This is way out of line."

For just the barest hint of a moment, Haley's bravado flickered. At the mention of the Commandant, his eyes started blinking rapidly. His eyes, once blazing with anger, broke contact with Taylor. Haley turned slightly to the window, watching a C-124 Globemaster rumbling down the runway. He started to say something, then caught himself. When he turned back, the hardness of his face was gone.

McNamara saw that. "General Haley, this is a very grave situation you've put us in."

"Mr. Secretary, you are the one who doesn't understand. Throughout history, military history, an army that has an enemy on the run and doesn't finish him off pays a steep price in blood later on."

"That's not the issue, General, and you know it. The matter is very simple: you've violated your oath of office by directly disobeying the orders of the Commander-in-Chief. For Chrissakes, man...you can't just run your own little private war here! What if the Russians decide they're not going to pull any more missiles out? What if Khrushchev decides to launch a missile or two, as a warning? Do you honestly think, even for a second, that the President's going to let some division commander plunge the world into thermonuclear war, just because he's got a beef with the Communists?"

The hardness returned to Haley's face. "The Russians understand one thing and that's force. Hell, we got the men and the forces here. We back down now and we'll just have to fight them somewhere else. And then the odds may not be so much in our favor. MacArthur was right: this is the moment and the time has come to confront the Communists on the battlefield."

"Settle it all, right now, is that it, General?"

Taylor picked up the orders the President had given him. He held them out for Haley, who only shook his head. Taylor stood there, arms outstretched, still clutching the orders.

"General Haley," Taylor told him, "these are direct orders from President to cease all military operations in and around Cuban territory by the Second Marines. You've been ordered to stand down and pull back, effective at once. Are you going to comply with these orders or not?"

Haley left the CJCS with his arms still out, still holding the President's directive. "The real question, gentlemen, is what is that pathetic, two-bit flunky of a Communist weasel with the beard going to do, isn't it? I'm not surprised at your being here. Not in the least. Actually, I'm not surprised you can't see the truth staring you in the face either. If you spent more time in the field, dealing with the Red bastards like I do, you'd know you can't run an army from behind a desk." Haley relaxed a bit, then sat down in his squeaky wooden chair. He clasped his hands tightly on top of the desk.

"Gentlemen, it's real simple, so I'll put it terms even you can understand. Castro's bad, see? Khrushchev too. We got enough forces right under the Bearded One's nose to smash the bugger once and for all. Now, Mr. Secretary, you can't tell me, especially after the Bay of Pigs, that the President wouldn't like to see that. Hell, we've been throwing everything at Castro we can get our hands on. How many cockamamie operations has the CIA run? The President's been trying to squeeze that asshole every way he can. Well, Jesus, Joseph and Mary, look around you! We got planes and ships and marines and everything we need to do exactly what we've been trying to do for the past three years. All we have to do is go! Plus, with the Russians and the missiles, we got a reason now, not that we need any more." Haley pointed at Taylor. "Max, you know I'm telling the truth. The Chiefs feel the same way. Everybody knows the world'll be safer once Castro's gone. All I'm doing, all any of us are doing, is helping the cause."

McNamara shook his head. "That's not the issue, General. The matter at hand here is that the President's the Commander-in-Chief and you're disobeying a direct order. I'll do this one more time: General Taylor has shown you the President's orders. Are you going to obey these duly constituted orders?"

Haley sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. He glared at McNamara. "How the hell did we ever get you from the Ford Motor Company? What makes you so qualified to be Secretary of Defense, anyway? This is not a goddamned car company."

"Then you are refusing to obey the President's orders?"

Haley snatched up the phone and spoke a few words. In less than a minute, a detail of armed Marines appeared in the door to Colonel Raines' office.

The detail commander was a corporal in the Second Marines. "Yes, sir, General."

"Corporal, these men have violated military security regulations. They're under arrest. Place them in the stockade. I'll clear it with Colonel Raines."

The corporal looked confused. The CJCS had four stars on his uniform. Didn't that outrank a two-star?

"Begging the General's pardon, sir, but who is senior authority here?"

Maxwell Taylor said, "Son, if you know what's good for you, you'll belay that order. I'm General Taylor. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. This is the Secretary of Defense. I have Presidential authority to place General Haley under arrest."

"Goddamn it, Corporal! I've gave you an order! Escort these men to the stockade at once!"

The corporal looked like he was about to cry. He wished he'd never answered the phone. This has to be some kind of joke.

"General, sir--"

"Corporal," Haley lowered his voice, "do your duty. Or else."

The corporal vaguely recognized Taylor and McNamara. He supposed it was just barely possible they were who they said they were. But there was no mistaking Hellacious Haley. The corporal had heard the Commanding General U.S. Second Marines ranting and raving halfway across Camp Lejeune, more than once. He didn't relish being on the receiving end of one of those tirades.

"Aye, aye, sir." To Taylor: "I'm sorry, General. You'll have to come with us."

The SecDef felt two strong arms grasping his arms. He looked around, found himself pinned between two husky Second Marines.

"You're making a serious mistake, Corporal."

Haley said nothing else as the CJCS and the SecDef were hustled out of Colonel Raines' office. The Colonel himself was standing at the end of the hall, nursing a steaming cup of coffee. His eyebrows went up as McNamara and Taylor were escorted past. Haley followed a moment later, carrying a small seabag with him, watching as the detail marched the two detainees across the "bullpen" area of the COC and out the door. They were piled into a jeep for the short ride over to the stockade. The holding cells occupied the second floor of an administrative building, Building 30, at the end of the flight line.

Raines was incredulous at the audacity of Haley. "Excuse me, General, but what the hell was that all about? Wasn't that--"

Haley had dropped his seabag on the floor and was already busily checking the latest teleprinter tape from Task Force 132. By now, Enterprise and Independence would have launched their planes and the tamale AAA would be getting plastered by rockets and bombs.

"A small dispute, that's all, Colonel. Nothing to be concerned about. If you'll excuse me, I've got a plane to catch. My ride to the Iwo's due any minute."

A small dispute? thought Raines. Haley was already out the door, heading for the flight line. Jesus Christ, either that was Taylor and McNamara or I'm from Mars. What the hell's going on? The CJCS and the Secretary of Defense under armed escort, on my base?

Colonel Howell Raines, U.S. Air Force, decided that Marines or not, even Hellacious Haley was a tenant at Homestead, and a temporary one at that. He wasn't about to let a two-star jarhead bully him around on his own base. Raines marched right out of the COC and headed for Building 30, determined to see what the fuss was all about.

11-6-62, Tuesday

Washington, D.C.

8:00 a.m.

As the creator and planning officer for Operation Moncada, Capitan Rafael Ramirez had always tried to anticipate anything the mission could possibly need. He had arranged for the mission team to practice fieldcraft in large cities: Havana, Cienfuegos, Santa Clara. Concealment, securing transportation (read:hotwiring cars and trucks, even buses), strategic hostages, escape and evasion, forced entry procedures, light weapons and small-unit tactics in crowds, all of these Ramirez had arranged for Moncada. Arranged and insisted they practice over and over again, until their instincts and responses were second-nature, until they knew with certainty how the Yanqui enemy would react and could easily defeat any strategy the imperialists lackeys could devise.

Only when the Moncada team could routinely outwit and outmaneuver any and all regular FAR and policia squads they faced in the dark alleys of Havana did Ramirez feel the team was ready for the final mission.

From the earliest days, Ramirez was sure the mission would eventually evolve to the point where they would be faced with the challenge of getting an atomic bomb, on the ground, past some kind of police or Army roadblock or checkpoint. They had drilled on techniques for that, devised strategies for flanking the roadblock, crashing the roadblock, or using what their Russian friends were pleased to call maskirovka, deception, to achieve the goal.

In the end, Ramirez chose deception as the best course.

The solution to the problem was simple enough, given the many talents of the intelligence arm, the Direcion General de Intelligencia, or DGI. What better form of deception could they devise than to become, in effect, part of the very pursuit they were hiding from? Does not the chameleon change colors to blend in? When Ramirez and Barracoa drove back to the Vandeventer townhouse on P Street, a bright early November sun was struggling to warm the air from its early morning chill. Ramirez pulled up into the driveway, waiting a moment, as Barracoa got out to shut and latch the gate, then pulled up outside the garage. They went inside.

The Worthy Flower van was no longer recognizable. Now all white, with stenciled inscriptions on the doors indicating Federal Interagency Motor Pool, a GSA tag and a Central Intelligence Agency Langley site parking decal, the van's new paint was still drying but for all practical purposes, the job was done.

Ramirez was pleased. "Excellent work, compadres. There's a few more details we need to take care of, though."

Saguente was one step ahead of Ramirez. "I've already got the paperwork done, Capitan." He handed over some photo ID passes and transmittal documents. "What do you think?"

Ramirez had always admired the DGI's handiwork. He held up the photo passes, studying the eagle and shield emblem of the CIA carefully, the numbers, the background colors, the photo itself. He remembered the day the picture was taken. Just a week after he had returned from his trip to Russia. The rusos had turned over some high-fidelity camera and photo equipment to them. For the first few weeks, the DGI's documentation section practiced forging IDs. They had gotten steadily better, with help and suggestions from the ruso's State Security people. By the end of the month, even the rusos were impressed.

"It's all here, Capitan," Saguente showed him. On the workbench in the garage, courier IDs and official letters of transmittal on Agency stationery, complete with classification stamps and classifying authority dates and initials, it was all there. "We are going to be CIA couriers this morning. Couriers escorting critical equipment needed for the bomb search. See the contents...equipo de descubrimiento...detection equipment."

"Where does this 'equipment' come from? What's the point of origin? They'll want to know that."

"Here," Saguente pointed to the requisite line on the front page. "From Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. In Neuvo Mexico."

Ramirez flipped through the documents, eventually pronouncing himself satisfied. "How about the bomb?"

Dmitri Kapitonov came up, wiping his hands with an oily rag. "Armed and ready."

"Crated too?"

"See for yourself."

Ramirez checked in the back of the van. While he and Barracoa had been reconnoitering the enemy's defenses, the others had built a wooden crate from planks and plywood sheets in the garage and surrounded the bomb with it. The crate was bolted and padlocked shut at a crudely fashioned and hinged door; the hinges had come from a door inside the house. The crate was stamped in black stencil: SENSITIVE EQUIPMENT--FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY.

"The Amerikantsy aren't stupid," Kapitonov said. "Your deception will never work."

"Why not?" Ramirez asked. "Your own State Security men trained us. Unless you're planning to notify the Yanquis...or do something stupid." He glared at the Russian with unblinking eyes.

"And blow a chance to strike at the capitalists?" Kapitonov returned a sneer he didn't really feel. "I welcome the chance."

"Good. Then everything is settled." Ramirez called the others over. They formed a semi-circle around the front door of the van: Kapitonov, Saguente, Barracoa, and Arrantes. "Compadres, it's time to move. With luck, we'll be in place in an hour. My plan is the same as always. We take the bomb in as close as we can get, try for Lafayette Park."

"If we can't get through the roadblocks..." asked Arrantes, "what then?"

"We find an alternate place. Angel and I saw good locations around the Yanquis' defensive perimeter. But I'm confident we'll get through. So far, the Yanquis have been two steps behind us. We've anticipated well, covered our moves, used deception and diversion when the operation called for it. Our discipline has improved. Now, the enemy is confused. And they're afraid. We saw it out there, we sensed it. We can use that."

"Capitan, who will go with the bomb?" Barracoa asked.

"Only three will accompany the bomb, inside the security zone. Myself, the ruso, and you, Jorge. Barracoa and Saguente will stay here."

He saw immediately the disappointment on their faces, and added, "That's the way we trained, remember? We need two to remain here, until Fidel makes his announcement. When you hear it on the radio, kill the hostages. Hide their bodies. Then get out of Washington as fast as you can. You go back to Miami. 'Florio' will hide you. Sparrow will get you back to Cuba."

"It's hard to leave, Capitan, after a long journey." Barracoa said. "We've been through a lot."

"We have, Angel. But the mission comes first. Cuba needs you. Fidel needs you." They embraced, and Saguente came over, the boy practically in tears.

"Vaya con Dios, compadres. Vamos ahora, eh?"

Ramirez got into the cab. Arrantes and Kapitonov got in the back of the van. With a quick nod and hand signal, Ramirez 'told' Arrantes to kill the ruso if he tried to escape. Arrantes smirked. It would be a pleasure. When Fidel came on the radio, and the ultimatum was delivered, Kapitonov would die.

Ramirez backed the truck out as Saguente and Barracoa went back inside the house. It was dark in the living room, and the closet was quiet. Saguente turned on a lamp by the foot of the stairs. Through the picture windows in front, Barracoa watched as the van rolled down the street, looking for all the world like an official U.S. Government delivery vehicle.

"He's gone, Miguel. I wish we could have been with them,"

"Me too," Saguente said. "Are you hungry?"

"A little."

Just then, a commotion, a foot kicking, sounded inside the closet. Saguente went over, started to open the door, then turned to Barracoa with a quizzical look. A question framed his face and he mouthed the answer even as the question came to him:

Let's do it now and be done with it, eh, compadre?

Barracoa nodded assent and extracted his own Makarov 9-mm. On a count of three, Saguente jerked the closet door open. At that instant, both men emptied their full clips of ammunition into the closet.

Ramirez drove slowly eastward along M Street, feeling conspicuous at the lack of traffic on what would have normally been a busy Tuesday morning. It was Election Day in Washington, and across America, yet pedestrian and vehicle traffic was eerily light. Scattered clumps of people huddled together in the early morning chill, watching Army trucks bringing more troops to checkpoints in the inner city.

At Pennsylvania, he turned south. Ahead was Washington Circle, just past St. Stephen's Church, and the first checkpoint of the exclusion zone. As they approached the Circle, Ramirez counted twelve jeeps and handful of half-ton and two-ton trucks, with two Patton tanks bulwarked around the north and south edges of the circle. Metal barriers had been erected in a staggered pattern, with simple wooden gate arms, manually hoisted at each turn.

He slowed the truck as a pair of soldiers, carrying automatic weapons, flagged him to a stop at the first gate.

"Sorry, sir, this is an exclusion zone. You'll have to turn around."

Ramirez handed him the folder of Agency courier documents, transmittal sheets, then flashed his own photo ID at the sergeant. Just a child, Ramirez thought, studying his unit insignia. He was dressed in woodlands camou, with a 3rd Infantry patch on both shoulders. The top of the patch read "The Old Guard."

"Agency courier," Ramirez told him. "We have equipment for explosives detection."

The sergeant looked through the cab to the other side, where another soldier was peering in. He jerked his thumb to the rear of the van. "You want to open her up?"

Ramirez got out, heart thudding in his chest, and went to the back of the van. He unlatched the doors and swung them open. Inside, Kapitonov and Arrantes glared back at the troopers, sitting on either side of the wooden crate. Stenciled in huge black letters, the crate read SENSITIVE EQUIPMENT.

The sergeant stuck his head in and looked around, seeing nothing suspicious. "What's in the crate, mister?"

Ramirez referred him back to the documents. "Like it says there, detection equipment. I don't know the details. I'm just a courier."

"And these two?" the soldier pointed at Arrantes with the muzzle of his M-14. "They got some ID?"

Ramirez held out his hand. Arrantes produced a photo ID, made up by the DGI, the same as Ramirez'. The sergeant studied it and handed it back. He saw Kapitonov had produced no ID.

"What about him?"

Kapitonov glared back, unblinking right into the face of the young sergeant, a piercing stare, that momentarily unnerved the soldier. Ramirez watched carefully, alert for anything, wondering if the ruso would betray them. He squeezed the handle of the Makarov in his coat pocket so hard his hands hurt. It was suicide, he knew. They were outmanned and outgunned. If Kapitonov twitched the wrong way, Ramirez was prepared to drop him right in the back of the van with his Makarov. That would end the Moncada mission in Washington, he was sure, as the next thing he felt would be a barrage of M-14 rounds slamming into his own body. He had thought about this moment in sleepless nights ever since they had left Batabano. He had long ago decided that, if the Washington operation went sour, he'd take them all down with him, and leave the rest to Calderone in New York. At least, Fidel would have another bomb to play with.

"Agency technician, sergeant," Ramirez told him. "He's...German. A physicist. Doesn't speak English."

"And no ID?"

"He just arrived yesterday. This contraption's his baby."

"I'm not supposed to let anyone pass without positive ID, mister."

Ramirez was thinking fast. The situation was deteriorating and he had to think up something. Then he remembered...the radio on the dash...it might just work....

"You can call back to the Agency, if you want. I've got a radio. Science and Technology Directorate, Section Six." Ramirez opened the cab door, showing him the radio, daring him to make a call.

The sergeant looked at his partner. The other soldier shrugged, cocking his head sideways, saying let 'em through, for crying out loud. The sergeant had plenty of experience with the Army's bureaucracy. No sense in fishing in the same waters twice, he supposed.

He handed Ramirez his photo ID card back. "Go on through." He jerked his thumb upward to the soldiers manning the gate. The bright orange swing-arm bobbed up, and the way was clear. "But you better get your friend some ID. Inner zone checkpoints are really squeezing traffic hard, I hear."

"Thanks," Ramirez said. He shut and latched the back door and climbed in front. "I'll call my supervisor. He'll know what to do."

Ramirez carefully negotiated the zigzagging course through the barriers. He estimated the checkpoint was manned at platoon strength, maybe more. Passing through the last gate, he nodded at the soldiers and sped up slightly, heading past the forbidding stone fortress of the George Washington University Hospital on their right. Only when he had put some distance between them and the checkpoint, did he finally breathe. He thumbed a line of sweat from his forehead, then cranked the window down. It was cold and windy outside but he was burning up.

That had been closer than he expected. He hadn't figured on Kapitonov being scrutinized so closely. There was no way the DGI could have manufactured a fake ID for the Russian, anyway. When they'd assaulted the base at Bejucal, it was sheer good fortune they'd been able to grab a few Russians at all. That one of them was a weapons expert was God's favor to the Moncada team. But he'd have to think of a better explanation at the next checkpoint.

The next checkpoint was upon them in less than a minute. Just at the intersection with 18th Street, Pennsylvania formed a small triangle with H Street. Ahead, the Roger Smith Hotel and the West End Post Office building loomed over an even more elaborate security setup, this one reinforced with a semi-circle of seven M-48 tanks, staggered on both sides of the street, guns depressed and rounds chambered. Ramirez saw the same zigzag course defined with metal fencing and wooden gateposts. A line of two-ton trucks occupied the curb lanes of Pennsylvania, parked on an angle on both sides to funnel traffic down to one lane at the southeastern tip of the triangle. At the end of the lane created by the trucks, a double gate and fence arrangement blocked the way. Slowed to a stop by four flagwaving sentries, Ramirez saw the glint of sunlight on the muzzles of rifles poking out from the truck beds. All around them, each truck was a firing station, a squad of riflemen ready to pour down fire from either side of the lane on any visitors foolish enough to try running the checkpoint.

Ramirez braked to a complete stop, but he kept the engine running. He rolled down the window, handed the folder of Agency documents out. The soldier, another sergeant whose nameplate said Wiggins, squinted as he flipped through the pages.

He was older, thought Ramirez, more experienced, humorless and probably dedicated as hell. As Sergeant Wiggins studied the documents, Ramirez kept one eye on the other men of the gate detail, as they reconnoitered the van, front to back. One soldier extended a long pole with a mirror at the end underneath the truck, checking for banned material, explosives, diamonds or whatever was on his list. Another rolled a cart up to the side of the van. He extended a hose-like device, with a probe at its end.

Madre de Dios, Ramirez thought, it's a Geiger counter!

He started to get out, but was firmly shoved back into the van by Sergeant Wiggins. "Photo ID, pal."

Ramirez fumbled with the card, trying to keep the soldier with the Geiger counter in view in the side mirror. He was waving the probe end around the back of the van. Then, Ramirez saw his head jerk up. He re-covered the area he had just probed, reached over to the rolling cart to fiddle with some dial, then fingered another soldier to come look. Through the window, Ramirez heard something about getting the Lieutenant....

Wiggins seemed satisfied with the paperwork. He stepped back from the door. "Okay, pal, let's open her up. We got to sniff this equipment of yours."

"Sniff?" Ramirez asked, getting out. He saw, from the sergeant's insignia, that Wiggins was Virginia Army National Guard. The unit was 29th Infantry, Third of the 116th Regiment.

"Orders," Wiggins replied. "Got us a gizmo for detecting bombs and such."

Ramirez saw that the cart did indeed mount a Geiger counter. Other instruments and graphs filled out the console. A heavy cable snaked along the street pavement back to a portable generator on the sidewalk, snorting and vibrating in front of a storefront. The entire squad had gathered around the console, as the Geiger counter clicked madly, indicating strong alpha in the area of the van.

The technician, a corporal named Byrnes, zeroed in on the van's rear panel, right above the wheel wells. "Strongest there, Sarge. Look at the scope. Peaks of alpha right up to the red line."

"What's in this van, mister?" Wiggins asked.

Ramirez had to think fast. "Detection equipment, Sergeant. Just like the folder said. New gear from the Agency. My assignment was to get it to the center of the security zone."

"Who's your contact? I didn't see a name"

Shit. Ramirez thought. That had been overlooked. "I don't remember the name, exactly. FBI guy, I think. Some investigator, in charge of finding the bombs." At Wiggins' prodding, he unlatched the door and opened it up. Again, Kapitonov and Arrantes glared back at them. "These men are technicians. As you can see, this is sensitive equipment. I don't have a key for the lock, either." Ramirez shrugged, smiling faintly. "You'll have to call my supervisor, back at the Agency."

Wiggins was halfway inside the van, on his hands and knees. "We may just do that. Byrnes, give me that probe." The private passed the extendible Geiger probe up and Wiggins waved it around the crate. Ramirez held his breath. Frigging ruso bombs are hotter than a furnace. The clicking accelerated to low whine.

"Jesus Christ," someone said from the street. "Sucker's like pure plutonium!"

"You have an explanation for this, I presume," Wiggins called back.

Ramirez started to speak but Kapitonov cut him off. "I can explain, soldier. That is plutonium you're detecting. This equipment looks for specific decay products from uranium 238 and plutonium. It's primed with a small plug of each, to set the detector's baseline level. We're looking for plutonium and uranium byproducts and specific signatures of lithium and tritium. Your Geiger counter only detects alpha and beta emissions from plutonium and uranium. This is much more sensitive."

Byrnes frowned doubtfully. He'd just come out of Ordnance Corps school and had aced his exams on atomic physics and detector theory. "I never heard of such. Where'd this thing come from?"

Kapitonov watched Ramirez, trying to control himself. "Los Alamos, T Division. It's new and we're giving it a field test, so to speak."

Just then, a Lieutenant arrived, having walked up from the checkpoint command post inside a candy shop on the corner.

"What's going on, Sergeant? What's the delay? You know we got to keep the approach lanes clear."

"Yes, sir," Wiggins said. "Sorry, sir, but the civilians have some equipment here that's got our Geiger counter in a tizzy. This man is some kind of technician. He was explaining--"

"They got paperwork?"

"Yes, sir. Seems to be in order. CIA courier, heading downtown."

"For what purpose?"

Ramirez interjected. "Delivering this gear to the FBI, Lieutenant. Justice Department. I guess the contact didn't get on the transmittal sheet." He shrugged, as if to say what can you do? "Bureaucracy, I suppose. You want to call the Agency?"

The Lieutenant shook his head. "That won't be necessary." The regimental commander was on his way and the Lieutenant wanted his checkpoint detail clean and mean. Civilians just mucked things up, like always. To Wiggins: "Pass them through, Sergeant. Regiment's gonna be here any second."

"Yes, sir." Wiggins waved at the gatepost detail, who obliged by pulling the arm up.

Ramirez took a deep breath, thanked them, and closed up the van. Back inside, he crept through the zigzag course at five miles an hour, his eyes focused ahead, not daring to catch even a glance at the squads of infantrymen roaming through the street. They'd been fortunate so far, incredibly lucky. Ramirez made the last turn and straightened up heading through the 18th Street intersection. Scattered in front of the USIA Building on their right, more tanks and trucks had parked perpendicular to the street, main guns elevated, for the moment. The entire Federal Triangle area was like an army base.

Ahead, Pennsylvania jogged left. Ramirez' heart beat faster. Through the light jeep traffic, he could see the gothic façade of the Old Executive Office Building. And beyond, just peeking through bare tree limbs now devoid of leaves, the pale white colonnade of the White House West Wing. They had made it! Finally, the target was in sight....

Ramirez forced himself to breathe regularly, deeply, his mind was spinning, giddy, at the view. So close. So damn close. And the ruso, Kapitonov...he'd helped them, he'd actually made up some story for the Lieutenant at the checkpoint....

Ramirez nearly ran into a jeep coming up the other way on Pennsylvania, swerving just in time. He laughed, thumping the wheel. Wouldn't that be last straw? Make it through two checkpoints and collide with a jeep in sight of the White House. Ramirez forced himself to calm down.

Ah, Tomas, Tomas, see? We made it. We made it after all. Together, you and me--

He passed by Blair House on the left, and slowed slightly in the stretch between Lafayette Park and the White House. Like any good tourist, he looked left, keeping one eye on the street, filled with soldiers and parked trucks and jeeps, then right, keeping the other eye on the seat of power, the Executive Mansion, the President's House, the center of the imperialist web of lies and warmongers. The target.

Inside, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And just maybe, God willing, redemption. Ah, Tomas, he's there inside, waiting for us. Just waiting like a plump pigeon in the Santiago Square, waiting for whatever Fate has in store for him.

He drove as slowly as he could, enduring stares and arms waving him on past the massed firepower of the U.S. Army's Third Infantry, A Company. He alternated peering over at the White House with a quick count of the deployed weapons and vehicles along Pennsylvania. Overhead, several helicopters circled, spotting and watching, ground observation for the Task Force Command Post. Beyond the Federal Triangle itself, the Army and the Air Force had swept the District's skies clean of all air traffic, even shutting down National Airport for the duration of the crisis.

He had done it! He had kissed the face of Death itself and brought final judgment into the very midst of the enemy's camp.

At 15th Street, he turned south, jogging back onto Pennsylvania at the corner of the old Willard Hotel. It was just nine o'clock, and he didn't want to chance discovery around the White House just yet. There would be time enough for that in a few hours. He wanted to be in place just before noon. Then, when the ultimatum came over the radio, the future of the American Capital would be up to El Lider Maximo, Fidel Castro.

The Justice Department came up and Ramirez pulled the van over, poking down 10th Street for half a block until they came to a courtyard entrance. He saw a cluster of security officers stationed at the garage entrance and drove past to the end of the street, stopping at the north entrance to the Museum of Natural History. Here, he turned the van around and found a vacant spot out of sight.

It was just short of nine a.m., in the very midst of what would have normally been a busy rush hour in downtown Washington. Yet the streets were nearly devoid of traffic, save the occasional truck or jeep. Ramirez killed the engine, and hopped out of the van, heading to the back. He unlatched the door, opened it and climbed inside.

For the next hour, he watched carefully as Dmitri Kapitonov checked and rechecked the arming status of the K-12 bomb.

11-6-62, Tuesday

Washington, D.C.

9:30 a.m.

The President's Limousine, a five thousand pound, armored Lincoln Continental, pulled away from the polling place in the back of the Union Methodist Church on 20th Street in the middle of a convoy of Secret Service and Army vehicles. Surrounded by twin columns of DC Metro Police motorcycle patrolmen, the convoy turned east on Pennsylvania, and headed back toward the White House.

Inside, John Kennedy was pensive and quiet as he stared out the rear of the bubbletop, watching the assembled military and police forces that had seized the Nation's Capital. Washington was an armed camp, a somber and tense place, like the footage he had recently seen of Berlin, the eastern sector, after the Wall went up. He'd been angry at those scenes: East German troops standing guard like the city was a prison camp--which it basically was--backed up by Soviet tanks. Khrushchev and Ulbricht waving their fists at the West, defying the Allied Powers to do anything about it. The truth was there was blessed little the West could do, shortly of starting World War III. Angry and sympathetic though he was, John Kennedy was enough of a realist to know they couldn't very well send a missile barrage over the North Pole just because the East Germans put up a wall.

And now this, he thought, watching the maneuvers of an M-48 Patton tank as it clanked and snorted, backing itself into the entrance of an underground garage near the World Bank Building. Washington's starting to look just like Berlin.

He had done his duty that morning at the polling place in the fellowship hall of the Union Methodist Church. He'd punched the ticket for a straight-party Democratic vote, then came out of the booth smiling and waving at the cameras and assembled reporters, trying for all the world to pretend that it was just another Election Day. One step out of the church was enough of a reminder that it most assuredly was not just another day.

The President's thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing. A secure radiotelephone line had been installed in the President's Limousine at Kennedy's request, not long he had been inaugurated last year. The instrument buzzed again, and a light flashed red next to the handset. In the twenty-three months he had been president, the unit had never buzzed. In truth, he had almost forgotten about it. Now, apprehensively, he picked up the handset.

It was Colonel Howell Raines, U.S. Air Force, base commanding officer at Homestead Air Force Base. The call was being patched through the White House Communications Office, and the Colonel's voice was scratchy, and distant, fading in and out. Kennedy could barely understand the man. But enough of the voice came through for the Colonel's message to be understood. And what the President heard had made his blood run cold.

Haines told him about General Haley. He also indicated that General Taylor and Secretary McNamara had been detained by armed Marines, under Haley's command, and were being held in the base stockade. Haines described a shouting match he had had with the General. He had lost and nearly wound up being arrested himself. After a tense standoff between the Marines and the base Air Police, Haley had stalked out of the COC and boarded a Navy C-2 Greyhound out on the flight line. Acting quickly, Colonel Raines had ordered the Air Police detachment to block the carrier plane from taking off. The Marines had set up a defensive perimeter around the aircraft. Haley had barricaded himself inside and, so far, was refusing all radio calls from the tower. At the moment, the situation remained a stalemate.

Kennedy grew more and more incredulous as Haines related the events at Homestead. They'd already come perilously close to blundering their way into nuclear war during the missile crisis: the wayward U-2 pilot over the North Pole, the rocket launch out of Wallops Island off the Virginia coast, that had triggered NORAD alarms in Cheyenne Mountain, the near confrontations on the quarantine line. Jesus Christ, there's always some poor sod who doesn't get the word. It was bad enough when the poor sod was a U-2 pilot or ship captain. When he commanded the U.S. Second Marines, it was time to do something. Something drastic.

Kennedy's initial orders to Haines were simple and direct: keep that plane on the ground at all costs. Then, the President used the phone to call Mac Bundy and several other staffers, alerting them to get to the Oval Office immediately. He gave Bundy one final order as well: get a hold of Admiral Anderson and General Shoup--I don't care where they are or what they're doing\--and bring them to the meeting. Haley was a Marine, after all. He ought to take orders from either the Commandant or the CNO, if he knows what's good for him. Bundy agreed.

By the time he had arrived back in the Oval Office himself, a new crisis had erupted. Bundy's face was drawn and grim, his black spectacles magnifying weak and tired eyes that spoke of a long, sleepless night. He laid an armful of telex cables on the President's desk as Kennedy was situating his back cushion for more comfort.

"Diplomatic cables, Mr. President. From a number of embassies in Havana." He arranged them in chronological order, from first received to latest. "So far, we've gotten Venezuela, Argentina, Britain, Switzerland, and Paraguay. They're all reporting the same thing...."

Kennedy scanned quickly, drawing in a surprised breath at the news. "What the hell--?"

"I couldn't believe it myself, Mr. President, so I checked with NMCC at the Pentagon. A Captain Starnes is the duty officer at the Current Status desk. He confirms it."

"Mac, this can't be right--"Kennedy looked up pained, and it wasn't his back. "U.S. aircraft...air strikes...bombs and rockets in Havana? There has to be some mistake--"

"It's no mistake, Mr. President. Captain Starnes couriered over a satchel full of action reports and logs. At--" Bundy found the dispatch and started reading--"oh five fifteen hours this morning, Eastern Time, aircraft units from the Independence and the Enterprise, attached to Task Force 132, specifically squadrons VFA-82, VFA-86 and Marine squadron VMA-231, attacked ground targets in Havana and western Cuba. Here's independent reports of the attack by several wire services--AP and Reuters are in that batch, with more coming in. The State Department is already in contact with a number of delegations, trying to get more information. Rusk's been on the phone all morning."

Kennedy was livid. "I ordered no military action in the area. I specifically ordered Admiral Dennison to withdraw his forces and prepare them for covering the missile withdrawal. The last I heard in briefings was that the re-positioning was proceeding normally. And the Soviets were basically cooperating with our aerial inspection. Mac, what in God's name is going on here?"

"I don't know, Mr. President. But these reports, combined with the reports you got from Raines at Homestead point toward Haley and maybe a few others, taking matters into their own hands."

"Attacking Cuba without authorization?" Kennedy could scarcely believe his own words. "Attacking Soviet targets while the Russians are trying to pull their missiles out? It's incredible--I can't believe such a thing--"

"Mr. President, the evidence points toward exactly that. Remember what Congressman Jenkins told us. This General Haley authored a wargame called Sierra. And there were already action reports from NMCC that parts of Task Force 132 had already detached and been re-positioned to support just the sort of action proposed in this wargame."

"And now Haley has gone off the deep end, Mac. He arrested Taylor and McNamara and barricaded himself in a plane at the base."

"There's more, Mr. President," Bundy said, rifling through papers on the President's desk. "This thing's more widespread than we realized. I've got unconfirmed reports, through a public affairs officer at Camp Lejeune, that three Marine rifle companies embarked on the Iwo Jima are already en-route to a northwest Cuba landing zone, for an amphibious assault--"

"What?"

"And press reports out of Kentucky, near Fort Campbell, that elements of the 101st Air Assault have been alerted to standby for deployment to the Caribbean. That comes from plumbing and electrical contractors in the area. Apparently, the wives want some last minute repair work done before their husbands ship out."

Kennedy was rubbing his eyes and face. Bundy thought the man had aged visibly in just the last week. "The President is the Commander-in-Chief but nobody listens. Instead, I do all the listening. Christ, I sat in this very room not a week ago and the Joint Chiefs practically read me the riot act. They didn't say it in so many words but I could tell they didn't appreciate my 'bush-league' approach to fighting the Communists. Of course, if I did just what they wanted, we'd all be in fallout shelters eating pork and beans, by now."

The Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, came into the Oval Office and plopped down on a sofa by the side of the desk.

"Jack, I just heard the news. It's insane. We've got to get control of the situation. Events are escalating out of control here."

"Bobby, does Dobrynin know anything yet? About the attacks this morning?'

"I haven't talked with him yet. I expect he'll be calling before long. What the hell do I tell him?"

John Kennedy laughed darkly. "Tell the Ambassador I'm being held prisoner in the Oval Office, by a bunch of madmen. That wouldn't be far off."

Robert Kennedy drummed his fingers on his knees. "Jack, just get over to the Pentagon. Send out a Commander-in-Chief's message to the units involved: 'Cease operations at once.' They're used to taking orders. They should obey."

"I'm not so sure anybody'll obey the President anymore." Kennedy was furious. He angrily shoved some papers off the desk. They fluttered to the carpet. He got up and began pacing, limping slightly as his back had stiffened. "We need some help. Who have we got, Bobby?"

"Well, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense are being held at Homestead. By now, Haley may be in complete charge of the base. And the COC."

Bundy added, "Those two with the President form the basic National Command Authority. After them, it devolves to the field commanders: Dennison, CINCPAC, Norstad in Europe, Tommy Power at SAC, people like that."

"He scares me," John Kennedy admitted. "A man like Power, under LeMay, in cahoots with a man like Haley. We better do whatever we can to prevent that." The President paused in front of the desk, picked up the ancient coconut shell on which he had scribbled a plea for help after that Jap destroyer had rammed the PT-109. All those years, the coconut fragment had been a faithful reminder: help was everywhere, often in unexpected places. But you had to be inventive. He put the shell back on the desk, and turned around, a quizzical cast to his face. "Mac, I've got an idea."

"What is it, Mr. President?"

"I'm not sure how much pull, how much authority I've got right now. I need someone in Haley's direct line of command with the bearing and the combat experience to go down there to Florida and knock some sense into the General."

"General Shoup?" Bundy asked, referring to the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

"Admiral Anderson?" Bobby Kennedy interjected. Anderson was the CNO, nominally Shoup's and Haley's boss.

Kennedy pounded a fist into the palm of his hand. "Oh, we'll need them too. But I had someone else in mind. A man of great experience and authority, with the kind of military background Haley can't blow off."

"Who?"

"Ike."

Bundy was puzzled at first. "General Eisenhower?"

"The one. I talked with the General a few weeks ago, when the ExComm was deciding on the quarantine. He told me he'd back anything we thought we had to do. And he has, in public."

"But he's a Republican"

Kennedy shook his head and went back to sit down at the desk, reaching for the white phone. "He's an authentic American military hero. Former President. Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the war. Mastermind of the greatest amphibious invasion ever. Haley'll listen to Ike."

Kennedy rang up the Communications Office downstairs in the basement of the West Wing. He explained what he wanted, asking for a patch to General Eisenhower's farmhouse in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. While the connection was being made, the President extracted a cigar from a humidor on the desk and began unwrapping it. He didn't light it, but sucked on the cigar and sniffed its fresh aroma while chirps and whistles came over the headset. In time, Dwight David Eisenhower's marbly voice came over the line. Kennedy's face lit up.

"General, it's good to hear you again. I trust I didn't interrupt anything important."

Eisenhower was cagey, wary at this early morning Election Day call. "Mr. President, if you're calling me to influence my vote, don't bother. Mamie and I have already been to the polls."

Kennedy laughed, a forced laugh to be sure. "So have Jackie and I, General. No, I'm calling on a different matter altogether. Frankly, sir, I need your help. The country needs your services again."

There was a pause, then Eisenhower replied, "What's happened?"

Kennedy took the next ten minutes to explain the situation in south Florida, the unauthorized Marine actions in western Cuba, the unauthorized Task Force 132 mobilizations, the standoff at Homestead Air Force Base. Listening to the story, the former President was deathly silent, and Kennedy, who knew something about the Genera's famous temper, could well imagine him a seething volcano, needing only the slightest spark to blow.

Kennedy finished his story with a plea. "General, to be honest, the Joint Chiefs and the CINCs respect you a lot more than they do me. I'm the Commander-in-Chief, but we don't all see game plan the same way. I've got to get control of the situation but this Haley fellow's like a bomb ready to go off. Considering what he's already done, I've got my doubts he'll obey any orders from me. But you have the reputation, and the respect of everyone in the military. I'd like to send you down there to deal with Haley. Along with General Shoup and Admiral Anderson."

Eisenhower chewed over the mission for a moment. He was in his upstairs study at the Gettysburg farmhouse. The big picture window revealed a wintry, snowy scene, the Catoctin Mountains in a deep November freeze. The General gnawed on a pencil, pacing back and forth in front of the ornate cherrywood desk, fiddling with an unexploded shell fragment from Omaha Beach that he'd saved as a momento of Operation Overlord all these years. A birchwood fire crackled in the fireplace.

"Mr. President, you're asking a lot of an old soldier like me. This Haley sounds like a real character. I've heard of him. Tough old bird, from the sound of it. Like Patton, in a way. What makes you think I can talk any sense into him?"

Kennedy said, "You're a General. You've commanded men in combat. I just skippered a PT boat. My reading of Olin Haley is that he's a fanatic, but he respects men who've paid their dues, men who've gone toe to toe with the Communists. You've done that."

"And if I fail, or get shot? What happens to the legacy of 'Ike' then?"

Kennedy smiled at the taunt. "General, you don't have to worry about your legacy. I'm the one with the Bay of Pigs and the Berlin Wall on his record. In any case, this is a classified mission, directly ordered by the President of the United States. I'll do my level best to see it stays out of the papers."

"That's reassuring, Mr. President." He chuckled. "Of course, if I'm successful, maybe a little publicity would do some good. Help the Republicans in '64."

Kennedy winked at Mac Bundy, standing by the outer door of the Oval Office with another armful of papers. "General, if you grab Haley and bring him down, I may just have to turn the Oval Office over to you after all. How could I compete against a man who kept the atomic bombs from flying?"

Eisenhower replied, "You haven't done a bad job yourself, Mr. President. For a Democrat. You know, Mamie isn't going to like this."

Kennedy replied, "She can go with you, General. Miami's nice this time of year."

Eisenhower laughed. "I sometimes wonder who's really the Supreme Commander." He turned more serious. "When do you want me to leave?"

Kennedy checked with Bundy. "I'll send a helicopter for you. Right to the front lawn of the farmhouse. Should be there in forty-five minutes to an hour. Shoup and Anderson are coming to the White House. I want to get the three of you together, work out a strategy and send you on your way by noon at the latest. We can't waste any more time. If I can't keep Haley's men out of Cuba, the balloon may go up this afternoon and nothing else will matter. Pack your bags now and I'll see you in a few hours."

They said good-bye and Kennedy hung up. He sank back in his padded chair, steepling his hands under his chin. "Mac, I'm going to authorize them to shoot Haley on the spot, if they have to. We have to do whatever it takes to break this plot. Keep our men out of Cuban territory. I suppose I'd better get a message off to Khrushchev, telling him what's happening."

"The Chairmen is pretty busy himself, Mr. President. Cleaning up after the attempted coup in Moscow."

"Ironic, isn't it, Mac?" Kennedy started jotting down a few notes for his little talk with the Ike and the others. "In one of his messages, Khrushchev mentioned we were pulling on opposite ends of a rope. A rope with a knot in the middle. The harder we pulled, the tighter the knot. It does seem that everything is mirrored somehow. One week, we're eyeball to eyeball over offensive missiles. The next week, we're cooperating in a joint investigation, trying to keep Castro from blowing up a couple of American cities. One day, he fights off a military coup. The next day, I do. It's eerie. Somehow, our fates are linked. At every level, politically, personally, our futures are tied together. He acts, I react. I act, he reacts. Somehow, some way, we have to find a way to stop pulling against each other. Pull together. Mac, if we keep pulling against each other, keep jerking and reacting to each other, one day the rope's going to break. It may already be near to breaking now." The President leaned forward, propping his elbows on the edge of the desk. Suddenly, he felt a hundred years old. He massaged tired eyes and kneaded the sagging folds of his cheeks.

Bundy was sympathetic. "What's our next step, Mr. President?"

Kennedy looked up. "I'm already sending Marine One up to Gettysburg. Shoup and Anderson are on their way. Mac, I need to go over to the Pentagon myself. Can we get another helicopter, maybe from Andrews or Quantico?"

"I'm sure we can, Mr. President. I'll have General Clifton arrange it."

Kennedy was shaking his head, staring at the swirling grain in the desk before his eyes. To no one in particular, he said:

"Someone has to stop this madness."

11-6-62, Tuesday

Havana, Cuba

11:30 a.m.

Fidel Castro stumbled to his knees for the third time, as the bomb detonation shook the walls of the underground command post. Del Valle helped him up, brushed off pieces of plaster and dust from the Presidente's fatigues. One side of his glasses was cracked from the shock wave. Castro cinched up his holster and belt and continued on to the centro de radio, clutching a folder of papers and maps.

"A close one, eh Sergio?" he muttered, clenching the Panatella even more tightly between his teeth.

Del Valle, the Chief of Staff, nodded. He was worried. That one was too damn close for his comfort. They should have evacuated the general staff last night, when they had the first warnings. But the Presidente would have none of it.

"Indeed, Commandante, the shell sounded like it burst right over the Plaza."

"Ah, Jose Marti won't like that. His statue's probably still rocking from the shock wave. The damn Yanquis have a lot of nerve, bombing downtown Havana."

Castro had come to the underground facility from an overnight stay at Celia Sanchez' apartment on Calle 28, overlooking the grimy sludge of the Rio Almendares. He'd arrived shortly before five a.m. The Yanquis had already been bombing and strafing targets in the suburbs of Havana for half an hour. U.S. Navy and Marine jets, screaming in low, cratering the runways at Marti International and the military airfield southwest of the city, at San Antonio de los Banos. They were hunting mostly military targets, it seemed. Airfields at Campo Libertad and Santiago de Cuba, Camp Columbia, the wharves and warehouses at Mariel port, even the Russian tank depot at Artemisa had been hit. That was daring. At least the air defense regiments were giving a good account of themselves. There were already reports of thirty Yanqui jets shot down, though the Presidente tended to discount the numbers reported to him. Furious, Castro had called Torrens, the Soviet command post, from the apartment, practically yelling at Pliyev to get his forces moving, disperse them, didn't they know the Yanquis were coming and what the hell kind of fraternal allies are you, anyway?

Pliyev, the weasel, had stalled as usual, telling Castro he had to get in touch with the Defense Ministry in Moscow, with Malinovsky and Zakharov, get instructions and approval to release all his forces.

"Then I hope you die in a big bomb blast while you're on the phone!" Castro had screamed at him, slamming down the phone so hard the casing had cracked.

The centro de radio was jammed with people, when Castro and Del Valle got there. Another huge thudding explosion rocked the room, sending a tray of tubes and radio components clattering to the floor amidst falling plaster and ceiling tiles. Something sparked behind a radio set on the console. A young mustachioed sargento with the Third Signal Platoon of the 20th Infantry, assigned to the northwest Habana sector, leaped over to extinguish the spurt of flame with a fire extinguisher. Castro helped him aim the device to catch the last of the fire.

A lull in the bombing came and Castro cleaned off his cracked glasses while the assembled reporters and photographers collected themselves. The Presidente was holding an urgent press conference and the Ministry of the Interior had sent word to every news agency, embassy and consulate in the capital. Forty-five had shown up that morning, huddling under the crumbling roof of the Museo de la Revoluccion, waiting for the command post to open its doors, while American jets thundered by scarcely five hundred feet overhead. Castro personally went around the centro de radio, shaking hands and chatting with knots of reporters, waiting for the Signal Platoon technicians to get the radio gear up and working.

This was to be an historic day for Cuba, the Presidente had declared, expansively. A major announcement, an address to the world, right here in my hand, Castro had waved the notes of his speech, the future of relations between East and West will be decided.

Half an hour later, the sargento indicated to Del Valle that the equipment was working properly, the signal had been tested and all lines and circuits were open and live. Del Valle informed the Presidente.

Castro fussed with his glasses, found them unacceptable and bummed another pair off his Chief of Staff. He stood before a battery of microphones, the largest one belonging to CMQ, Radio Havana. Flashbulbs popped as the Presidente launched into his address. He was surrounded by foreign and wire service reporters and officials from several dozen embassies. Many had come seeking shelter from the American attack.

It was exactly noon.

"Comrades and countrymen, compadres of all working men and revolutionaries everywhere, this... is Cuba. I am addressing you today from my underground command center in Havana. If you cannot hear my words, know the reason well: at this very moment, planes and bombs from the Norteamericano imperialists are exploding all around me. Even right above us. Yes, it is true, compadres. Cuba is under attack. Once again, we are the victims of imperial aggression from the north.

"Many times in this century, we have suffered under the yoke of the Yanquis. But today is different. Today is the dawn of a new era. Today, Cuba, little Cuba, can fight back. Today, we are under attack by the Yanqui aggressors. Perhaps, you can hear their aircraft dropping bombs above us now."

As if on cue, a dull thud reverberated through the walls from another explosion, a distant rocket going off.

"But," the Presidente added, "we now have the ability to defend ourselves."

For the next few minutes, Castro informed the world about the existence of something called Operation Moncada.

"I came back to Cuba in 1956," he told the world, shaking his fist at one of the microphones as if it were the enemy. "I organized attacks against the traitor Batista, who had sucked our blood for too many years, always with the help of the Yanquis. His Moncada Barracks were our first victory, the place we struck the first mortal blow against imperialism.

"Today," he thundered, "Moncada is our second victory. An even more powerful blow against the forces of the enemy. Even as I speak to you, two atomic bombs have been put into place in the very lion's den of the aggressors, in two of their most important cities. Both bombs, hundreds of kilotons of explosive power each, each carrying the destructiveness of scores of Hiroshimas, are under my control. One is stationed in New York City, the very citadel of capitalist exploitation. The other is stationed in Washington, D.C., the dark and dangerous center of this web of deceit and lies and betrayal of every decent man's dreams.

"We have more bombs, "Castro lied, "we are ready to inflict even more damage on the Yanqui aggressors. Naturally, we have no wish to cause millions of casualties, millions of Americans to die needlessly. But we have the right and the duty to defend ourselves and we will defend ourselves and our Revolution, using whatever terrible weapons we can find."

Castro dramatically flung the pages of his speech away, grabbing the CMQ mike with both hands. He bent over to the soundhead, practically kissing the device.

"This is the only warning I offer. To the Yanquis, to Presidente Kennedy, I say simply: you have one hour to pull your forces back. If bombs continue to fall on Cuba after this hour, I will obliterate your largest city."
CHAPTER 18

11-6-62. Tuesday

New York

2:15 p.m.

In the aftermath of Castro's announcement, there was growing panic in New York and Washington. Less than an hour after the national networks had re-broadcast the address across the nation, major highways and bridges were jammed with cars, buses and trucks, fleeing both cities. The Army, the National Guard and the police had all they could do to control the traffic and crowds. Mayors of both cities went on local radio and television, appealing in vain for public calm. All over the nation, supermarket shelves were emptied of milk, bread, batteries and cans of soup, as millions continued hoarding necessities despite the efforts of Civil Defense to ration goods equally. In store after store, fights, even gunfire erupted, as frantic homeowners stocked up for the coming holocaust.

In lower Manhattan, Mike French and Alexei Maximov studied maps of the area with the joint FBI/NYPD/AEC/U.S. Army assault team, holed up in a makeshift command post in the basement of the Equitable Building, at Nassau and Pine Street, a block north of the Stock Exchange. Just outside the street level entrance to the service room where the assault team had set up operations, metal fencing and wooden barriers had been erected across Nassau, forming part of the northern arc of the perimeter defense surrounding the Sisters of Mercy ambulance. A twelve square block area of lower Manhattan, centering on the Stock Exchange, had been cordoned off and was being systematically evacuated. With Castro's announcement, the pace of the evacuation had speeded up.

The task force command post was strewn with plywood sheets on sawhorses and requisitioned banquet tables, all covered now with maps of the streets, sewer lines, subways, and all potential access points to the intersection of Wall Street and Nassau. The Cubans had parked the ambulance on the north side of Wall Street, directly opposite the main entrance to the Stock Exchange. Once the presence of the Cubans had become known, NYPD Fifth Precinct, working with troopers of the 69th Infantry, had effected a mass evacuation of the Exchange through entrances and fire doors on the west, south, and eastern faces of the building. Several thousand people had made it to safety; only a skeleton staff of the Exchange itself was inside, still refusing to go, despite threats of arrest from the police. A miniature stand-off had ensued, and Captain Bernard Krantz, chief of Patrol Borough Manhattan South, had personally intervened to get them out.

Inside the command post, Captain Will Hunter was conferring with Major Wyndham of the 69th's First Battalion and Colonel Gaylord Reeves, U.S. Army. Reeves had just flown up from Fort Bragg, heading up the 82nd Airborne's 75th Ranger Regiment. The first few platoons of Rangers had already come in at LaGuardia and were forming up for the short ride over to Manhattan.

Reeves tapped the map of lower Manhattan with a metal-tip pointer. "For my money, we go with chemical munitions and close in from east and west. Look here--" he switched his pointer to the map of subway lines--"there's a BMT line right runs right down Nassau. And a station at Wall Street. You let me lay down suppressive fog and smoke, and I can get two platoons of my Rangers out of that station in less than thirty seconds."

Captain Hunter, a former Ranger himself, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Colonel, it won't work. Too exposed. Unless you get your BLX fog so thick the Cubans can't possibly see you, they'll still have time to detonate. And if the stuff's that thick, your men could easily wind up picking each other off. Especially, if your western assault isn't timed just right. You planning on using the Irving Trust Building to stage from here?"

Reeves nodded. "We'd use Irving Trust for the western assault, and either the BMT station or the Federal Hall monument for the eastern group. My men are well trained in small unit tactics with smoke."

"I'm sure they are," Hunter smiled a humorless smile. "I was too. But we've got to find a way to get on the Cubans before they can detonate. Your method might work, but there has to be a better, quicker way to jump 'em. I was thinking of a vertical assault."

"Helicopter?"

"Either that or rappelling down the side of one of these buildings. Maybe even the stock exchange itself. I was thinking of some diversionary stuff, concussion rounds, smoke and fog, that sort of thing, maybe on a regular schedule every half hour or so. Get 'em used to it. Then about six or so, do the assault, just as it's getting dark."

Mike French shook his head. "That's three or four hours from now. "We may not have that long. How long will Castro wait?"

"He's right," said Captain Krantz. "We'd better make our move in the next hour or so. We have to assume Castro means business."

Kevin Winans, the Bureau's New York SAC spoke up. "I just talked with Hostetler, Mike. He told me there's some kind of military operation going on in Cuba, right now. That's what's got Castro in a dither. I told him the Army better back off or we're liable to see lower Manhattan a smoking pile of radioactive rubble by the end of the day."

French snorted. "Friggin' Pentagon's got a helluva sense of timing. I hope Cliff told them that."

Winans shrugged. "It's been discussed with the Attorney General. At the White House, no less. But Washington's got their own problems. Attorney General told the Bureau that New York would have to solve its own problems for now."

"Great." French ran his hand through his blond crew cut. "Tactics are up to us. Just don't blow the place up. And, by the way, our own guys are machine-gunning Castro right in the middle of Havana."

The men discussed various options for awhile. After half an hour, the basic assault strategy had come down to two choices: ground-level assault, probably from the BMT Wall Street station, though some sentiments were expressed for using an IRT Express station next to Trinity Church. The problem was time and concealment. How to get several platoons of Rangers, not to mention NYPD Special Forces officers, out of the station and up to the Sisters of Mercy ambulance without being seen and before the Cubans could detonate the K-5 device...that was the major question. There were only so many ways you could use chemical smoke and fog, like the Rangers' BLX munition, to cover the assault.

The second option, favored by Captain Hunter, was a vertical assault, either by helicopter, or from the roof of the Stock Exchange. The advantage of this strategy, Hunter insisted, was the element of surprise. With the right approach and proper attention to diversionary tactics, the assault squad could virtually drop right on top of the ambulance with little or no warning. As the discussion went on, more and more attention was shifted to the exact nature of the diversionary assault. It was Major Wyndham, of the 69th Infantry, who pointed out the obvious.

Wyndham went over to the wall map of the Lower Manhattan street grid. "Why can't we use both methods? Use the ground assault as a diversion, then when the Cubans are stunned and wondering what the hell hit them, drop a platoon on top of them, right out of the sky and kill the bastards before they can detonate."

The more the discussion went on, and Mike French was growing increasingly impatient as the clock approached three p.m., sentiment grew for Wyndham's idea. Though Bernie Krantz was nominally in charge, French was aware that Captain Hunter seemed to be running the show, whether from force of personality or local politics, he wasn't sure. French caught Alexei Maximov's eye. The Russians were keeping to themselves, in a corner of the makeshift command post. They had contributed little to the discussion, short of technical details on the K-5. Maximov had given them a sanitized briefing on the physics of Soviet warheads.

As the strategy session bored in on final details, Maximov and Kudinov slipped out of the room and headed off to the end of a long corridor. At the end of the corridor was a utility room. The Russians ducked inside, without being detected.

Kudinov was furious with Maximov. "Alexei Nikolaevich, what do you think you're doing? You know what Moscow Center said. Don't you understand orders? We've got strict instructions to limit or prevent the Americans from knowing any more than necessary about our technology. We're to make every effort to keep them from getting a good look at the bomb."

Maximov snarled. "Moscow Center doesn't know its head from a horse's ass. Nikita Sergeyevich himself told us we had to help the Americans. How are we supposed to do that and keep them from seeing the bomb at the same time? Let the Cubantsy blow up everything? Use your head, Valery Pavlovich. We need the Americans to help us find the bomb, don't we? Unless you've got psychic powers. Our best strategy is cooperate with them, for the time being."

Kudinov's hair was black and windblown, giving the man a wild look. He pushed an errant lock back from his forehead. "You're wrong and Moscow will have both our asses. We have to try to get the K-5 before the Americans. It's State property, a vital secret."

"What the hell are we going to do...assault that ambulance all by ourselves?"

"If we have to," Kudinov glared at him. "But I have a better idea."

"I'd love to hear it."

At the same time, Kudinov was explaining his plan to Maximov, Kevin Winans had finally succeeded in building a general consensus on the combined, two-pronged assault plan first put forward by Major Wyndham. Colonel Reeves and Captain Hunter agreed that they would need at least two hours for preparations. Equipment had to be moved, the BLX generators put in position, assault teams briefed and weapons loaded. Helicopters had to be fueled and staged forward from Idlewild's heliport. Captain Krantz got on the phone to the Transit Authority, making sure both the BMT and IRT lines were clear of all traffic south of Canal Street. Wyndham wrote up an order for the 69th to move its two-ton trucks and half-tracks to final defensive positions, along a line paralleling Fulton Street, from the West Side Highway to the East River. Every street going north was blocked with trucks and M-48 tanks, just in case the Cubans decided to make a break.

H-Hour was set for 6:00 p.m. By then, the sun would have set and the street would be in darkness. Krantz had already arranged for Con Ed to kill the power for several blocks around the Stock Exchange.

"The radio link to the ambulance is still open," Krantz told them. He'd just been in touch with the dispatcher at Patrol Borough South. "As far as we can tell, there are at least two Cubans, maybe three or four. We've had surveillance on the ambulance from the very beginning. Best estimate we have right now is three Cubans."

"Any idea on how they're armed?" Colonel Reeves asked. "Aside from the bomb, that is."

"None," Krantz said. "I'd assume small-arms capability though. We don't know exactly what else is in that ambulance, but it's big enough for a small arsenal. Standard assault rifles, possibly a rocket launcher, some grenades, that sort of thing."

Reeves took a deep breath, ran his finger along the blow-up of the Wall Street area that NYPD had furnished. "Damn this is going to be real dicey. We don't practice with live atom bombs too often."

"Who does?" Hunter observed. "It's a cinch the thing is armed and already fuzed. That Russian guy--by the way, where'd he go?--said shoot for the base of the device. The wireways carry current from the battery and the capacitor banks. If we're forced into a long-range kill, we'll have to sever those electrical connections, before anything else. We let current get to the high-explosive detonators, and we're cooked."

"Two hundred kilotons," said Krantz, to no one in particular. "Right smack in the heart of Manhattan. Fucking madness...."

He was interrupted by the arrival of Ralph DeJulio, Emergency Services Coordinator with the Deputy Mayor-Operations office. DeJulio was a rotund, gray-bearded man who had made a fortune in stocks, and retired to run for public service. He was chewing on a pipe stem as Captain Krantz showed him around the command post.

Krantz, with help with Wyndham, Reeves and Hunter, explained the assault plan to DeJulio. The ESC had come by to get the final facts for the Mayor and DeJulio nodded gravely as the details were laid out for him. When the quick briefing was done, DeJulio rolled the pipe around his mouth and jammed his hands in his pockets.

"The Mayor wants to be kept fully informed on what's going on. That's why I'm here. I realize we have the Army, the FBI and god knows who else here but the Mayor wants to have the final say on whether we go."

Colonel Reeves started to argue but DeJulio held up a hand.

"No arguments, gentlemen. The Mayor's prepared to go right to the White House if he can't get his way on this. This is New York, for Chrissakes! The Mayor of New York ought to have a say in what happens to his city. Capish?"

There was some grumbling but no serious dissent.

Reeves spoke. "We need approval right away, then. H-Hour's set for six. I have men and equipment to get into position."

DeJulio glared at Reeves. "The Mayor wants a final estimate of possible casualties."

Mike French jumped in. "Given what we know about the device, the yield and the ground placement, the Russians estimated 150,000 to 200,000 immediate fatalities or serious injuries."

DeJulio winced visibly. "Even with all the evacuations?"

"That's been taken into account. Of course, it's just an estimate."

"Hell," said Reeves, "we don't even know if the Cubans have authority to detonate the device on their own. Castro's message implied he'd make the final decision. We just don't know."

"We've been looking into that," French told them. "If they have to get specific direction or orders, the question is where and how? By radio? The Bureau's already advised the National Security Agency. They've got their signals people working overtime."

While DeJulio got on the phone to the Mayor's Office, Kevin Winans stepped outside the command post for some fresh air. It was a short climb up two flights of stairs next to a utility room to reach street level. As he came to the stairs, the two Russians emerged from inside the utility room. They were startled on seeing Winans.

"Fresh air for you too?" he asked them.

Maximov was grim as he nodded, then he climbed the stairs with Winans. Kudinov trailed behind.

"Please inform Michael French, inspector," Maximov said. "We have to leave our post for awhile. Our superiors have requested us to come to the Soviet United Nations mission. Further instructions."

Winans understood the sometimes puzzling ways of dealing with Headquarters. He slapped the Russian sympathetically on the shoulder. "I'll tell the others. You've got transport?"

Maximov indicated they did.

"Just make sure you're back before six. Wouldn't want you fellows to miss the big show."

11-6-62, Tuesday

Washington, D.C.

3:30 p.m.

In two years of dealing with the rusos, Rafael Ramirez had learned one thing: you didn't trust anything you couldn't see for yourself. When Kapitonov pronounced the arming procedure done, Ramirez was skeptical and demanded the Russian go over every step he had just completed, explaining at each stage what he had done. The Moncada team had come a long way from Bejucal and Ramirez wanted no mistakes now.

Irritably, Kapitonov complied. The explanations took some time, as Ramirez questioned him closely, looking for anything--a facial tic, a suspicious eyeblink, anything that might reveal whether the Russian was lying, covering up something. At length, the Capitan was satisfied he was telling the truth, and satisfied that the K-12 was truly

armed.

"You need only activate these switches, in sequential order, left to right," Kapitonov said. He showed Ramirez the makeshift switch block, with three switches mounted on top. Wiring ran from the base of the block to the bomb's wireways, near the base of the device.

"What do they do?" Ramirez asked a final time.

Kapitonov smirked, knowing the Cubans didn't trust him. What they didn't know was that he could have told them anything, that the bomb worked this way, and not that way, and they would have been none the wiser. Truth was Kapitonov was a craftsman. He wanted the bomb to work. Every single device in the K-12 series, every weapons core made at the Glavatom plant was like a child to him. He could no more have sabotaged a K-12 device than he could have poisoned his own son, if had one.

Kapitonov pointed to the switch on the left. "A bypass switch, something I thought up. A field modification to get around the barometric pressure sensor, several sequential timers, and the arm/safe circuit. This center switch is another bypass, routing control logic around a set of inertial switches. That enables the bomb's control relays to receive the inputs they expect, without flying the device on a missile."

Ramirez started to finger the right switch, but the ruso quickly pulled the switch block away. "And this one--?"

"Connects the battery in the base of the bomb to the explosive layer. This is the final triggering mechanism. The sequence of switches to detonate the K-12 is from left to right."

Ramirez grabbed the switch block from the ruso's hands. He handed it to Arrantes. "Jorge, you hold this. Nobody touches anything until I say, comprehende?"

Arrantes nodded, carefully, accepting the switch block, cradling it in his lap like a kitten.

Ramirez checked his watch. "We're behind schedule. You heard Fidel's announcement. We've got to get back into position."

"It's risky, Capitan. What if the Yanquis want to inspect the bomb again? What if they want us to open up the crate?"

Ramirez reminded Arrantes that they still had a few surprises in the mission crate next to the bomb.

"If we have to, we can knock off any nosy policia."

Kapitonov was skeptical. "In the middle of the American Army? You're even crazier than I thought. You'll just get us all killed."

Ramirez smirked this time. "You're a soldier in my army, now, ruso. We may die and we may not die. It's all the same to me. If we die, we die for Cuba. This is guerra sin curatel...a war to the death." To Arrantes: "If he tries anything, kill him at once."

"Si, Capitan."

Ramirez nudged open the rear door of the van. Tenth Street was quiet, devoid of pedestrians for the moment. Behind them, the ornate north façade of the Museum of Natural History peeked through bare tree limbs. The grounds were eerily quiet. He stepped out, and went up to the cab. He started the engine, and backed out of the parking spot. Then he headed north, for Pennsylvania Avenue.

They were inside the inner security zone, so he made the right turn north onto Fifteenth Street without incident. Where Pennsylvania jogged west, at the Treasury Department, Ramirez eased the van left and pulled over onto the Lafayette Square side, only yards from the marble statue of Lafayette himself. Ahead, wooden sawhorse barriers and orange barrels blocked their way. Ramirez switched off the engine and saw a platoon of DC police advancing toward the truck.

He felt for the Makarov, tucked into the back of his belt. By feel, he flipped the safety off, just as the first officer came to his window.

"You got a permit to be here, mister? This is a restricted area."

Ramirez smiled vacantly as he fished in his jacket pocket for the Agency documents. He handed the papers over.

The officer was a young, crewcutted man, burly and thick-necked. In addition to his service .45, he had shouldered a dull black shotgun, while he examined the documents.

"CIA, huh?" The officer looked up, squinting, studying Ramirez closely. "Didn't think the Agency got involved in domestic cases."

Ramirez shrugged. "I'm just a courier, officer."

"So I see. This says you got some gear in back. We'll need to take a look at it."

"Certainly," Ramirez said. He got out, and went around back to open up the van.

The officer, whose nameplate said DeFlores, followed, accompanied by four other officers. Ahead of the van, beyond the line of barriers, several squads of National Guardsman and U.S. Army Third Infantry were encamped around a large woodland green field tent, the command post for this sector. The tent was set on the grass at the edge of Lafayette Park.

DeFlores was momentarily startled on seeing Kapitonov and Arrantes.

"Technicians," Ramirez explained. Arrantes handed down his own ID folder. DeFlores checked it, scowling, and handed it back. Ramirez indicated Kapitonov. "This one's a German citizen, designer of this gear. We brought him in before his ID was ready. You can check with the Agency, if you want to."

"We'll do that." DeFlores half-climbed up into the back of the van. "You want to open up the crate?"

Ramirez did not want to open up the crate. He stalled. "I don't have a key for the lock. I'm just a courier. I'd have to get permission from the Agency."

DeFlores motioned for one of the other officers to join him. They both stepped up into the van. DeFlores checked out the crate, from one end to the other. "I don't see any lock. Looks like this lid just--"

Ramirez had to think fast. "Officer, I wouldn't do that, if I were you." While DeFlores was poking around the crate, Ramirez hand-signaled Arrantes to reach behind him, get the "pens" from the mission crate. DeFlores and the other officer, Whitley, didn't see Arrantes extract two fountain pens. He placed them in his shirt pocket, his eyes never leaving Ramirez's.

"Why not?" DeFlores muttered. "You got a bomb or something in here?"

"It's very sensitive equipment. As the papers say."

Something about Ramirez's tone of voice caught DeFlores' attention. He stepped back, curious. Outside the back of the van, several more officers had appeared. Three of them. Ramirez saw they were outnumbered and outgunned.

"All right, mister, what the hell's in there? What are you hiding?"

Ramirez had memorized the story. "It's equipment for detecting emissions from atomic bombs. We're assigned to the bomb task force, by order of the President."

"A detector?"

"That's right. Highly sensitive. And stolen. This gear was taken from a Russian installation. Near Moscow. The fact that we have the device at all is classified top secret. The Russians used the device in their weapons testing."

"No shit?" DeFlores didn't see Kapitonov roll his eyes. He also didn't see Arrantes slide one of the "fountain pens" around the forward end of the crate. Ramirez retrieved it and stuffed it in his own jacket. "Let's take a look." He started to unhook the latch at the top lid of the crate and began pulling it up. Whitley was on the other side of the crate, between Arrantes and Kapitonov. He helped.

Ramirez extracted the pen and pressed the button at the top. Arrantes did likewise. Instead of a writing instrument, the pen contained an injection needle with a small bulb at the top. The bulb was filled with a fast-acting neurotoxin, supplied to the DGI by Soviet State Security only a month before Moncada was approved.

At Ramirez' silent signal, Arrantes stabbed the pen needle into the neck of Whitley. Ramirez did the same with DeFlores.

DeFlores jerked up, grabbing his neck.

"What the--:?" he slapped at his neck, but he was already growing dizzy, spinning, losing motor control even as he whirled around and pitched into Ramirez' arms. He slumped forward and Ramirez caught him, quickly pocketing the pen, as he propped the officer up, then let him slide to the floor.

"Hey! Ramirez yelled out, toward the officers gathered outside the van. "Hey...the officer's sick...."

In an instant, several more officers had climbed into the van. They grabbed DeFlores and Whitley and helped them out of the van. Both men were laid to the ground, while officers motioned for a corpsman from the battalion command post to come. In seconds, several soldiers were dashing across the square, one carrying several bags of gear.

"What happened?" asked the officer in charge of the detail.

"Look out--he's convulsing...."

DeFlores' body began to twitch, then his hands squeezed hard on the pants leg of a nearby officer, as he went into a violent seizure. Ramirez stood back, stunned himself, at the speed of the toxin. Inside DeFlores' body, and Whitley's too, who had been laid out on the grass beyond the sidewalk, the poison rapidly shut down nerve function everywhere. In less than a minute, DeFlores was gasping for air, as his lungs quickly became paralyzed. He thrashed about on the street, clutching at air, at anything he could get a hold of....

The Army corpsman waved frantically for help. "Get this man up! Get him to the aid station, quick! He's going into shock...Jesus Christ, what the hell is this...."

A temporary litter was fashioned and Ramirez helped the officers lift DeFlores onto it. He nearly fell off, still thrashing and twitching. Two officers had to keep him from flying off the litter. In the confusion of the moment, inspecting the van had been forgotten. As the officers bore first DeFlores away, then Whitley a few moments later, Ramirez hung back, by the van, watching. The emergency detail headed off west, past Lafayette Park, toward the battalion aid station near Blair House. The officers and soldiers who had gathered around the van during the commotion began to drift away.

To Ramirez' amazement, no one came back. No one returned to the van, demanding to see his authorization, demanding to check the crate. The infantrymen resumed patrol duties and the DC police re-manned the traffic control points opposite the Treasury building. Ramirez slipped back inside the van with Arrantes and Kapitonov, and shut the door. A small window at the rear door was their only view of the street, facing to the east toward the New York Avenue split and the Trans-Lux Theater. They waited for ten minutes, then Ramirez peeked out again, to gauge the situation. He made a quick trip up to the cab, nodding at several soldiers strolling down the middle of Pennsylvania, waiting for them to pass, then retrieved some papers from the front seat. He made a quick reconnaissance of the street as he went back: bivouacked platoons of infantry scattered around Lafayette Park, traffic control stations at the Fifteenth Street side of the Treasury Building, several M-48 tanks blocking the driveway entrances to the White House and more platoons arrayed along the north fence. Opposite the White House, a row of two-ton trucks in front of the Old Executive Office Building blocked access to the street from the west.

All the soldiers and tanks and machine guns in the world won't matter now, thought Ramirez, as he shut the rear door. All they had to do now was sit tight, and wait.

If Fidel Castro wanted to detonate the bomb, went the plan, he would have a coded message sent over public radio frequencies, at 850 megacycles. The transmitter would be aboard a small pleasure craft (arranged by Miguel Munoz) circling in the Chesapeake Bay. The receiver was stored in the mission crate and Ramirez ordered Arrantes to get the gear out and power it up. The receiver was no bigger than a telephone, which it slightly resembled. A flexible antenna was attached to the side of the box and Arrantes opened the rear door slightly to extend the antenna up, fastening it to the door frame. He shut the door, but made sure it didn't crimp the antenna. Then he flipped on the power, supplied by D-cell batteries and began tuning.

Ramirez realized he was hungry and thirsty. There were ration kits and canteens in the mission gear but he wanted more. He wanted coffee and a cigarette, bad. He pulled out one of the ration kits and began peeling the top off, sniffing cautiously at the contents.

Now, the wait began. He'd done it. He'd accomplished their basic mission and a 700-kiloton K-12 atomic bomb was scarcely a hundred yards from the White House and President John Kennedy. Now, everything was up to Fidel.

Ramirez stuck his tongue into the glop that passed for field rations, scrunching up his face at the rancid taste. This would never do. Somehow, they'd have to make a run for some real rations. Like a hamburger and fries.

His greatest concern now was boredom. They had to stay sharp and alert, ready for anything. Somehow, he and Arrantes had to maintain a good combat edge, in case the Yanquis tried something.

And he'd have to keep an especially close watch on the Russian.

11-6-62, Tuesday

In the Chesapeake Bay

4:00 p.m.

Osvaldo Carrera was a man in love. Not with his wife of seventeen years, Carmen, though he surely appreciated her as only a husband could. Nor with his eighteen-year old daughter Miriam, though he was as proud as a father could be when she had graduated at the top of her class at the Mary Magdelene School near Havana.

No, Osvaldo Carrera was in love with a boat. Fancy Dancer was her name and he was sure she was the most magnificent vessel ever to ply the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. That she had been confiscated from a crime boss by the Fidelistas in 1960 and turned into a coastal patrol craft hunting down Alpha-66 guerillas day and night really didn't matter. She was now his to captain and in those hours when he stood in the wheelhouse with salty winds freshening in his face, as she streaked like a rocket over the wavetops, Carrera found a kind of peace and satisfaction seldom experienced by his less fortunate countrymen.

That he could participate in so epic and valiant a mission as Operation Moncada only made his captaincy all the more satisfying. Truly, he was a warrior born to the sea and soon to join the pantheon of Nelson and Halsey and other great naval heroes he had long studied.

It was late afternoon, bright, sunny, cool and windy in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, twenty-two miles due east of Annapolis, Maryland. A perfect day for pleasure boating or crabbing or just lolling about in the early November sunshine. In fact, the Dancer's mission was anything but pleasure.

To all outward purposes, Osvaldo Carrera was an exceptionally fortunate and generous émigré Cuban-American businessman, an astute investor and trader whose fortune had been made over the last three years in radio and television production for south Florida's booming Spanish-speaking population. The truth was rather more complicated. Behind the smiling face and the large, expressive hands, was a dedicated Fidelista with unswerving convictions about the Revolution and the need to do whatever was needed to protect it.

The truth was that Carrera was a paid front man for the DGI.

The Fancy Dancer had carried one main cargo from its slip at the Bonaventure Marina at Key Largo. The trip took four days, and Carrera decided on his own to follow a zigzag course in case the Coast Guard or the U.S. Navy had followed him. He had seen no surveillance, by air or sea, during the trip. Just to be safe, he had plotted a course halfway to Bermuda before changing heading back west toward the Virginia Capes. By Sunday, November 4, the Dancer had made Hampton Roads and steered north into the Chesapeake Bay, to take up station.

Her cargo was a 250,000-watt radio transmitter and supersensitive receiver system, called Gorizont (Horizon), donated and installed by engineers of the Morskoi Flot, the Soviet Navy, at Mariel in May. Ostensibly assigned a coastal defense role in the Cuban Navy, the MGR or Marina de Guerra Revolucionaria, the Dancer had served admirably for months in several actions against Alpha-66 along the north coast off Matanzas. When Raul Castro had finally approved Operation Moncada in August, the General Staff had re-assigned the boat to Capitan Rafael Ramirez, as a support vessel. By the end of September, her final fitting out was done and she sailed for Florida, by way of the Bahamas, to be turned over to a DGI cell active in the Miami area. A few weeks later, she had a new skipper in the person of Osvaldo Carrera.

Dancer's mission had been arranged by Miguel Munoz, 'Florio' to most DGI operatives in south Florida. She was to await a radio transmission from the FAR's long-range transmitter at Cayo Coco, a transmission coded from Fidel himself. The transmission would authorize Moncada to detonate the K-12 device now safely secreted away in Washington, D.C. The Dancer was then to broadcast a separate coded signal of its own, the actual detonation order, transmitting every fifteen minutes on 850 megacycles, to the west, toward the Yanqui capital. She was a way station for Fidel's orders, nothing more, but of that, Osvaldo Carrera was extremely proud.

Though he fancied himself a champion of the Revolution and a trusted espionage agent, Carrera was in fact little more than a bored dilettante. The Dancer had been circling endlessly in the middle of the Chesapeake for nearly three days, following a vague elliptical course north and south halfway between Annapolis and St. Michael's Island. Almost from dawn, Carrera and his three crewmates had been playing cards under a canvas awning on the aft deck, sipping at beers and other libations, while waiting for Fidel to give the order.

They had heard the announcement out of Havana early Tuesday morning and the crew had been agitated with excitement ever since. They had talked with Carrera for hours: what would it mean? it's an historic occasion...the Yanquis won't be messing with Cuba anymore...Fidel's tweaked the nose of the mighty Estados Unidos.

They had broken out several bottles of champagne and toasted the glorious day, then sang 'The Internationale" and patriotic Cuban songs for an hour.

But by early afternoon, no signal from Fidel had yet arrived. What was he waiting for? The Yanquis would never back down, until their nose was bloodied. By three o'clock, the last of the champagne was gone and the crew had become restless. The poker games continued for awhile and the crewman took turns flipping channels on the Gorizont receiver, listening to radio stations in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia. Between Chubby Checker and Elvis Presley, the stations gave continuing coverage of the growing panic across the Eastern Seaboard, a direct result the men knew of Castro's announcement. Every report brought more laughter and wide smiles to the men, and to Carrera.

By four-thirty in the afternoon, the sun was dipping lower into blooming purple clouds to the west and Osvaldo Carrera was growing bored. He bowed out of yet another round of poker and excused himself, heading up to the pilot house, to catch a chill breeze blowing whitecaps across the water. Carrera found his binoculars on the chart table behind his seat and scanned the horizon a full 360 degrees. There were a few other small boats on the bay, shrimpers and crabbers mostly, but no sign of planes. No sign of the Coast Guard.

He squinted, peering through shafts of sunlight, looking west. By his calculation, the city of Washington lay over the horizon about fifty miles. He had studied up on atomic bombs when Munoz had asked him to skipper this vital mission for Moncada. They said the mushroom clouds often extended fifty thousand feet in the air and could be seen for several hundred miles.

They ought to have a ringside seat for the detonation. Of course, they couldn't stay long. The prevailing winds would soon drop radioactive dirt and soil and God knew what else on them, probably within an hour of the burst.

Still, for a few moments, they'd have a glorious view of the greatest day in Cuba's history, the day she took her rightful place of the stage of the world's great nations.

Carrera smiled in spite of himself, wondering in his imagination just what a nuclear fireball would look like, billowing up on the western horizon.

11-6-62, Tuesday

Washington, D.C.

5:00 p.m.

John Kennedy tapped his pen on the desktop like a drum, his eyes glazed with fatigue. Ed McDermott was there, right across the desk, full of facts and figures about Civil Defense and how the Nation's Capital was preparing for the holocaust that might come at any minute. In a word, the preparations, not to mention the FBI's Bomb Task Force search for the Cuban commandos, was going terribly. Kennedy had had a pounding headache all afternoon. He figured the decision that events had now forced on him was the main reason.

He'd talked with Bundy, McNamara, the rest of the Joint Chiefs (at least they hadn't mutinied yet), now McDermott and anybody else who could have offered insight. From none of them had he found any real reason to delay the decision any longer. It was a matter of expediency and the logic of events compelled action now. But the President also knew that once the decision was made, an irrevocable step had been taken. Even more, the effect of the decision on the morale of the public was likely to be equivalent to a hurricane slamming into a city. He could only pray the panic wouldn't grow to unmanageable proportions.

"Ed, in my two years in this office, the only time I felt this bad about a decision was the Bay of Pigs. But I don't see any choice."

Edward McDermott, Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, was sympathetic. "Mr. President, if it's any consolation, we can be sure the government of the United States will survive, if the worst happens. That's important...for the future."

Kennedy sank back in his leather chair. "I know you're right. But it's the image of thing...the picture of top officials fleeing to the mountains while the people can't even buy enough beans to stock their fallout shelters. That's what bothers me."

Only a few moments before, John Kennedy had signed an Executive Order, putting into motion the Emergency Relocation System. Under procedures that had been worked out a year ago, essential personnel in all executive departments of the Government, as well as key Congressmen, and three Justices of the Supreme Court, would be taken from the Nation's Capital to a mountain hideaway in the mountains of western Virginia, an underground complex known as Mount Weather. The system was the very essence of arbitrary assignment and controversy, yet hard decisions had to be made. Mount Weather had room for several hundred officials, and the decisions on who to assign and who to notify, while seemingly random, were in fact thrashed out and argued over for months. They were supposed to be based on the need for essential services and expertise, whatever would be needed to reconstitute the government of the United States after a massive nuclear attack.

To many critics inside the government, the assignments and the relocation system smacked more of political favoritism.

By five o'clock, the Executive Order had been transmitted to all assigned personnel. According to procedure, they had three hours to gather essential personal belongings, not to exceed two suitcases, and stage themselves to designated pickup points around the city. Buses would be requisitioned by the Army and pickups would be made promptly at three hours after notification. Every assignee had a password, coded to their work location and departmental responsibilities, to gain access. If they forgot the password, they wouldn't be allowed on the buses.

The emergency pickup point closest to the White House was located at St. Matthews' Cathedral, a few blocks north on Rhode Island Avenue. John Kennedy knew that not every one in the White House staff would be going.

By six o'clock, the West Wing was a scene of frenzied but controlled activity, as boxes and files were collected for the short trip up to the church. To lessen the tension, Kennedy decided to leave the Oval Office and take a brief walk around the corridors. He didn't know exactly who would be on the Emergency Relocation list, and he didn't really want to know. But he did want to gain a sense of the atmosphere. He'd been kicking around the idea of making another address to the nation.

Kennedy left the Oval Office through the door just to the right of the fireplace. He ran into Evelyn Lincoln, his personal secretary, just closing up some boxes on top of her desk. The President's secretary had an office just beyond the Oval Office, midway to the Cabinet Room.

"Evelyn, need some help? I'm glad to see you're on the list."

Evelyn Lincoln had been the President's secretary since his days as a junior congressman from Massachusetts. She pushed back her brown hair and wiped paper dust from her hands with a small napkin.

"Actually, Mr. President, I'm not on the list." She smiled faintly. "I was just packing some things for Mac Bundy. He'll need these papers."

"Oh," Kennedy was surprised. Evelyn not on the list? It was insane not to include the President's own secretary. Surely, room could be found....He started to say something, but changed his mind. "I...didn't know...you know, I wasn't sure. I haven't seen the list...."

Evelyn could see he wasn't too comfortable. "It's okay, Mr. President. I've known it for months. It's just I never expected to be in this position."

Kennedy tried to smile back, but it was too forced and he gave up the attempt. "I'm sorry...it's not right--"

She shrugged. "Some of us have to stay behind and keep things going."

Kennedy wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she leaned on him for a moment, trying to stifle the tears. "You wouldn't like Mount Weather anyway. Too crowded. And it smells like a hospital. I was there for a tour a year ago."

Evelyn pushed him away. "There's a lot of papers--"

Kennedy understood. "Mac should be helping you. I'll find him." He squeezed her arm once more and went out into the corridor. Staffers flew back and forth, scurrying to the front entrance, where several rolling carts of boxes had been stacked together. Beyond the windows, he could see a van with its rear doors open, and two men busily hoisting more boxes inside. Mac Bundy was nowhere to be found.

Through the columned front windows of the West Wing, Kennedy watched two M-48 tanks re-positioning themselves at the end of the North Driveway. As he watched the scene, he began subconsciously counting all the Army and police vehicles he could see.

Damn things are lined up like a funeral procession, he muttered to himself. Nobody'll be able to move out there because of all the vehicles. As he watched, a gathering of police and soldiers dispersed around a white van, heading off west, bearing a man on a stretcher. Kennedy wondered what had happened. Probably anxiety attack, he thought. It was understandable.

It was nearly five-thirty. Kennedy decided to leave the West Wing and go up to the residence on the second floor. He needed to see Jackie and the kids. The creaky, wood-paneled elevator seemed to take forever.

Jackie was in the small kitchen, making up sandwiches for Caroline and John, Jr. She had told them they were taking a short vacation. John Kennedy swept up his son into his arms and held him overhead.

"You're getting too big, buster. Did you finish packing?"

John, Jr. bubbled happily. "I helped Mommy. We packed a lot of things. Mommy said we couldn't take so much. But we got ten suitcases. Mr. Rowley couldn't lift them."

Kennedy laughed and put the boy down. He would well imagine the Secret Service man struggling with their luggage.

He leaned over to kiss Jackie. "Somebody's making up stories, I think," she said. She ruffled John Jr.'s brown hair. "You want a peanut butter sandwich?"

"Sure," Kennedy said. "Everything ready?"

Jackie took a moment to fix her hair, now tying it back in a bun. She was wearing a white blouse and dark blue skirt. Caroline had spilled a spot of jam on her blouse sleeve and she tried blotting it with a wet napkin.

"Pretty much. I packed a week's clothes for the kids. You didn't say how long we'd be at Glen Ora. Plus their riding gear."

Kennedy accepted a peanut butter sandwich and started munching. "I don't know how long it'll be either. I guess that depends on Castro."

"And the FBI," she added. "Is the helicopter here?"

"On the way. I told Jim Rowley to go ahead and get the luggage collected downstairs. You'll be off in about half an hour."

Jackie watched her children both tear off the edges of their bread crust, eating the center of the sandwich. It was a trait they had learned from their grandfather, several years ago, on a Christmas visit to West Palm Beach. "You think we really might go on to Hyannis Port?"

Kennedy shrugged, slurping some milk to finish off his sandwich. "I don't know, honey. If we can grab that bomb before the Cubans do something stupid, maybe not. But I don't want you or the kids anywhere around here for the next few days. I've already signed an Executive Order activating the Emergency Relocation System. A lot of people will be evacuating Washington today."

"What about you? Mac Bundy wants you to go to Mount Weather, doesn't he?"

"He does," Kennedy admitted. "But I've decided against it, for the time being."

"Why, for heaven's sake? Your family needs you--"

"Jackie, don't, okay? This is tough enough. It's just that the country needs leadership now. Visible leadership. I need to be in the White House."

Jackie snuffled back a few tears and busied herself with getting the kids through their snack and off to get dressed. She said nothing more and the President accompanied them to the Lincoln bedroom, where the last bags were still to be packed and closed up.

For the next twenty minutes, John Kennedy helped them pack a few more essentials, making fatherly decisions for John Jr. on just what toys and model cars and plastic boats and model airplanes he could cram into his bag. When the bags were stuffed to the point they would barely close, Kennedy cut off any further arguments and pleadings, reminding the kids that the helicopter might not be able to get off the ground otherwise.

Jim Rowley, Secret Service White House detail commander, rapped at the door and stuck his head in.

"Marine One's overhead, Mr. President. She'll be ready for boarding in five minutes."

"Thanks, Jim." The Secret Service man disappeared. John Kennedy finished closing and zipping up John Jr.'s bag, then looked up at Jackie. Their eyes met.

It seemed a natural thing to do at the moment. John Kennedy took her hand, then stooped down to pull the kids into a group embrace.

"Daddy, can't you come too?" said Caroline.

"Pumpkin, I'd like to but I have work here for awhile. You go on with your Mother. I'll be along."

They embraced for a long minute, until Jim Rowley and two more agents came by for the last bags.

"We're ready, Mr. President."

The elevator was crowded and the bags had to come behind them. The Kennedys left the White House, all holding hands, for the quick trip across the South Lawn. Marine One, the green Sikorsky S-61 sporting the white insignia of Executive Flight Detachment VH-3A, squatted on the concrete helipad, its overhead rotor chopping the cool air. Beyond the fence, the white shaft of the Washington Monument had already

acquired its evening dress of floodlights, a red beacon winking at the very top of the obelisk. Beyond the Monument, more helicopters droned across the sky. John Kennedy looked up and watched as the choppers crisscrossed the purple twilight sky of evening Washington. He knew full well they were assigned to the Bomb Task Force.

A last minute kiss and Jackie and the kids were boarded and tucked in. Kennedy was gently pulled away from the helipad by Jim Rowley and the two men retreated toward the Rose Garden, while Marine One's twin 1250-horsepower General Electric turboshafts, spun up the rotor. Seconds later, the pilot, Marine Colonel Robert Fitzpatrick, tweaked the collective lever, and the Sikorsky bounced on its landing gear, then lifted into the night sky. It wheeled about to a southwesterly heading, getting a new vector from Approach Control at National Airport across the river, then dipped and soon disappeared beyond the trees.

Kennedy watched for as long as Marine One was in view. A thought came to mind--that he might very well never see them again, that indeed this might be his last night on earth. He tried squashing the thought, tried to think of something else, but the foreboding chill of the idea came back, intruding its way into his consciousness.

He knew he was right. The President was in charge and he had to be seen to be in charge. His place was at the White House. Besides, as he had told Jackie not half an hour ago, there was still Air Force One at Andrews, already fueled and ready to go, ready to extract the President quickly if need be.

President Kennedy and Jim Rowley turned their attention to the other helicopters, watching the squadron of Army CH-34's and UH-1's circling the Federal Triangle area like black vultures seeking prey. In every cockpit up there, he knew, were men and machines, looking with every technical trick America could muster, for an atom bomb somewhere below. It was now five hours since Fidel Castro had issued his ultimatum, warning that either Washington or New York would be obliterated if his demands weren't met. For five hours, they had survived at the behest of the Cuban Presidente.

How much longer would Castro give them?

Kennedy turned to Rowley and clapped him on the shoulders. "Come on, Jim. Let's get back. We've got a lot of work to do."

11-6-62, Tuesday

Near Mariel, Cuba

6:30 p.m.

Lieutenant Commander Wade Joiner, better known tonight as Maverick Leader, was the first to spy the glow on the horizon. Cloud cover at twenty-eight thousand was scattered and broken and the moonglow on the surface of the Gulf was enough to make you want to take your clothes off and go skinny-dipping. But business called and there wouldn't be any skinny-dipping tonight. Fifty-five miles ahead of the squadron of F-8 Crusaders known as Maverick Flight, the glow on the horizon could only signify one thing: Havana and its environs were fast approaching.

"All right, you slugs, listen up. You know the drill. On my mark, we separate into attack elements. Two, you come with me. Three and Four, you vector left, come at the target from 110 degrees, two minutes behind me. Arm bombs now. I say again, arm your loads and report back."

One by one, the rest of Maverick Flight, two hours away from the U.S.S. Independence and the kerosene-like coffee of VFA-87's Air Ops ready room, called back in, announcing full pickle on their bomb loads, the "Hoss Cartwright Specials" now fully fuzed, powered up and ready to light up the night skies of the Cuban capital.

"Very well," Joiner announced over the air-to air. "Three and Four, on my mark, peel off and get yourself set up for the party. Four...three...two...one...mark!"

At that moment, Maverick Three and Maverick Four broke sharply left, separating themselves quickly from the rest of the flight. In seconds, they were beyond visual, lost in the remnants of nighttime thunderclouds, as they zigzagged to the right attack heading.

Seconds later: "Maverick Three to Maverick Leader. We're on station, 110 degrees, angels twenty-eight, locked and loaded."

"Roger that," Joiner came back. He reached down to his own weapons panel and flipped four switches, shunting battery power to the arming circuits. He saw and counted four confirming green lights above the switches and heard the buzzer tone in his headset, smiling in spite of himself in his face mask. It was going to be a hell of a party tonight in La Habana and Maverick Flight had the biggest firecracker of all. Joiner stifled a laugh, and got as comfortable as he could in his ACES ejection seat. Damn it, it feels good, he thought. Better than sex and beer. It felt real good to finally do something about that tamale asshole Castro. Before the night was done, the sucker'd be begging for mercy, once the United States Navy got through with him.

"Coastline coming up," Joiner called out, seeing the ghostly outlines of the beach on his radar scope. "Look alive. We got AAA in the neighborhood and probable MiGs for company too."

Back in the ready room, they had spent an hour on the air defense batteries alone, plotting locations, approach corridors to minimize exposure time, tracking radar frequencies. Joiner knew Maverick Flight was following half an hour behind the Bugs Bunny units, that had swept through the area surrounding Havana and Mariel in their F-4 Phantom II's, drawing AAA fire and hunting down air-defense batteries to take out. Just ten minutes before they'd tallyho'ed the coastline, Maverick Leader had been in contact with Bugs One, an F-4 orbiting fifty miles off the coast north of Havana. He had gotten a quick report of air-defense activity around the capital, and an advisory that suppression work was still going on, so take it easy, drop your load and get your butts out of Dodge in a hurry.

"Any MiGs tonight?" Joiner had asked.

Bugs One came back, "A few showed up but after we splashed one, they skedaddled and haven't been back. Watch your approach to Campo Libertad. Lots of MiGs in the neighborhood and the AAA guys have sharp eyes. Bugs Four has rudder damage already from a shell."

"Copy that. What about SAMs?"

"They painted us at Guanajay but didn't launch. Artemisa's been quiet too. My guess is they're sitting tight, waiting for a bigger attack. By the way, we've been hearing Russian chatter on the air-to-air freqs. They like 1840 megacycles. We definitely got some Ivans in the sky around here."

"Understood, Bugs One. Maverick Leader out."

They crossed the coastline in full attack configuration, dipping down to eighteen thousand feet. Joiner popped a speed brake to bleed back to three-fifty knots indicated, then checked his tactical chart a final time. Air Boss had given them two airfields as targets tonight, Campo Libertad, where Bugs had seen some MiG activity, and Campo Justicia a few miles southeast. Both were critical to Castro's air defense, and thus prime candidates for destruction. When the Marines hit the beaches at La Esperanza and the airborne pukes hit their landing zones at San Antonio de los Banos, nobody wanted Castro's air force mucking up the operation. So, Air Boss had given Maverick Flight an important, even critical piece of the second phase of OpPlan 322. Joiner was determined to see Maverick's targets a pile of rubble before the night was over.

Four minutes after crossing the coastline, Joiner's wingman, Maverick Two, called out bandits high. At that same instant, Joiner got all the confirmation he needed in the form of a stream of red and white tracer fire, ripping the air right in front of the Crusader's nose.

He jerked the stick hard right, and jinked like a snake on a hot griddle, then wheeled around and squinted out the forward windscreen, hoping to catch a glint in the moonlight before the next strafing run. There! Sure enough, a wing and a red star flashed by. MiG-15, most likely. Joiner thumbed the radio mike.

"MiGs in sight! MiGs in sight! Maverick Flight, squadron defense now!"

They had practiced the maneuvers a hundred times, on the Gulf range south of Pensacola and Joiner was sure the flight knew what to do. He shoved the stick hard over and the Crusader's wings bit into the heavy, humid air, pulling six g's in less than two seconds. He goosed the throttle and the Pratt and Whitney J-57 pumped out more thrust, driving Maverick Leader up and up, punching through a low cloud deck into a moonlit sky. Joiner craned his head around and right away spotted the silhouette of a MiG, flashing across the underside of a rain cloud several miles away.

"Maverick Two, Maverick Leader. I got me a bad guy in sight, MiG-15, three miles and above me. I'm closing."

There was a burst of static and Two's strained voice crackled in Joiner's headset. "Roger that, Mav Leader. I've got one of my own and we're going to the dance right now--" There was a loud pop and a distant rumbling--"Jesus. Mary and Joseph, that was close--Sorry, Lead, got an earful of AAA, right over my cockpit."

"Go for it, Two. I've got dibs on this MiG. Maverick Leader out."

The dogfight lasted ten minutes. Three of the four Crusaders had engaged MiGs, but they were outnumbered and Joiner winced, at the sound of the battle streaming in on the air-to-air. Maverick Four took some gunfire--whether MiG or AAA, he didn't know.

Joiner called. "Mav Four, this is Lead. What's hit? What's hit?"

Maverick Four, Lieutenant Commander Corky Sipes, was breathing hard, wrestling the stick.

"Don't know yet for sure, Lead. Probable stabilizer damage, I'm dropping fuel and hydraulic, fast! This horse's getting hard to handle...."

"Turn around and head to the sea, Four. I'll get the SAR boys on you soon as I get rid of this bugger. If you have to ditch, make sure you're as far from those patrol boats as you can get."

"Amen to that, Lead."

Joiner located his Two, four miles west, hooked up in a running battle with several MiGs, dodging AAA bursts. Frigging tamales are nuts, shooting off AAA like that, he muttered. They don't care what they hit, their own planes or ours.

There wasn't much he could do for Two at the moment; he already had his own MiG centered in the reticule on the windscreen. Joiner hosed the Crusader's nose around and jumped up another two thousand feet in altitude. The MiG was barely visible, scudding along the underside of a cloud deck, moonlight flashing intermittently on his wings.

Not so fast, Jose, Joiner muttered. He warmed up the AN/APS-12 radar and toggled into track mode. Then, the MiG dived into a cloud and was gone. Shit! Joiner enabled power and radar link to the Sidewinders on his outer pylons, and prayed for a tone in his headset. He plowed into the same cloud deck and a few seconds burst out over a lit-up urban area, with the black waters of the Gulf off to his left. He had no idea where he was now. Could be Havana, Mariel, Guanajay, or a dozen other coastal towns. There was no sign of the MiG and Joiner knew perfectly well he couldn't stay in the clear over heavily defended areas much longer. As if to emphasize the point, a staccato starburst of AAA shells lit up the night sky directly in front of him. The Crusader plowed into the smoke puffs. Joiner pulled the stick back and lifted his plane back into the relative safety of the cloud deck. For good measure, he changed heading back to 040 degrees and then, incredibly, he heard it. The tone!

The AN/APS-12 tracking radar had caught a reflection off something metallic. And close. The warbling was music to Joiner's ears. Popping in and out of the clouds, he couldn't see anything in the dark ahead, but the radar was definitely on to something. He prayed it wasn't one of the other Crusaders and held off the pickle switch, for that reason. Somehow, someway, he needed a visual. He needed a visual real soon, before the target broke lock.

"Maverick Two, Maverick Leader. Say your position. Over."

A few moments passed, then, "Lead, this is Two. Six miles behind you, I think. Heading 125 degrees....whoa! there he goes again!--Sorry, Lead, I'm in pursuit...standby--"

Joiner knew Four was heading away from them, hopefully out to sea. That left Maverick Three.

"Maverick Three, Maverick Leader. Say your position. Over."

He waited, and waited, as the target broke lock and the AN/APS-12 reacquired several times. Whoever he was, he didn't seem to know he was being painted. That alone argued for the target being a MiG. Still, he wasn't sure. He wanted to be sure....

Suddenly, the dark sky exploded in a shower of light and shrapnel pelted the Crusader, cracking the windscreen. Joiner ducked as shards tore through the cockpit. Something slammed into his helmet, and bounced off the top, knocking him sideways in his straps. He fought the stick, and instinctively dove below the oncoming debris.

What the hell!!\--

Then he knew what had happened. The target was a MiG. It had broken track lock several times and the explanation was simple: the MiG had turned around and was heading straight for the Crusader. The MiG had fired a missile but somehow the thing had detonated too far away, close enough to damage the Crusader, but not close to destroy it. Joiner felt his head pinned to the back of the headrest by the roaring wind streaming into the cockpit. A white filmy powder coated his helmet and visor and he thumbed off enough to see a little better. Then he took stock of the situation. The aircraft was damaged, how badly he wasn't yet sure. He had an open windscreen and he'd have to head down below ten thousand feet in a few moments. His oxygen was dropping fast, even as he watched, the capacity dial spun down to less than a hundred pounds. The wind was ripping so loud he could barely hear anything on the radio. For the moment, he seemed to have full control of the aircraft, but a fuel line must have been damaged. That gauge was dropping too. Off to his left, a white stream could clearly be seen issuing from the left main tank.

He was about to begin a shallow dive down to heavier air so he would have oxygen to breathe, when something popped over his head. Instinctively, he craned his head up, just in time, to see a red-orange ball of flame licking the undersides of the cloud deck. In the brilliance of the explosion, he could clearly make out a wing and a section of aircraft tail, cartwheeling out of the dull red flames, an avalanche of debris dropping rapidly toward the ground.

A missile hit!

Before he could react, a faint chirping in his headset indicated a radio call and he cranked up the volume to maximum.

"--erick Leader, this is Maverick Three, do you read over? Maverick Leader--"

Joiner would have leaped for joy if he hadn't been strapped in. "Doyle, you old fox, where the hell have you been!?"

Jimmy Doyle, Maverick Three, had a radio voice like a wounded cow. Back on the Indy, the squadron had long ago given him the nickname of Honker. None of that mattered to Wade Joiner now. For all he cared, Jimmy Doyle might have been the voice of Moses himself.

"Splash one MiG, Lead! I creamed that sucker with a Sidewinder off my port rack. First shot."

Joiner was trying to shake his head. "You dope, you almost creamed me too. Don't you think that was a bit close?"

"Depends on your perspective, Lead. I didn't want to wait any longer. When that tamale creep loosed his own missile, I figured it was you he was shooting at. Didn't want to give him a second chance."

"Awfully considerate of you, Maverick Three. Next time, give me a little heads-up, okay?"

"Roger that, Lead."

"Maverick Two, form up on me and Maverick Three. Go to heading 340 degrees and hold until we're ten klicks north of the coast. We gotta re-group for the run in to the primary target."

"Two, roger," came a distant crackle.

"One more thing, boys. I got a cracked windscreen and zero oxygen. I'm stuck at ten thousand. Two, you and Three make the primary run at twenty eight, like we planned. Hose 'em with all you got. I'll follow behind at ten thousand, do an assessment, maybe get off a few rockets and then hightail it out of there. Anybody heard from Four lately?"

"Yeah," Two came back. "He was fighting it all the way out of the target zone. Got clipped by a tamale coastal defense gun. He told me he was going in, going to try and ditch."

"How far out?"

"Not far enough, I'm afraid. He reported patrol boats just a few miles behind him."

"I'll put in a call to my F-4 buddies. They should be flying CAP near there. With any luck, they'll occupy those Cuban boats until the rescue helos can get into the area."

The three Crusaders flew northwest in loose formation at twelve thousand feet, making the coastline in good order. They held a heading of 340 for ten minutes, then at Joiner's order, Two and Three formed up for the assault run in to the first target package: Campo Justicia airfield.

"Arm all ordnance," Joiner commanded. He flipped four toggles on the weapons panel at his knee. The Bullpups perked to life, indicated by a green status light above each switch. Outboard of the air-to-ground missiles, each Crusader sported a pod of eight, unguided Zuni rockets. Joiner warmed up the igniters and got another satisfactory green light. Then he tightened his helmet, to hear better over the wind noise and cycled the volume switch one more time.

"I'm done," Two called out.

"Good to go, "Three added.

Joiner chopped the J-57 back to thirty percent, dropping below and behind the other two. Both Crusaders shot ahead.

"Okay, Maverick Flight, you know the game plan. Plaster that airfield with everything you got. The Marines and the Army are counting on us. I've got fifty bucks wagered with a jarhead major in the First Marines. Fifty bucks says the Marines never see a single MiG in the sky 'cause the Air Force sent 'em all to Cuban Hell."

Joiner straightened up in his seat and shoved the throttle forward, taking dead aim on the tailpipes of Maverick Two and Three, now climbing away at two thousand feet a minute. He checked the airspeed; past three fifty knots, the wind noise was too loud to hear anything on the radio. Overhead, a nearly full moon peeked in and out of dark scudding clouds. Ahead, coastal lights, and the air-defense batteries that had probably tattooed Maverick Four.

Joiner gritted his teeth and lowered the visor of his helmet even tighter, trying to screen out the cold wind blasting through the cockpit.

Let the games begin, he muttered, then fired off a short burst off his 20-mm Colt Mk12 cannon, just to make sure the magazine was free. He planned to do a little dusting of that airfield himself, once Two and Three had plastered the place.

11-6-62, Tuesday

Havana, Cuba

7:00 p.m.

Forty feet below the Avenida de la Independencia, Fidel Castro could still hear the scream of U.S. fighter jets buzzing low over the center of Havana. The command post of the underground bunker was hot and stuffy, jammed with Del Valle's men and General Staff aides, screaming into telephones, scribbling reports, smoking so many cigarettes that the air inside the post was thick and rancid with stale tobacco and the sweat of frightened men.

The Presidente was chewing on a day-old cigar, furious and ranting about the radio centro, beating the thick air with angry fists.

"Kennedy has ignored me, he's spit in my face, with these attacks! Cuba will not take this anymore! He was warned, but now it's too late. This malo, this Yanqui evil will be punished, as I warned him!"

Major Del Valle knew enough to stay out of the Presidente's way when he was like this. Castro pushed through his staff like a boat plowing through the sea, a wave reverberating back and forth from one wall to the other. Only the map table and the radio consoles interrupted the storm. At one wall, Castro whirled in fury and lashed out at his Chief of Staff.

"Del Valle, what are you standing there for? A Yanqui bomb could come right down the ventilation shaft and kill us all. Get Munoz in here, get maps in here. I want maps of New York. And Washington. We have to act now, before the Yanquis destroy Havana."

Del Valle saluted and disappeared for a few minutes. He returned with Capitan Hector Munoz. Castro spied them and came over, grabbing Munoz around the shoulder like a lost brother.

"Hector, you've been the main contact since Moncada began, haven't you?"

Munoz nodded. "Si, Presidente, I've handled our agents in Miami. The main contact is 'Florio.'"

"Si, si, I remember you told me that." Castro walked Munoz about the room, still clutching the capitan by the shoulders. "I have a question. Our commandos, our brave guerrillas, are in position, are they not?"

"They reported to the answering machine in Miami, through the code words, that they were."

Castro's face broadened into a sly grin. He pointed at the map of the eastern United States, with his cigar. "Tell me about the bombs again. Their size, their power, how much they can destroy."

Munoz, with help from Luis de la Madrigo, the MINFAR's G-3, described the Soviet K-12 and K-5 devices. The explanation took five minutes. Castro's smile broadened as he listened. Finally, he held up his hand.

"Enough. I've heard what I need to hear." He chewed vigorously on the cigar for a moment. "The larger bomb is in Washington. That's good. I want to keep that bomb ready, but not use it just yet. We may need it later, depending on what the Yanquis do. No," Castro resumed pacing again, forcing staff to move out of the way as he orbited the map table, "I won't order this K-12 bomb to be used unless Havana itself is attacked. We'll hold it in reserve." Castro touched the map on the table, tracing with his finger an imaginary line from Washington to New York.

"The other bomb, you call it the K-5? that one is perfect for a little demonstration. All the better that it's in position on Wall Street, that bastion of capitalist dogs who raped Cuba for decades."

The Presidente folded his arms and began issuing a stream of orders.

"Capitan Munoz, you'll send the coded instructions to the Fancy Dancer. What did you say the code was?"

De la Madrigo, the Ministry's Operations Officer, spoke up. "'Death is the greatest happiness.'"

Castro stroked his beard thoughtfully. "An unusual phrase. Whose idea was it?"

"Capitan Ramirez, Presidente. He wanted something unique, something that would stand out on the radio."

"The Fancy Dancer will broadcast on the same frequency as WRUL," said Munoz. "A Spanish-language station in New York. Teniente Calderone, with the team there, has been listening to that station since they got into position. When he hears the code, he is supposed to detonate the bomb within the next half hour."

"I want the code phrase sent now," Castro ordered. He could picture it in his mind: thousands of Yanquis in the midst of New York's rush hour, riding the trains, cars, on the bridges and sidewalks, all heading home for a quiet evening with the family. Castro's smile broadened at the image and he started laughing. He described what he was seeing in his mind. A few chuckles circled the map table.

"If we've planned Moncada well, companeros, by 8:00 this evening at the latest, lower Manhattan will be a radioactive smoking ruin. A hundred thousand americanos will be dead." He extracted a new cigar, stuck it in the corner of his mouth and began chewing it, adding, "A great tragedy, yes, but a small price to pay for a century of oppression."

"Shall I give the order, Presidente?" Munoz asked.

Castro finally lit up the cigar and puffed contentedly. The moment was delicious irony and he enjoyed the taste of it. "Companeros, my brother Raul is this very day in Moscow. You didn't know that, did you? A secret mission. I ordered him to leave at night, in complete secrecy, to foil the traitors and spies. He's meeting with Khrushchev."

"More weapons, I hope, Presidente," said de la Madrigo. Del Valle nodded in assent.

Castro peered ahead, seeming to see through the very walls of the bunker, to some distant land known only to him. "Tonight, we'll accomplish the very thing Comrade Khrushchev was too weak to do. Tonight, we bring los Estados Unidos to her knees, humbled before little Cuba. Hector--?"

"Yes, Presidente...."

Castro's voice lowered. "Send the message. Send it at once."

"Si, Presidente. Right away." He went to the long-distance console, wired by landline to the huge transmitter at Cayo Coco a hundred miles east. In less than a minute, Hector Munoz had established a secure link to the site. He flipped a switch and a tape spool began to spin. Another switch fed the coded stream onto the carrier wave, which traveled by underground cable the hundred mile distance to the control shack at Cayo Coco in five ten-thousandths of a second. There, the duty operator, Mario Llano Baria, a cabo (corporal) in the 35th Infantry, 1st Signals Platoon, heard the chime signifying an incoming message. Cabo Llano Baria noted the source was the Centro de Mandato Nacional (National Command Center) in Havana and leapt to his feet.

Twenty-two seconds later, Cabo Llano Baria, had transferred the coded message stream from Havana onto the carrier wave of the huge, seventy-foot Pan Eye long-range radio transmitter. The message headed north, skipping off the Earth's ionosphere several times in the process, at one hundred eighty-six thousand miles a second.

11-7-62, Wednesday

Moscow

12:00 Midnight

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev swirled the vodka several times in the small tumbler before downing the last remnants of the fluid. He stood at the picture window, facing north east across the Moskva River, and admired the backlit brick battlements of the ancient Kremlin, the red star atop Spasskaya Tower a dim beacon in the swirling snow now falling on the Soviet capital. He was thankful for the snow and for the distance. From his vantage point, the shell holes and bomb craters couldn't be seen.

Beside him, Minister of the FAR Raul Castro, sucked hard on the last stubb of the cigarette he had been nursing the last hour, then put it out on the edge of the steam radiator clanking away beneath the window. He put his hand against the glass.

"How cold will it get tonight, Comrade Khrushchev?" he asked.

The First Secretary shrugged. "Ten below. Maybe more." He turned to face Castro. "A normal Russian autumn night. Some more vodka?"

Castro shook his head. He'd never developed a taste for the fiery Russian drink, preferring himself the various rum and whiskey concoctions common to the Caribbean. "A beer will be fine. I liked that Ukrainian beer you gave me the other day."

Khrushchev snapped his fingers and a white-jacketed waiter at the door disappeared immediately, heading for the First Secretary's well-stocked cellar and beer cabinet on the ground floor. He would be back with the Cuban's request in less than five minutes.

Twenty feet from the huge picture window, one step down in a comfortable sitting area, sprawled across several divans, were two more visitors to the First Secretary's Lenin Hills apartment. Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, the Defense Minister of the U.S.S.R., hunched over the edge of a low, glass top table, several folders of papers spread before him. Malinovsky was florid and red-faced, having had twice as much of the First Secretary's favorite Ukrainian vodka with peppers, Spertsem, as he normally consumed.

Across the carpeted sitting area, sitting back with his own papirosi tube, his head engulfed in acrid smoke, was Vladimir Semichastny, Chairman of the Committee on State Security, the KGB.

"Shall we resume, Comrade Minister?" Khrushchev suggested, waving with his hand toward the other men.

Castro nodded silently. He had come to Moscow for one main reason and that was to extract as much additional military aid, as many tanks and artillery pieces and rifles as he possibly could. Khrushchev had stuck him in one long meeting after another, all of them well lubricated with vodka and Castro had come to suspect that the First Secretary was doing his utmost to impair and otherwise hamper his usually keen judgement. Fidel had told him about it a week ago. "It's the way the rusos do business. They can't write their names without making a toast."

Raul Castro took his seat between Malinovsky and Semichastny, more aware than ever of feeling like a prisoner of these inebriated thugs than an honored foreign dignitary.

They had spent the last three hours, through a twelve course dinner in the First Secretary's private dining room, and too many toasts to fraternal cooperation to count, discussing and agreeing to platitudes on security, military and intelligence cooperation between their two countries. The talks had bogged down an hour ago over the disposition of the two stolen Soviet warheads.

Malinovsky spoke, his tongue thick, his eyes red. "You realize, Comrade Minister, that eventually, you'll have to return those warheads. They are Soviet state property."

"Real cooperation," Khrushchev added, "can't begin until you remove the stolen warheads from the United States and return them to General Beloborodov. Then, there is the matter of the casualties the General suffered at Bejucal. What am I to say to the families of the men you killed?"

Raul Castro lit another cigarette. "You sold us out! What do you expect us to do? Seven months ago, you came to Fidel and told him the Soviet Union would guarantee our security with nuclear missiles. Once they were in place, the Yanquis wouldn't dare invade our country. But the Yanquis made threats and you backed out and you didn't even ask us or inform us." Castro picked up some of Malinovsky's papers and flung them to the carpet. "We just want to ensure our own survival. The Cuban people want this Revolution to succeed--"

"And so do we," said Khrushchev. "Mikoyan and the old Bolsheviks practically cried when you marched into Havana three years ago. Here was a real people's revolution, throwing off the oppressors by themselves. We have to help you."

"Then help us by understanding us. You had dozens of warheads in Cuba--"

"Thirty-eight, to be exact," growled Malinovsky, grunting as he bent over to retrieve his scattered papers.

"--and we have borrowed two, that's all. In any case, the result is the same as your Operation Anadyr, isn't it? Have we not accomplished the same thing you wished to achieve by sending missiles to Cuba in the first place? We've placed the Americans under the same threat as the rest of us. And they don't like it one bit."

Castro's explanation was interrupted by a staff aide, who appeared in the room as if by magic, handing the First Secretary a message form. Khrushchev dismissed the aide, then put on his pince-nez spectacles and read the dispatch. After a few seconds, he paled and slowly handed the form to Malinovsky. Khrushchev wearily removed his spectacles.

"It seems" he said to the others, "that the Americans have taken exception to your little gamesmanship.

Raul finally read the dispatch, after Malinovsky and Semichastny had looked at it. The message consisted of a single telex page, from the Foreign Ministry, received in the last hour in a transmission from Ambassador Alekseev. It described the opening hours of a new, American assault. American aircraft were attacking targets in and around Havana, as well as military airfields west of the capital, troop concentrations and armored vehicle marshaling yards. There had been casualties in Mariel, at the port, and around La Esperanza, which had suffered the most intense bombardment of the whole island. Mikoyan had added a few comments, from his hotel room, where he was still under house arrest, but allowed visitors. General Pliyev, said the Ambassador also had communications intercepts from American naval forces near the island. It appeared, from all indications, that an invasion was imminent. Fidel had already issued a combate de alarma, and mobilized the militia, the Guardia Rural and all armed forces. The Presidente was in the underground bunker at the moment, the Point One headquarters at Vedado having been bombed into rubble two hours ago.

Khrushchev was red with fury. He couldn't say it to Raul Castro, but he knew perfectly well that he owed a lot to the Americans, possibly even his life. They had warned him about the impending coup just a few days ago. The whole thing had been a close call, but the Party and the leadership had survived. There had been casualties in the fighting around the center of Moscow. And, he knew, thinking of Brezhnev and Shelepin and the rest of the plotters, there would probably be more.

Now, what was Kennedy up to? He was trying to take advantage of the situation, that was clear enough. The Americans weren't fools, despite what the Cubans thought. Kennedy had taken it upon himself to strike directly at the heart of the problem.

Malinovsky was already on the phone to the Ministry at Frunze Street, talking with Gribkov and others at the General Staff. After a few minutes of yelling, he hung up, then asked permission of the First Secretary to head over to the Ministry. Khrushchev waved him off.

"Kennedy is using the situation," he told the others. The First Secretary paced back and forth in front of the picture window, now a white swirling mass of snow. "He's using the situation to improve the position of the U.S. in the Caribbean. Since he has violated the agreement we had, we should do the same in Europe and perhaps elsewhere."

"We should call a meeting of the Presidium," suggested Semichastny. "An emergency meeting."

"In time," Khrushchev was thoughtful. "First, I want to dictate a letter. Put my thoughts together. Vladimir Illych, why don't you take Comrade Raul with you? Show him Dom Dva, our intelligence center at Dzerzhinsky Street. You haven't seen that yet."

Rather brusquely, Khrushchev ended the evening's meeting and ushered the two of them out. When he was alone, he fixed himself another vodka, munched on some salty bread, and seated himself at the ornate writing table beside the fireplace. For the next thirty minutes, he scribbled out several scenarios, ready to put the situation before the Presidium when the meeting was finally called. The First Secretary listened to the clock chime 12:30 and shook his head ruefully, sipping at the vodka.

No sleep for anyone tonight.

By one a.m., the First Secretary had sketched out several responses to the Americans' brazen assault on Cuba. He decided he would carry the letters with him to his Kremlin office, where he would have the duty staff in the Presidium offices type them up and make copies. Khrushchev leaned back in the chair and stretched, pleased with his efforts. Cooperating with the Americans in finding the K-series bombs had always seemed unnatural, a violation of the natural law of state relations. Now, they could dispense with that. Unwittingly, John Kennedy has given us a way out and a weapon to change the balance of power, forever.

He knew he would have no trouble getting the approval of the Presidium. Sheep follow the flock, he reminded himself, even the bad ones, like Leonid Illych Brezhnev. With a modicum of debate and the issuance of the proper orders, thereafter, the Red Army Group of Forces Germany would soon be on the move. On the move across the borders of the Allied sector. In less than a day, the whole of the city of Berlin would be sealed off and the capitalist dagger at the throat of socialism would be removed, in one master stroke. It was perfect.

Khrushchev gathered his papers and stuffed them in a leather satchel. Then he rang Fyodor to get the ZIL limousine ready for the short ride over to the Kremlin.

The trip took about twenty minutes, owing to poor visibility across the Tchaikovsky Bridge and slick streets on the Kalinin Prospect approach to the citadel. Khrushchev made use of the delay by using the limousine radiotelephone. He rang up Suslov, and several others, tersely explaining the situation, and then had the pleasure of rousing Brezhnev himself from a deep sleep. Unlike the Russian wolf, who prowled the taiga from dusk to dawn, Leonid Illych was groggy and thick with a hangover. Khrushchev barked into the phone. There will be an emergency meeting of the Presidium at two a.m. All members should be there. We have important decisions to make. Before Brezhnev could respond, the First Secretary hung up.

The lighted turrets of the Troitskaya Tower materialized out of the gloom, still pockmarked with shell and bullet holes. Khrushchev's ZIL sped through the gate without slowing and pulled to a stop at the south entrance to the Council of Ministers Building. In a driving wind flecked with ice and sleet, the First Secretary went in and made his way to the second-floor offices of the Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. There he found Raul Castro, waiting patiently in the outer chamber of the conference room, hands behind his back, studying a marble bust of Lenin.

"Comrade Minister, back from Dom Dva so soon?"

Castro scowled. "I insisted to Comrade Semichastny, when I learned of this meeting of your Presidium, that he bring me here. I have things to say. I demand to be heard."

Khrushchev shrugged out of his greatcoat. It was going to take some work to calm the Cuban down, he could see that.

"I never should have agreed to dismantle the missiles. Fidel was right and I admit it, though he is impulsive. And," Khrushchev wagged a finger in the Minister's face--"he still must give the stolen warheads back."

"Comrade First Secretary," Castro said, "my country is under attack. We have a mutual defense treaty--you've pledged your word as a Communist to help us defend our revolution. What will you do? We need help now. Release your men and weapons to us and let us fight the Yanquis on the beaches."

"Not to worry. You'll have plenty of help. It's all decided. I have only to present this matter to the Presidium and you'll have your guns and tanks." Khrushchev took his seat at the end of the long walnut table and poured water from a carafe. He sipped thoughtfully. "While the Americans are preoccupied with the Caribbean crisis, we will correct an historic mistake in Central Europe."

The twelve members of the Presidium filtered in over the next half hour. Each one was greeted in turn by the First Secretary, with apologies for the lateness of the hour, and then by Raul Castro. Even Brezhnev was treated no differently, though the gruff, dark-haired party boss nodded grimly, his eyes momentarily narrowing, as Khrushchev grasped his big hand in a quick handshake.

Before the First Secretary could bring the meeting to order, a Presidium staff courier scurried into the room, handing Khrushchev a yellow telex sheet, another message. The First Secretary read quickly, scowling through his spectacles as he finished the note. He slapped the paper onto the table.

"Bad news, Nikita Sergeyevich?" asked Suslov, cleaning off his own glasses.

"What's the message about?" asked Kosygin.

"A dispatch from Dobrynin, in Washington, from the embassy." Khrushchev scanned the note, reading portions...."He says Fidel has issued an ultimatum, from Havana. Even while the capital is under attack by the Americans, Fidel has warned Kennedy that both New York and Washington are under immediate nuclear threat. He warns Kennedy to call off the attack or--"

"Or what?" asked Suslov, impatient.

Khrushchev sat down heavily, pushing the note over to Suslov. "--or New York will be destroyed by atomic bomb."

"One of our bombs!" said Ponomarev. He glared at Raul Castro, seated at the end of the table opposite Khrushchev. "We have a thief here, don't we, comrades?"

Suslov squinted at the telex page, following the text with his finger. "What about the bomb in Washington? He says nothing about that. Maybe, we should attack Cuba, too. Make sure Fidel doesn't cause any more mischief."

"He's going to start an atomic war yet," said Brezhnev. "Remember that message he sent us, urging us to fire missiles at the Americans. Now, he's gone one better. He's got his own bombs to threaten Kennedy."

"Our bombs," Ponomarev corrected him. "He's got our bombs. And Kennedy holds us responsible. If Fidel blows up New York, Moscow won't be far behind."

Raul Castro rose and shook his fist at the gathering. "My hermano is a soldier. That's all. He wants Cuba to be free--we all want that. You've said so yourself. You promised us you would defend the Cuban Revolution. But when the Americans object, you run like frightened dogs. Where can we run? We have no choice--fight or die or become Yanqui slaves." Castro was shaking with anger. "We have already spent far too much time under their heels as it is. Better to die in atomic war than live like that!"

Khrushchev stood up himself. He held out both hands, imploring Castro to sit. "Please, comrade, we're all soldiers here. Sit. Let's discuss this rationally. Fidel's upset, I can see that, and I should have consulted with him on the missiles. But time was short, and the situation grave--you saw that, surely. What good is Cuba free if the world dies in holocaust? That was my main objective--to prevent the destruction of the earth. Kennedy's got the Pentagon to deal with--I didn't know what he might be forced to do. For you, for us, I had to accommodate Kennedy before it was too late."

Castro glowered at him but sat down. Khrushchev followed, adding:

"Comrades, I had a plan. Right here--" he waved a sheet he had pulled from his leather satchel--"it's all written down. A plan to liberate Berlin from Allied occupation. I was going to use Kennedy's preoccupation with Cuba and the Caribbean to make our move in East Germany, and push the Americans and the British out once and for all." He leaned forward on his elbows, pointing at Raul Castro. "Even Cuba would have benefited from such a socialist victory. But now, Comrade Fidel had robbed us of a chance to correct this historic mistake."

He described the plan, worked out with Malinovsky and the General Staff over the last day in some detail, citing units, strengths, the highways Marshal Konev would use to secure the land routes into East Germany and seal off the approaches to Berlin. "It's all here, comrades, and we could do it, we could have Berlin in our hands in less than three days. I'm convinced of it. But now--now, we dare not go ahead with it. Not with our bombs threatening America's most important cities. I know what Kennedy will do if one of our bombs destroys an American city. He'll do it because the Pentagon will force him into it. We can't let that happen."

Malinovsky interjected, "Comrade First Secretary, we should at least raise our own defense readiness. Condition Two, at the least."

There was a chorus of approval around the table.

Suslov shook his fist. "We have to protect our own people from Kennedy's madness."

"Comrades," Brezhnev cut in, "if Fidel steals our bombs and explodes them in American cities, Kennedy will be the least of our troubles. Would we offer Moscow to them if New York is destroyed?"

Khrushchev didn't like the course of the discussion and cut it off with a sweep of his hand. "Marshal Malinovsky, there's agreement on your proposal. Issue the orders to raise our defense condition to match the Americans."

"At once, Comrade First Secretary."

"For now," Khrushchev added, "we wait on the Berlin matter. Marshal, inform Konev not to move any further toward their strike positions. Keep the maneuvers down. Let's not give Kennedy any more reason to press the button. We'll wait and see how the situation in America is resolved."

Suslov asked, "What about the investigation? We have agents on the scene, looking for the bombs?"

"We do," Khrushchev admitted. "For the time being, we are cooperating with the American FBI, helping them locate and recover the K-12 and K-5 bombs. Is that not true, Vladimir Illych?"

Semichastny nodded. "Our agents are giving us excellent intelligence. This cooperation has been a gold mine for our State Security. We provide the Americans with a little information about the bombs, just enough to sound truthful. In return, we've learned a great deal about how the FBI works on major investigations, how their counterintelligence operations function. We've learned more than years of covert operations would have gotten us. When this is all over, we'll have a complete picture of FBI operations and practice. Imagine what that will mean for our intelligence activities."

"If we can recover our bombs intact," Khrushchev said, "no doubt, Kennedy and the Americans will be grateful. That's the time to seize the initiative on Berlin. When the Americans are too preoccupied with Cuba.

Raul Castro protested. "The bombs are security for Cuba. They keep the Americans away."

"They haven't kept the Americans away today, have they?" asked Suslov.

Castro's face was a picture of pain. "If you seize the bombs our guerrillas have put in place, my country will be overrun. I assure you we won't let that happen."

"Nor will we," Khrushchev answered. "Communists can't stand by when other Communists are fighting reactionaries. Perhaps, just a little pressure--not the full operation we planned--but a reminder of the tactical situation, a twist of the screw in Berlin, will give the Americans caution."

11-6-62, Tuesday

Schmalkalden, East Germany

10:45 p.m.

Lieutenant First Rank Vladimir Deryatnikov, commanding officer of the 'Starzha' Platoon, 4th Motor Rifle Division of the 8th Guards Army, climbed out of the turret of the T-54 tank and leaped down to the ground. He walked over to the edge of the two-lane highway the platoon was blocking and accepted the radio mike from the soldier manning the signals equipment aboard the BTR-60. Deryatnikov listened grimly, nodded once, grunted an order and gave the mike back to the sergeant.

"The spotters have them in sight," he told his driver, climbing back on to the foredeck of the thirty-six ton tank. He slipped inside the turret and situated himself on the commander's seat. "Give me the platoon radio." The gunner handed up the mike and Deryatnikov took a look around and behind his own tank, spying the column of eight T-54s spread out on the highway behind him. Flanking the tanks, a column of BTRs, each carrying sixteen troops, was barely visible in the heavy mist wafting across the road. In all, 'Starzha' Platoon mounted forty-eight riflemen for dismounted infantry operations and small-unit assaults, plus the massed firepower of eight 100-mm main guns on the tanks, each carrying thirty-four rounds of armor-piercing ammunition.

Deryatnikov rang up the platoon assault frequency, hoping and praying in the back of his mind that all the firepower would be enough.

"Platoon, this is Starzha Leader. Enemy convoy in sight. About five kilometers west of us, on the highway. Assume garrison positions. And load your guns!"

For Lieutenant Deryatnikov, the mission assigned by Major Simonov at the headquarters compound at Erfurt was maddeningly vague, a fact that even the Major was forced to admit in the face of some of the Lieutenant's questions.

Simply put, Starzha Platoon was assigned checkpoint duty, twenty kilometers inside the East German border along the Leipzig Highway, one of several road corridors assigned to the Americans in their never-ending job of protecting and supplying the foolish West Berliners. On paper, the mission was straight-forward: block the corridor and prevent an American military convoy from proceeding any further than the Werra River bridge near Schmalkalden until the convoy commanders produced proper authorizing documentation from the Allied Control Council. Such documentation authorized military convoys along the highways of the German Democratic Republic, a sovereign state and member of the Warsaw Pact. Convoys without such documentation were subject to inspection and seizure, as the Council permitted the inspectors to impound any equipment or materials not on the approved list. The fact was that the East Germans and the Soviets had never once stopped a legitimately authorized convoy, after the Berlin Airlift crisis in 1948.

Lieutenant First Rank Deryatnikov did not want to be the first to break that long string of events.

The platoon's orders were clear enough and it was well practiced in garrison duty, in the 8th Guards Army sector. The Major had read the orders out loud in the command post, just to make sure Deryatnikov understood them. Upon signal from forward spotters at the border crossing, the platoon was to take up positions along both sides of the Leipzig Highway, revetting the T-54s into the thick pine and fir woods along the road, four tanks to each side. The tanks were to be separated by no more than fifty meters, in the gaps of which were to positioned six of the eight BTR armored fighting vehicles. Riflemen would assume proper firing positions on the ground and in the woods around the vehicles. The other two BTRs were positioned in staggered pattern in the exact center of the highway, and metal fencing with attached gate arms lain across the road, completely blocking further travel. If the American convoy tried to run the checkpoint, they would have to slow down enough to negotiate the BTRs blocking their path. That would expose them to withering AK-47 and tank cannon fire from both sides.

By the time the platoon had taken up garrison stations, Deryatnikov could hear the low grumble of American Army truck engines, a few hundred meters away through the trees. He watched from the side of the road, as the first two-ton flatbed of the convoy, bearing the white star insignia of the U.S. Army came trundling around the turn and slowed slightly, though it didn't stop.

Looking beyond the first several trucks, Deryatnikov's eyes went up. For the first time since he had been posted to the 8th Guards in Erfurt, the Americans were running a convoy with tank carriers as well as half-ton and two-ton trucks and Jeeps. Stretching around the turn for as far as he could see, American M-48 tanks squatted like black metal beasts on their platforms, guns elevated.

Deryatnikov's throat went dry.

Division headquarters had insisted there was no great danger in setting up an inspection station, despite the worldwide tensions emanating from the Caribbean. Deryatnikov wasn't so sure. Nor was he convinced the Americans were going to stop. He ordered two riflemen to step beyond the gate arm and halt the Americans by hand signals.

They did but the convoy clanked on, bearing down on the gate arm and the first BTR at approximately ten kilometers an hour. For Deryatnikov, it was a slow-motion nightmare.

The Americans were not going to stop. In dozens of inspections, this had never happened--

By hand, the Lieutenant ordered the first echelon of T-54s to leave their revetments and block the road. At the same time, the BTR-60 in front began backing out of the way. Still, unaccountably, the Americans kept coming, refusing even to slow down.

What the hell?--

Days later, in debriefings about the incident at Schmalkalden, Vladimir Deryatnikov would say, over and over again, that the collision was inevitable, that his riflemen had given plenty of warnings to the Americans, that the American's lead truck made no real effort to stop or swerve to the side, that yes, it was possible his brakes failed, but that was doubtful, and in any case, they was no room to maneuver, and the first collision, a slow-speed impact crumpled the front end of the truck, nudged the T-54 a scant centimeter backward, if at all, and thereafter, events followed as dictated by the laws of physics, the laws governing inertia and momentum.

The chain reaction accident, involving a Soviet T-54 tank, a BTR-60 armored infantry vehicle, and four U.S. Army two-ton trucks, plus an M-48 tank carrier, was over in less than thirty seconds. It covered a distance of some two hundred meters, Grinding, tearing metal shrieked through the woods as men scurried for cover and angry shouts filled the air.

Deryatnikov himself had dove for the rain-filled culvert on the side of the road. When the collisions were over and the last piece of fender had landed in the woods, the Lieutenant dragged himself out of the muck and tried wiping himself off, unsuccessfully. Disgusted with himself, he knew no one would mistake him for a Soviet Army officer looking like this. He fingered mud from his eyes, tried his cap on and marched up to the road, finding knots of soldiers from both sides yelling and gesturing to each other. Beside the second truck in the collision, an American officer, perhaps the convoy commander, was gathering several squads of infantry. Deryatnikov's eyes narrowed.

That was a serious breach of protocol. Never before, with any American convoy, had the infantry been ordered out or even allowed to dismount. The Lieutenant yelled for his own riflemen to form up around the smashed BTR. Starzha Platoon riflemen began materializing out of the woods. The Americans halted where they were.

Further down the convoy, Deryatnikov saw a sight that made his blood run cold. Just at the turn in the road, one of the Americans' M-48 tanks was slowly backing down the ramp of its carrier. As Deryatnikov watched, another M-48, having disembarked, clanked up along the side of the road, its 90-mm main gun traversing.

The Lieutenant ran back to the gathering of T-54s and shouted up for the front tanks to leave their blocking positions and move forward. The lead tank began re-positioning itself, leveling its own 100-mm gun on the American armor. Behind, a second T-54 swiveled on its tracks and lumbered ahead along the top of the culvert.

A loud pop, an engine backfire, erupted and black oil smoke filled the air. Before Deryatnikov could react, one of the T-54s fired on a target at the end of the American convoy. Instantly, an American truck disappeared in a red ball of flame and smoke, tires and doors cartwheeling through the air. The 100-mm round had twisted the truck frame into smoking ruins. A secondary explosion, the fuel tank, boomed! and flames geysered into the sky. Soldiers, some on fire, poured out of the billowing smoke and dirt, scattering and flailing in terror.

In seconds, every man in the road crossing was diving for cover. Through the smoke, an American M-48 wheeled up, lowering its gun. The muzzle flashed and the 90-mm round detonated overhead, blowing the turret of the lead T-54 into the sky. The six-ton piece spun and pitched over, plowing into the trees with a thud.

Vladimir Deryatnikov flung himself into the grass as small-arms fire crackled overhead. He crawled sideways over to the relative safety of a truck, then shouted for the platoon's squad leaders to spread out, flank the enemy, get into the woods and bring fire from the sides. He duckwalked back to the second T-54, now maneuvering around the shattered, burning hulk of the first tank, seeking a firing lane. Flinching as American machine gun fire plinked off the hull, he grabbed the radio set connected to the rear comm port and told the tank commander to fire at the M-48s, fire at will, blast them off the highway. After he'd given orders for that tank, he dashed back to do the same for the remainder of Starzha Platoon.

The last tank belched and clanked its way out of the woody revetment, swiveling on its tracks and Deryatnikov scrambled up on the rear deck, then went down the hatch headfirst, the strong arms of the driver helping to cushion his fall. The hatch cover banged down after him.

Six kilometers west of the East German town of Schmalkalden, along the Leipzig Highway, a pitched tank battle had developed. It had erupted from simple misunderstandings surrounding a simple highway road accident. Tensions were high. Yet despite strict procedures and years of protocol regarding American military convoys and Soviet inspection teams, a single spark had set off a fierce duel of close-range tank cannon and machine-gun fire. Muzzle flashes, explosions and small-arms fire crackled and flared in the misty late evening gloom of the countryside.

Inside the command T-54, Lieutenant First Rank Deryatnikov silently prayed to a God he wasn't even sure existed.

11-6-62, Tuesday

The Atlantic Ocean

11:15 p.m.

Six hundred miles northeast of Cuba's Cape Maisi, the destroyer Aurora (DL-5) heeled over hard to starboard, as her captain, Commander Rowland Petty called out a new heading change. Nearly pegging the inclinometer, the Aurora cut a wide foamy swath through the Atlantic whitecaps, as she continued prosecuting the sonar contact she had detected an hour before. Petty stood behind the sonarman manning the AN/BQQ-20 console, while the hull-mounted array actively pinged below, seeking metal, seeking the Russian sub Petty knew was there.

The cat and mouse game had been going strong since 2200 hours, when the Aurora was at the far western limit of her elliptical quarantine course, holding up the southern end of Task Force 136's Walnut Line. Chief Riley and the sonarman were convinced they had pegged a Soviet Foxtrot. SUBLANT, not to mention a pair of P-3's from Admiral "Whitey" Taylor's ASW squadrons at Cecil Field had put out an advisory two weeks ago about Soviet submarine activity in the western Atlantic. Aurora had charted the contact and stayed on her tail so far, dropping a round of depth charges less that half an hour ago, without effect.

Aurora's hull-mounted sonar still pinged and got solid returns from a submerged contact, running generally west-southwest, toward Cuba, approximately four hundred feet down.

Petty worked with the P-3s orbiting overhead, dropping their own rounds of sonobuoys, to drive the Foxtrot away from the main line of the quarantine and force her to surface. By "boxing in" the pattern of active ping returns, Aurora's sonarman had a general idea of the Foxtrot's location and worked for nearly two hours, to keep the sub contained and targetable. But she was slippery and each round of depth charges had missed their marks.

Unknown to Commander Petty, the tactical situation was rather more complicated than he imagined, for running on a course heading of 265 degrees at a depth of four hundred twenty five feet, there were in fact two Soviet Foxtrot-class diesel-electric submarines. Both boats, each almost three hundred feet in length and 2300 tons submerged, were running the same course heading, separated by less than a thousand yards. The close station, combined with heavy ship traffic in the vicinity, combined to confuse and deceive the Aurora's sonarmen as to the number of contacts they were prosecuting. On the plot over the AN/BQQ console was a single threat, designated

Fox One. The hull-mounted array had been unable to effectively resolve the contacts from two separate submerged objects. To Aurora, the twin Foxtrots were seen as one.

Per quarantine procedures, Petty had first given the Soviet sub a chance to surface without being attacked. Submarine Surfacing and Identification Procedures was a stapled sheaf of papers lying on top of the Chief of the Watch's station, consulted regularly for approved and prohibited actions, as they had been dictated by the CNO at the beginning of the Missile Crisis.

"U.S. forces coming in contact with unidentified submerged submarines will make the following signals to inform the submarine that he may surface in order to identify himself: Signals follow--quarantine forces will drop four or five harmless explosive sound signals which may be accompanied by the international code signal 'IDKCA'. This signifies that the submarine should immediately rise to the surface. Sonar signals made on the underwater communications system shall be transmitted in the 8 KC frequency range. Submerged submarines, on hearing this signal, shall surface on an easterly course."

Five separate attempts had been made to contact the Foxtrot and allow him to surface, but the Russian skipper was having none of it, which didn't surprise Petty at all. After the fifth attempt with no response, no change heading, no hull-popping transients indicating a submarine preparing to surface, Petty decided to cease the friendliness and get down to real business. He ordered Aurora to battle stations and sent command to the aft launchers to make ready depth charges.

Commander Rowland Petty didn't know that Aurora had run across two Foxtrots and he also didn't know that one of them, hull number Z-178, six years out of the Severodvinsk yard in northern Russia, captained by Commander First Rank Alexandr Leptev, had suffered a steam plant casualty in the second depth charging. Z-178 had ruptured steam piping in her engine room, and half a dozen badly burned engine room sailors, and was rapidly losing way as her propulsion system struggled to turn the main shaft. On advice from the engineering officer, Commander Leptev had decided to bring his boat to the surface and seek assistance from Soviet destroyers known to be in the area. He transmitted his decision to the following boat, the Z-209, and ordered ballast tanks blown for a battle surface. As a precaution, suggested the Z-209's skipper, Captain First Rank Skudin, why don't you open your outer torpedo tube doors. If the Americans attack, you can get off a few shots and keep them away until help arrives.

Leptev thought that a good idea. The outer doors of all six bow tubes of the Z-178 were opened and warshots made ready. That done, Leptev gave the order to bring her around to a course heading of 180 degrees, and sound the active pinger three times. This would signal the Americans that she was coming up.

Unknown to Leptev, the Aurora's hull-mounted hydrophones suffered a sound transient at the exact moment the Z-178's three pings were transmitted. Months later, in official investigations of the incident, no cause other than perhaps a rock slide in some nearby underwater canyons would be offered as explanation for the failure of the Aurora to properly detect and process the Z-178's signal.

At the moment the Z-178 began to blow ballast and rise to the surface, a P-3 Orion ASW aircraft from VF-45 (The Pelicans) out of NAS Jacksonville began dropping a general search spread of sonobuoys. Cruising at five hundred feet, the first of the buoys took several minutes to reach their optimum three hundred and fifty feet "listening" depth. Immediately, screw noises from the Z-178, as she came about to an easterly heading, were heard in the earphones of the P-3's TACCO, the tactical coordinator. Contact was called, the Aurora was advised, and the P-3 headed further east, preparing to drop another spread, this time a four thousand yard barrier pattern at the extreme east end of the original pattern.

With the screw noise contact and the change in the Foxtrot's heading, Petty had ordered the Aurora onto an intercept heading. She crossed over the presumed course of the Foxtrot seven minutes later, and Petty ordered another round of depth charges launched. A few moments later, the destroyer's stern end bobbed as each round detonated its four-hundred pound explosive charge, sending a mushroom of spray into the night sky behind the destroyer.

Trailing the action in the Z-209, Captain Skudin was furious. Despite their publicity, the Americans were little more than murderers. Hadn't Z-178 signaled she was surfacing? She'd already come about to an easterly heading. Hadn't the American sonar operators heard the ballast tanks blown, the hull-popping, the hum of the bow planes angling up? What in the name of Lenin are they doing?

To Captain First Rank Skudin, the outcome was certain and he wasted no time preparing his own response. What did Fleet regulations matter if the Americans weren't going to play the game? The rules of engagement given him, in a briefing at the operations center at Dock 20, Severomorsk, was clear enough. Do nothing to provoke the Americans. Shadow the freighter convoy across the Atlantic. Your mission is to prevent American submarines from interfering with the convoy. It was quite clear, Fleet advisories and rules of engagement notwithstanding, that the Americans had gone quite a bit beyond the boundaries of their publicly professed quarantine procedures. To fire on a submarine signaling a surface, a submarine following the very strict procedures the Americans had themselves broadcast to the world, was unconscionable.

To save the Z-178 from further damage, Skudin made up his mind that drastic action was necessary. To the best of his knowledge, the Americans had somehow failed to detect his own Z-209.

Skudin swung around the cramped control room and hung on the broad shoulders of the chief, himself studying the oscilloscope flickering of the sonar display. Four ships in the vicinity, counting the Aurora, known to Skudin as Contact Eight. Four ships and the surveillance planes overhead. The odds were not good, but he couldn't let the Z-178 be attacked so flagrantly without responding. Every submariner took an oath upon graduating from the Nakhimov Academy, an oath of loyalty first to the Party, then to the Rodina, Mother Russia herself, then to the Morskoi Flot and finally to his fellow sailors. An oath to protect and defend, to the death if necessary. Skudin had always taken the words quite seriously.

"Bring her around smartly," he called out to the chief. "Course 177 degrees. Increase speed to flank. Open outer doors."

Two minutes later, the firing computer had a target solution on the Aurora and the bow tubes were flooded, ready for firing. Skudin knew perfectly well that if the Americans hadn't detected the Z-209 before, with the firing preparations, they would surely know of them by now. He grimaced at the prospect ahead but it was duty and Leptev was a comrade. Indeed, even as he stepped over to check the planesmen's indicators for bow plane angle, Sonar reported a blade pitch change in the screw rpms of Contact Eight, indicating she was preparing to change course again, or speed up.

A new solution was computed and locked in. Skudin held course at 155 degrees, flank speed. He'd need the speed after the shots, to snap turn away from the engagement and head deep. He waited impatiently, sucking hard on a cigarette, as the sonarman counted down the decreasing distance. At two thousand yards, Skudin gave the order.

"Match bearings and shoot. Tubes One and Two."

The Foxtrot-class boat rocked slightly as the torpedoes were ejected in a slug of high-pressure water. When the fish were away, Skudin ordered the diving officer to take the Z-209 deep, below the thermal layer, at least three hundred meters. The deck angle dropped and the boat heeled to port as the helmsman swung her around to a more northerly course, heading 330 degrees, north and west of the American ships.

As the Z-209 maneuvered deeper and away, two 21-inch Raduga battery-powered torpedoes, running at forty-four knots, streaked along at a depth of twenty meters toward the Aurora. Two minutes and ten seconds, after leaving the bow tubes of the Z-209, both Radugas impacted the American destroyer. One hit directly amidships, detonating its hundred and fifty pound explosive charge just outside an auxiliary machine room near the main boiler.

The second torpedo blew off the forward third of the destroyer's hull.
CHAPTER 19

11-7-62, Wednesday

Homestead Air Force Base

1:10 a.m.

Dwight David Eisenhower looked out the windows of the C-130 as it turned off base leg for the final approach to Runway 22 at Homestead Air Force Base. The base was a small planet of light in an otherwise dark south Florida landscape, with the blackness of the Atlantic to the east swallowing up the eastern horizon. For a moment, the former General of the Army, Supreme Allied Commander, and President of the United States entertained a wisp of a memory, a memory of a windy night in early June eighteen years before, in a land enslaved across the ocean, where men much like those surrounding him, swept out of the dark skies and brought fire and death to the enemy.

Would the same thing happen tonight, he wondered? His rump felt the Herky Bird settle onto Homestead's well-worn tarmac and the props reversed, shuddering the aircraft as if slowed and taxied to a stop some five hundred yards from the main operations building. The flight line was ablaze with lights and other aircraft, normal as any Air Force base might look at the tail end of a major crisis. What was not normal was the gathering of tanks, M-48s and M-60s by the look of them, at the end of the other runway, Runway 18. Floodlit and dusted by the downdrafts of helicopters, the tanks and mortars and light infantry surrounded a single plane, caught like a fly in the web of light. A Navy carrier on-board delivery aircraft known as a C-2 Greyhound. Serial number N14146.

Inside the cabin of the C-2, Marine General Olin Haley tapped a pencil against his teeth, studying the scene outside the window, wondering who or what had just arrived in the dark green Herky Bird.

Dwight Eisenhower had company on the flight down from Andrews. Riding along at the orders of the President were Admiral Anderson, the CNO, and General Shoup, Commandant of the Marine Corps. Between the three of them, the President had reasoned, they ought to be able to handle Olin Haley.

Kennedy had authorized the use of deadly force, if necessary.

Eisenhower saw through his porthole that the C-2 had started moving. The C-130 was making its last turn toward a final parking position. The General watched as Haley's aircraft somehow found a gap in the surrounding vehicles, trundled over the ground between Runway 22 and Runway 18 and pivoted onto the south-facing runway. Eisenhower went forward to the cockpit and instructed the C-130 pilot to back out onto the flight apron and head for the end of runway 18 where the C-2 sat, revving for its takeoff roll.

"I don't want him taking off," the General told the startled pilots. "Block the end of the runway with our aircraft."

A bit reluctantly, the pilots acknowledged and braked sharply, nearly sending the General pitching forward into the instrument panel. The Herky Bird's four Allison turboprops shuddered as the engineer cycled them back to speed, and the huge aircraft turned right, bouncing across the flight line. They zigzagged across several taxiways, as off in the distance, the C-2 jumped forward, starting its takeoff roll.

The C-130 pilot ran the throttles forward to nearly takeoff power, racing south down the taxiway, trying to get ahead of the C-2 and turn onto the end of the runway. Eisenhower held on as the plane swung hard right, bottoming its landing gear and scraping the left wing tip on the tarmac. Five thousand feet away, the C-2 was gaining speed, flaps down, charging right for them.

"General," asked the pilot, "do you really want to do this?"

"Turn, damn it!" Eisenhower yelled. "Get onto the runway and block that plane!"

The pilot glanced over at his co-pilot and accelerated through a sweeping righthand turn, then gunned the Allisons. For a few moments, the two planes raced toward each other from opposite ends of the runway. Fearing the worst, both pilots tightened their shoulder straps.

"Uh, General--?"

"Don't slow down yet, Major!"

The physics of the problem was simple, if harrowing. The C-130 needed to get to a spot on Runway 18 before the C-2 could, a spot signifying V2, the rotation speed, at which Haley's pilot would pull back its controls and the Greyhound would lift into the air. If the C-130 could reach that spot first, the C-2 would be forced to abort its takeoff roll. Failing that, both aircraft would slam into each other at a closing speed of nearly three hundred miles an hour.

Eisenhower had found himself a seat at the navigator's console and strapped in. Jesus Christ, I'm too old for this, he muttered, peering up through the windscreen to check the approach. The C-130 rocked along the runway, bouncing, gaining speed--

"Uh, General, shouldn't we--"

At the last possible second, the C-2 began slowing, smoke pouring from its brakes, as it slewed sideways, then slewed the other way, fishtailing down the runway. Eisenhower pitched forward in his shoulder straps as his own pilot stood on the brakes. Outside, the turboprops roared and shuddered the aircraft, reversing pitch. As the General watched, the C-2's starboard main gear collapsed and the aircraft skidded over, a sheet of sparks arcing into the night sky as it left the runway altogether and plowed into the soft muddy ground off to the side.

The Herky Bird's brakes ground and shrieked as the aircraft coasted to a stop, on top of the black skid marks freshly made.

Eisenhower unbuckled himself and lunged forward for a headset. "Major, dial me in. I need to talk to the tower."

The Major flipped a switch and the General was in contact with Homestead Ground Operations. A Lieutenant Kelly was on the line.

"Are you okay, General? We saw what happened--"

"Never mind that, Kelly. Just listen up, will you? Where's the base commander?"

"Right here, sir, I'll put him on."

Colonel Howell Raines' voice filled the cockpit, incredulous, doubting. "Raines here. Is this really General Eisenhower?"

Eisenhower rolled his eyes. "No, it's the Queen of England, Colonel. Now, listen up. I want a contingent of Air Police and anybody else out there who can fire a gun made ready, on the double. Set up a defensive perimeter around that aircraft. And for God's sake, somebody shoot out that bastard's tires. I don't want another chase down the runway like that again."

"General, Haley's got armed Marines aboard that aircraft. Maybe a platoon. If we're not careful here, we could have us a little shooting war right on the runway."

"Colonel," Eisenhower bit his lip to keep from saying what he really thought, "if we don't stop Olin Haley on this runway, right now, what happens here after that won't really matter a whole lot. Get your men moving."

Eisenhower consulted with Shoup and Anderson, back in the cabin.

The CNO's eyes blazed with anger. "He'll be court-martialed, at the very least. I want to talk to that traitor right now." Anderson headed up to the cockpit. David Shoup, Marine Corps Commandant, stayed behind.

"General, I know Haley, "Shoup said. "He won't give up. Never has. He's not a quitter. No sir, we'll have to storm that aircraft, one way or another."

Eisenhower was studying the arrival of the jeeps and several tanks, watching their deployment with a critical eye. "Maybe so, but we have to try. The President wants him alive if at all possible. To face military justice."

"You think he's really behind these excursions into Cuba?"

Eisenhower shrugged. "President Kennedy and his advisors showed me a lot of paperwork at the White House. From what I could see, Haley's guilty as sin. Not that Castro doesn't deserve every bit of it."

"Amen to that," Shoup muttered.

A blue sedan rolled up to the metal stairs beneath the C-130. Moments later, Colonel Raines climbed aboard, made his way down the length of the cargo hold, grabbing netting and lanyards all along the way and greeted Eisenhower and Shoup.

"General Eisenhower, Mr. President, it's a pleasure--" he began pumping Eisenhower's hand like a giddy child.

"Your men setting up, Colonel?"

Raines' face turned serious. "Yes sir. Check outside, General." They went to a nearby porthole at the loadmaster's station, one of only a few portholes inside the cargo hold. "See there? M-48 and M-60 tanks. All four corners of the aircraft. Gaps between have machine gun emplacements and light mortars. We've made an inner perimeter with the trucks, and every truck has four or five riflemen. Air Police, plus we borrowed a few Marines and airborne from one of the transports. They were just getting ready to take off for Gitmo."

"What about aerial?"

Raines showed Eisenhower the helicopters, circling like birds of prey over the runway, playing circles of light across the ground. "Two Hueys and a '54 Choctaw from the Army. Got 'em over here from the port of Miami. They were shipping out for Puerto Rico tonight. Took off right from the pier, gassed up from our stores."

"Very well, Colonel." Eisenhower saw that the loadmaster had a pull-out table, for handling paperwork and manifests. "This'll be our command post, for the time being General Shoup?"

"Yes, sir?"

"You said we'd probably have to assault that aircraft. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the possibilities."

Shoup came over to the table. The back of a loadout diagram was used as a makeshift map. Admiral Anderson, had returned from the cockpit, reporting no luck even reaching Olin Haley.

"Well, General, we got reports Haley's taken a platoon of Marines with him. If that's the case, and goddamn the leathernecks who ever betrayed their country, we'll have a devil of time getting aboard that Greyhound without serious casualties. We can blow the doors, and we can shoot our way in, but we may wind up with everybody dead in the process."

"I'm authorized to use whatever force is needed to subdue the man. I want to take him alive but if deadly force is required, we use it. Understood?"

They all nodded.

"What about the helicopters?" Eisenhower asked. "A vertical assault?"

Shoup drew some rough sketches on the diagram. "I was just coming around to that, General. I think that might be the way to go. Here, let me show you."

By three am, the assault force was in position and ready. Eisenhower, Shoup and Anderson had left the C-130 and taken up protected positions behind the outer defense line, a semi-circle of more trucks two hundred yards further out. In the back of a dark blue intra-base van, the three commanders checked off units and positions against the Marine Commandant's scribbled list.

"Wish we'd had this gear on Guadalcanal," Shoup told them. He squinted through some field glasses at the scene three hundred yards away, just off Runway 18.

It was a cool, humid but windy night in south Florida. The airspace around Homestead had been closed to all traffic for the duration of the assault, with approaching traffic diverted to Miami International or to MacDill or Patrick Air Force Bases further north. All ground movements within a mile of the assault area had been stopped. Non-essential personnel along the flight line and the fronts of the hangars were ordered inside, away from stray gunfire.

Base emergency vehicles, fire trucks and ambulances had been mobilized with all supplies and medical and support teams, just outside the outer defense perimeter, ready for casualties.

The tanks had been repositioned slightly, to act as a diversion. Now, both M-48s were behind the C-2, their guns lowered and rounds chambered, at angles to the rear fuselage, having backed off about a hundred yards.

The M-60s had moved to a mirror image position in front of the aircraft, in full view of the cockpit crew and, presumably, General Haley.

Behind the M-48s, two trucks of Air Police, in riot gear and face shields, and scattered airborne troopers from the 101st and Marines from the Second of the Fourth Regiment huddled in full combat gear, waiting for the go.

"Your call, General," Raines told Eisenhower. The men stepped outside the van into a stiff breeze, the tang of salt air fresh and strong, and studied the arrangements.

Eisenhower thought back to a fretful night in June 1944, when the lives of thousands hung on his decision. He had been here before, in the land of the lonely commander, ready to commit brave troops to battle. It wasn't any easier now than it had been before.

"You're sure this'll work?" he asked Shoup.

The Marine Commandant shrugged. "General, combat doesn't deal in certainties. We have the men, the firepower, and the positional advantage. It should work."

Eisenhower nodded. "Go."

Word flashed to the assault units, scattered around the runways, and taxiways. In less than a minute, the tanks opened fire. Their cannon, depressed to the lowest limits of their traverse, boomed in the night. Anti-tank rounds slammed into the landing gear of the C-2, and the concussion of the explosions nearly knocked Eisenhower off his feet. Enveloped in smoke, the C-2's wing tanks were nearly full of aviation kerosene. The anti-tank rounds cooked off the fuel and a thunderous set of explosions rocked the ground. The C-2's triple-tail blew off the rear of the aircraft and went skidding across the ground.

Almost immediately, the base fire trucks moved up, in line with four trucks bearing the ground assault force, now dismounted and using the trucks for cover. Water cannon arced into the raging inferno of flames, now engulfing the plane. Scattered gunfire echoed in the air, and the first of the Marines aboard the plane leaped through jagged holes in the fuselage, hitting the ground. They scrambled up, and started firing out at their attackers, dodging flames and falling debris.

The first wave was cut down by the assault force on the plane's port side. Staccato small-arms fire ripped the air, punctuated with the crackling of flames, now spreading into fuel-soaked ground around the plane. Overhead, the Army CH-54 helicopter materialized out of the dense black smoke, lowering itself gingerly over the flames licking the sides of the fuselage. Troopers from the 101st Air Assault scrambled down ladders and leaped to the ground just abreast of the C-2's rear loading ramp. One by one, the troopers hit the ground, crabwalked to the ramp and scrambled up into the belly of the plane.

Inside the cargo hold of the C-2, dense smoke mixed with shouts and scattered firing. As anticipated, the smoke filled the aircraft and made visibility impossible. The 101st troopers had counted on that effect. Working from a crouch, they made their way along the tie-down bolts and blackened cargo netting, sweeping forward, as much by feel as by sight. Faces and bodies appeared and disappeared. Any living face, anything moving, that didn't immediately surrender, was gunned down and left behind.

The assault squad reached the forward bulkhead of the cargo hold. Ahead, through a small hatch, was the cockpit and forward berthing for passengers. One trooper, a sergeant named Westover, stuck the muzzle of his M-14 inside the hatch, then followed cautiously with his head. Inside, the smoke was lighter, wisps really, though the place was hot as hell. Probably it would blow any second.

Sergeant Westover beheld an incredible sight.

At the engineer's console, surrounded by maps and papers, was none other than Major General Olin Haley. The pilot and co-pilot were dead, slumped over their control sticks, the forward windsceen blasted away. Flames licked up the side of the aircraft, occasionally spitting into the cockpit. Already, the insulation around the instrument panel was smoldering. Sparks arced behind the dash.

Haley smiled thinly at Westover. "Hello, Sergeant."

"General Olin Haley?"

Haley raised a .45 revolver from the console and leveled it at Westover's head, pressing against the soldier's temple. "The one and only."

Westover flinched and was about to attempt to raise the M-14 but a trooper from behind shoved him forward. The movement startled Haley and he fired his weapon. The discharge popped sharp and loud inside the cockpit and Westover's head exploded in a shower of blood and brains. He pitched forward onto the engine control levers.

Haley pushed Westover away and swung into the hatchway ready to lay down a curtain of fire, but was immediately clipped by an M-14 round in the shoulder. The impact slammed him backward and he lost his balance, twisting sideways into the gap between the engine levers and the control stick. His shoulder screamed fire and pain but he was stuck, momentarily, wedged in tight. He tried raising his .45 again, but found the muzzle of an M-14 right in his face.

"Not so fast, General" Haley looked up, through intense pain and saw the sweating face of a young Army Ranger, just a kid really, sighting down the barrel of the assault rifle. "Drop your weapon...Now!"

Haley opened his fingers and the service revolver clattered to the cockpit floor. The kid kicked it away, then was joined by several more faces, crowding in over his shoulder.

"Holy moly!"

"Man, Ricky got 'em! Come look and see, come up and look...."

The shoulder wound was painful but only a flesh wound. Haley offered no further resistance to arrest.

"Let's get the hell out of here, men," said Ricky, backing quickly out of the cockpit, M-14 still under Haley's upturned chin. "This sucker's gonna blow any second."

Crouching and seared by flames, the assault squad half dragged, half-carried Haley rearward, scuttling back through heavy smoke, tripping over bodies, until they smelled the cooler air of the rear loading ramp. One by one, they dropped down the ramp and hit the ground running, hustling Haley along with them. A truck pulled forward, dodging clumps of burning grass, and braked to a stop. Haley was thrown into the back, and the rest of the troopers piled in after him. The truck had just made its turn, when the rest of the aircraft fuel detonated behind them. The explosion lit up the night sky for several miles around, and the truck was blown onto two wheels by the concussion of the blast. Careening forward, it finally slammed back to the ground and skidded away from the flaming wreckage.

At the blue van serving as a command post, Olin Haley was handcuffed and brought before Eisenhower.

"Looks like your little war is over, General," Eisenhower said. He regarded the Marine coldly, circling Haley while the General stood at something like attention. Shoup and Anderson glared angrily on while Eisenhower sized up Haley. "The President told me he thought you'd respect higher authority. That you knew how take orders from superior officers." Eisenhower came nose to nose with the Marine. Haley flinched slightly. "Kennedy's a decent man, I suppose. But he was sure wrong about you."

Haley swallowed hard. "History will find me innocent."

Commandant Shoup came forward, hissing, "But the court-martial won't, I'm afraid. You'll be a guest of the government for a long time, if they don't stand you up in front of a firing squad first."

The CNO, Anderson, spoke up. "Where are the Secretary of Defense and the CJCS?"

Haley was made to sit on the door step to the back of the van. "You'll all regret what you've done here. All of you. You'll regret not getting rid of Castro while we have the means and the opportunity."

Eisenhower replied, "You're probably right, General. But we still believe in civilian control of the military here. That's a lesson you seem to have forgotten."

Haley said nothing. Eisenhower ordered him taken to the base stockade and Haley was bundled off into a jeep that had pulled up, accompanied by three armed Air Police troopers.

"What's going to happen to him?" Anderson asked.

"The President wants him back in Washington. General court-martial proceedings, I'm sure. Now, we'd better find Taylor and McNamara, before anything else happens."

Eisenhower rode in another truck, accompanied by Shoup and Anderson, to the COC building. The entire operations complex was surrounded by airborne troopers and Marines, in case Haley had any assistance coming. Eisenhower's truck was waved through with a quick salute.

Inside the Combat Operations Center, Eisenhower gathered together a squad of paratroopers from the 101st, 1st of the 3rd Regiment. They'd touched down at Homestead earlier in the day, a stopover before heading on to Cuba.

"Men, your trip's over. You all recognize me and I'm glad of it. Truth is, I'm retired, but the President asked me to step in and help out in this little...crisis. There's been some shooting on the base and we destroyed a Navy plane out there, but it had to be done. We had a commander get a little too aggressive with his orders, and we can't have that, not with atomic bombs and things like that in the background. This commander was refusing to obey direct orders of the Commander-in-Chief, so we had to take action. You saw some of that action outside.

"I'm sorry for the casualties, damn sorry. Better to have men die on the battlefield. I guess this base is kind of like a battlefield today. But we still got serious business to attend to. Men, the mission you're here for is canceled. This mission, whatever you were told, was not authorized by the National Command Authority, not by the President, nor the Secretary of Defense, nor anybody but the commander involved. In fact, he disobeyed direct orders to cease this operation. We do have men at this time, a few platoons I'm told, on the ground in Cuba. Fighting the Russians and the Cubans. They're not supposed to be there. And we're gonna get them out quick, before the damn thing escalates into nuclear war.

"Now, I need your help. The Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs came down here to put a stop to this little war. But the commander--(Eisenhower found he just couldn't say Haley's name to these men) had them arrested. They're on base somewhere. I need your help--now--to find them and get the proper command authority re-constituted. We got to get those men out of Cuba right away."

A young corporal in woodlands camou paint spoke up. "General, who is this commander you're talking about?"

Eisenhower had feared that very question. "He's well enough known, son. For the time being, I'd like to keep it quiet. You'll learn the details soon enough. Are you men with me, so far?"

"Yes, sir!" came a chorus of replies.

"All right, let's get organized. I need search parties for this building, for Base Operations, for all the hangars, the shops, everywhere."

The organizing of search parties took about five minutes. At Eisenhower's orders, the parties split up, each composed of four to six men, each heading in a different direction. Word had already come back from the stockade, in the basement of a supply building at the end of the flight line, that McNamara and Taylor weren't there. Colonel Raines had assigned men from the Air Police detachment to accompany the search parties.

Raines pulled Eisenhower aside. "General, I'm sorry for this mess. Believe me, we've always run a tight ship here at Homestead. I thought the Marines had put them in the stockade. That was the logical place. But Haley--"

Eisenhower squeezed the Colonel's arm. "Forget it. The man's demented. Everybody can see that. They're probably locked in a closet somewhere. I just hope they're okay."

A young Marine lieutenant appeared before the gathered officers, saluting Shoup, Anderson, Raines and Ike in turn.

"What is it, son?" Shoup asked. "This your post?"

Lieutenant Roy Cedars said, "Yes, sir. I'm the staff S-3 to General Haley. I'm the one who sent the inquiries to Headquarters."

Shoup's eyebrows shot up. He was about to light into the lieutenant but Eisenhower intervened.

"Save it, General. What's going on, Lieutenant?"

Cedars spread his hands helplessly. "Well, sir, the COC radio shack's just beyond that partition--" he pointed behind him--"and I think the yeoman there has Admiral Stone's ship on the line. That's the Dearborn, sir. She's running the op in Cuba, right now. I've been listening in to the sitreps--"

"What--?" Eisenhower headed for the tiny shack, bounding around the partitions to find yeoman Skiles hunched over the console, one earphone pressed to an ear, fiddling with dials. "Yeoman, who's on that line?"

The yeoman started at Eisenhower's abrupt question and stood up, spying the accumulated brass behind the General. The CNO himself filed in behind Ike.

"Sorry, sir, I didn't know you were in the facility--I--was just--I was in contact with the Dearborn, sir, just trying to get an update on the landing--.

"Landing?" boomed CNO Anderson. "What landing? On Cuba?"

Yesss, s-s-sir," stammered the yeoman. "Tarata, sir. Just an hour ago--"

"What the hell-"

Eisenhower nodded to Anderson, who grabbed the earphones from the Yeoman, then sat at the console.

"Dearborn, this is Homestead Ops. This is the CNO speaking. Who's on the line?"

Anderson's face scrunched up, as he strained to hear the tinny voice from the Dearborn. It was a dispatcher in the ship's landing force control center. A chief named Thurman. Anderson listened for a few moments, then cut in.

"Son, you go get Admiral Stone right now. That's an order. Tell him the CNO's on the line. And tell him the CNO's pissed, too."

Moments later, Jack Stone had arrived in the radio room of the LFOC. He put on an earphone set and dialed in.

"Stone here."

"Stone, this is Anderson. You recognize my voice?"

Jack Stone swallowed hard. Yes, sir. The CNO."

"The one. Admiral, I want you to listen to me very carefully. Olin Haley's been caught. The President's on to your little escapade, and he's not gonna let it happen. I'm here with General Shoup and a distinguished emissary from the White House, General Eisenhower. We have full authority to shut this little war of yours down and that's just what we're going to do."

"Admiral, I can--"

"Save it for the court-martial, Stone. Haley's in the brig right now and that's where you'll be pretty soon. Now, listen up: Operation Sierra is finished. You are in direct violation of specific orders from the President. You are to cease all military operations at once and pull back to a defensible position."

There was a long pause. Stone's voice, when it returned, was weary and fatigued.

"Admiral, that's not going to be easy. You must know that--"

Anderson stood up abruptly, knocking a spiral notebook of comm procedures onto the floor. "Can it, Admiral Stone! That's an order. I don't want any bilge about this."

Two hundred and ten miles southwest of Homestead Air Force Base, Jack Stone squeezed the arm of the radioman's chair so hard his knuckles were white. He wanted to yell back at the man Listen to me, for God's sake.

"Admiral, we have a bit of a problem. The landing force has already left the Iwo. They've already landed, sir."

"Landed? On Cuban territory, man?"

"Yes, sir. Tarata. It's a beachhead near La Esperanza. More than an hour ago. Several battalions of the Second Marines. They've been in heavy fighting from the beginning. They're stalled."

Anderson relayed the news to Ike and Shoup. Eisenhower rubbed his chin. "Sweet Mother of God. Good thing we got the airborne assault stopped."

Anderson went back to the phone. "Stone. Jack. What's the situation?"

"Like I said, sir, the Marines have two battalion landing teams at Tarata. First and Second of the Fifth Battalion. They're exposed to heavy fire--mortars, tube artillery, some air. Our guys can't get a bead on the enemy. Weather's dicey--rain, overcast, squally winds, plus the forces are too close together. It's bad, and getting worse."

Anderson was incredulous. "And you're sitting there letting them get chopped to pieces?"

Jack Stone felt his face flush. If Haley had stood in front of him, even as an apparition, he would have socked the General. "Sir, Admiral Anderson, we were trying to--you know--keep a lid on the--"

Anderson was white with fury. Through tight lips, he got out, "I understand, Admiral. I'll deal with you later. Who's the assault force commander?"

"Brockett, sir. Colonel Brockett. He or his radioman have been giving us updates every fifteen minutes. Right now, the BLTs are dug in on a line just beyond the water. They're were using the LSTs for cover."

"Get Brockett on the line. Can you patch him through to me?"

"Yes, sir, I think so...." Stone waved frantically at the radioman, circling with his finger to indicate that he should raise the assault force. "It'll just take a minute, sir."

Anderson waited impatiently, pacing back and forth, limited only by the cord of the earphones. Shoup and Eisenhower hovered around the console, behind them Lieutenant Cedars, pale and grim. A minute later, Stone's voice crackled in the headset.

"I'm putting him through, Admiral."

Anderson cupped his hands over his ears, closing his eyes. Scratches, chirps and whistles filled the headset. Then, something--a sharp sound, an explosion? then staccato bursts, unmistakably gunfire, more whistles...

"Colonel Brockett, Colonel Brockett, do you read me? Colonel Brockett, this is the CNO."

Lost in the whine came a distant, husky, voice. "Brockett, here....---getting killed, Admiral. I--" there was a shriek, then a long, warbling whine, then static, followed by, "--Christ, that was--"

"Brockett, listen up! This is the CNO speaking. This is an order! Get your men back to the landing craft! Saddle up and move out now!!"

More static. "--again, Admiral, you're...break--up...."

"Brockett," Anderson yelled into the receiver, "--get your men the hell off that beach...right now!!"

11-7-62, Wednesday

Tarata, Cuba

3:45 a.m.

The clearing was soggy, as usual, and hell for footing, and Lieutenant Shelby Peters, Able Three of A Company, 2nd Battalion, was of a mind to say screw it and get back to the rest of the company before the tamales overran the little patch of mud overlooking the road. It was pointless anyway, what the Major wanted them to do. Peters waved silently at the rest of the platoon to form up and fall back--already, the Cubans, Ivan, or whoever it was out there was moving forward in something like regiment strength, seemed like. They could all hear the heavy equipment grinding through the banyan trees a mile or so east of the road. Tanks were coming.

Peters didn't want to be caught out here on the left point exposed like a naked jaybird when the T-54s showed up. They'd been pinned down for almost two hours, now, slugging it out with elements of Cuban infantry, artillery raining shells on the beach like it was some damn practice range. And after an hour and a half of that, the Major had called Third Platoon together, sending them off on a little quick recon of the western flank, looking for a gap in the line, a weak spot, some damn place they could skedaddle off to and get out from under the onslaught. But no easy dice.

It had been tough going all night long in the drizzle and mud of this godforsaken hellhole.

Not five minutes ago, the radioman had felt the buzz go off on his squad radio backpack and signaled for the Lieutenant to come over. Peters took the call. It was from Brockett himself back at the CP. Brockett didn't waste words. "Get your men back here pronto. We're pulling out at 0400 hours."

Finer words Peters hadn't heard in days, but it didn't make a lot of sense. Pulling out? They had only just gotten here. What they needed was reinforcement and some air cover. Let the flyboys pound the tamales into tomato paste. Then, they could really go to town.

But Peters aye-ayed and began pulling the platoon back. When the men had gathered at the edge of the clearing, he put out the word.

"Battalion's pulling back. Back into the water, the Colonel said. Don't ask me why, but I like it. This place sucks. Embarkation at 0400 hours. We're to get our fat asses back to the beach. And watch your flanks for loose tamales. I don't want anybody getting picked off 'cause he was careless. Move out!"

By the time they had marched, slithered, slid and crawled their way back to the beach, hunkering down at the crest of the grassline while a salvo of shells blasted sand everywhere fifty feet away, Peters had started wondering. Where the hell is our airborne, anyway? Weren't the 101st guys supposed to be flying over about now, dropping ten miles on the other side of the highway? What gives...?

The beach was a scene of controlled chaos. Out beyond the surf, a quartet of LSTs peeled off for the quick lunge into the beach, one by one, dropping their forward ramps before the vehicles had even stopped. Able Three came sliding and stumbling along the beach as the first landing craft gouged up sand with a spray. Peters ordered his men to fall out and get their gear squared away for boarding. While they did that, Peters went hunting for the Colonel, diving into the sand as another mortar round detonated in the shallows off to his right. He found Brockett huddled with several officers: Able Seven, the company exec and Able Four, Lieutenant Warren of the machine gun platoon.

"Colonel, what gives anyway?" Peters asked.

Brockett's face was smeared with dirt, sweat and runny camou paint. "Hell if I know. LFOC just sent a pull-back order. I'll admit we're in a bind at the moment, but damn, we just need some air. Just a few Skyhawks would do it."

"Pullback? Why?"

Brockett shrugged. He was at a loss to explain why, after over two hours of furious fighting and substantial casualties, LFOC was pulling them off the beach. Especially since the damn Cubans now seemed to be melting off into the forest.

"Lieutenant Warren, you see any more Cubans on your front?"

Warren was a skinny tow-headed guy, who walked like a whip. "No, sir. I don't know what's going on, either. One minute, they're in our faces with assault squads, mortars, grenades and light artillery--I mean, really sending some heavy shit our way--the next minute, they're gone. Can't say I'm sorry about it either. Jesus, their 80s were dropping rounds right on top of us."

"It may just be a tactical retreat. Re-directing to come from another direction. We need some recon but I guess that'll have to wait." Brockett turned to watch the LSTs maneuvering to pick up one platoon after another. "Peters, you and Warren get back to your men. I'm gonna get on the horn, see if I can find out what's going on. Maybe we're just jumping down the beach a ways."

Seven miles east-southeast of the Tarata beachhead, in a small clearing beyond the Coastal Highway, Highway Two running down from La Palma, Platoon Sergeant Valery Nizhin stood behind the Moskva Battery of the 33rd Rocket Troops of the 74th Motor Rifle Division, critically appraising the loading and preparation of the Luna rockets. By his estimation, Moskva Battery was four minutes ahead of the other two batteries in getting the K-15 warheads armed and fused, the two launchers trained and set to the proper elevation, and the igniter cabling unbundled, connected to the generator pack and switches safed for the launch order. He wasn't surprised that Moskva was so far ahead. They had, after all, received a Unit Meritorious Order of Suvorov just that spring, only a few months before the deployment to Cuba.

Nizhin was proud of them. He was certain they would do their socialist duty and wreak destruction on the invading capitalist American dogs like they had never seen before. Division had only to give the orders and the six launchers of the 33rd Rocket Troops would salvo their Luna rockets on the target at two kilometer interval spreads. After that, what was left of the American force wouldn't be worth a kopeck in a whorehouse.

Nizhin knew the Luna weapon well. They had trained with the equipment in exercises for several years, always at the desert ranges in Kazahkstan, sometimes with live rounds, sometimes not. She had a twelve-mile range, and was launched from a special tractor-erector truck, with hydraulic lifts to hoist the launch table to the right elevation and traverse the table up to 80 degrees left and right of the centerline. A spin-stabilized, unguided artillery rocket, the Luna was powered by a two-stage solid propellant rocket. Each stage had a single main nozzle for propulsion and a skirt of annular nozzles for thrust control and stability in flight.

Handling the Luna was considerably more of a challenge than ramming home a 122-mm shell into the breaches of tube artillery. She was thirty-one feet long and twelve inches in diameter, forward of her cruciform tail fins, weighing fully loaded something like 5400 pounds. The warhead, conventional, high explosive or nuclear, could weigh up to 1200 pounds, and was contained in a bulbous nose at the front tip of the rocket.

For Operation Anadyr and the deployment to Cuba, Nizhin knew, there were only nuclear warheads for the Luna: twelve operational K-15 implosion-type, fission-fusion warheads allotted to the 33rd, plus two inactive spares that could be armed and fused in several hours. The spares had been kept under strict guard at the Bejucal compound. After the Cuban commando assault, the spares had been removed to the freighter Alexandrovsk, still tied up at Mariel harbor, but ready to sail on two hours' notice.

Sergeant Nizhin stole a quick glance behind the battery's position, at the Cuban observer-spotter assigned to the 33rd. Primer Teniente Marones of the FAR's Twentieth Infantry, sat in the front seat of a jeep, parked next to the 33rd's platoon commander, Lieutenant of Artillery Kamenov, the two gold chevrons on his collar gleaming in the dim light of a battle lantern mounted on the dash of the vehicle. Marones had a hand-cranked squad radio on the seat next to him. He had the handset to his ears, listening intently to reports from the beachhead, while Nizhin and the Russian artillerymen completed their preparations.

He saw and noted, with calm pride, that Moskva Battery had indeed completed setup of their Luna launcher. The corporal saluted smartly, reporting the news. Nizhin stepped away to report the battery's readiness to Kamenov. The platoon commander nodded grimly, checking that the other two batteries would be in readiness within a few minutes.

"Anything yet, Comrade Lieutenant?" Nizhin asked.

Kamenov spoke to the Cuban teniente. "Rockets are ready, teniente. We're ready to fire on the targets. We only need your word."

"One moment, Comrade Lieutenant." Marones nodded his head, bending forward to catch some faint whispers in the radio. A smile slowly spread over this face. "Still on the beach?...bueno, Arrias, bueno...I see...embarking now but not formed up...still loading....si, that's very good. And the squads? Si, another two minutes, I understand. Marones out."

"All Luna batteries and rockets ready for launch," Kamenov reported. "The targets--?"

Marones checked his watch in the dim light. "Our spotters have verified the coordinates. The forward squads of the regiment have cleared the area to the requisite distance. That was tricky. We were afraid the Yanquis would think we were retreating and try to follow us. For some reason, though, they're breaking off the attack. Their landing craft are picking them up."

Kamenov stroked his black beard. "A purely tactical retreat, teniente. That's all it can be. We opposed them with overwhelming force at Tarata. They're just moving to another part of the beachhead. We'll finish them where they are, tonight."

The radio buzzed. Marones lifted the handset, listened, nodded and said, "I understand. Gracias. Keep your head down, compadre. Tell the men that. Out."

He looked up, replacing the handset. "Our men are clear."

Kamenov waved his own signalman over, with a line open to Dankevich back at Torrens. The Lieutenant relayed their readiness to Group Headquarters. Kamenov smiled and answered, "At once, comrade General." He handed the phone back to the signalman.

"We have authorization from Headquarters, men." His eyes met Marones'. "Dankevich was firm. 'Launch when ready. All batteries.'"

Marones got out of the jeep, fishing in a pocket for a pair of sunglasses. "Let's not waste another second, Lieutenant. Not while the Yanquis have their hands on Cuba's throat."

Kamenov was already walking the main line. "Comrades, we have permission from Division. Fire all batteries! Fire all batteries! And then take cover--"

Ten seconds later, Moskva and Uralsk Batteries were the first to go. A bright flash erupted at the base of the rockets as igniter cables sent a charge from the field generators to the tiny explosive cap-ring at the bottom of the propellant charge. Ten-thousandths of a second later, the inner core of the propellant column exploded into flame and fury, and the rockets leaped from their launch rails, bringing momentarily broad daylight to the tiny clearing. With the roar of a thousand jet aircraft, the two rockets streaked out of the clearing, passing over the dark line of palm and eucalyptus trees, then retreated into the fog and mist like a shrinking suns, until only a bright glow suffused the dense, rain-soaked air.

Ten seconds later, the remaining four batteries salvoed their Luna rockets, each in turn bringing a midday sun's brightness to the clearing, then screeching off into the night.

The first rockets covered the seven-mile distance to the Tarata beachhead in a fraction over five seconds. Fused for airburst, the K-15 warhead atop Moskva Battery's Luna detected the required air pressure a microsecond later. A timing circuit in the relay box that was the effective brains of the weapon simultaneously reached its expected value. Relays in the box began closing.

A small capacitor in the box, charged on the ground by field generators during the arming process, discharged its current into a bundle of electrical cabling wrapped and tied down around the primary charge inside the K-15 device. The cabling transported the capacitor's current to the sphere of high-explosive detonators that ringed the primary in a shell. There were twelve detonators in all, small explosive caps not unlike those that had ignited the Luna solid rocket less than six seconds ago.

All twelve detonators fired with microsecond precision, sending twelve shock waves spreading inward toward the core of the device. Each shock wave met other detonation waves, combined and concentrated into a rapidly collapsing spherical pressure wave that crossed to the aluminum pusher shell, vaporizing it as it passed. The pressure wave rocketed the pusher shell inward, crossed next to the primary's heavy uranium tamper, liquified and vaporized the tamper, moved the material to the uranium shell of the core, hammered the uranium shell inward across an air gap to the plutonium ball levitated within at the exact center of the whole assembly.

At that precise moment of maximum compression, with the rapidly vaporizing mass of uranium and plutonium having gone supercritical, the shock wave, now shaped by special grooves in the beryllium shell at the center of the plutonium ball, sliced through that shell and began mixing beryllium with polonium plated onto the ball of beryllium on the inside. Here, alpha particles from the radioactive polonium knocked off a dozen neutrons from the beryllium. These twelve neutrons were ejected into the surrounding supercritical mass of uranium and plutonium. A runaway chain reaction began.

Eighty generations later--a few millionths of a second--X radiation from the furiously heating fission fireball hotter than the center of the sun escaped the primary mass entirely, began to ablate the blast shield over the K-15's secondary charge and flooded down a short cylindrical radiation duct inside the casing. Instantly, the radiation penetrated the thick polyethylene lining of the casing and heated it to a white-hot plasma. The plasma re-radiated X rays that reflected simultaneously from all sides inward onto the surface of the heavy uranium pusher, heating it instantly to ablation. The ablating surface of the pusher drove it explosively inward even as it liquified and vaporized. The intensely powerful pulse of pressure concentrated as it moved inward, closed the first vacuum gap, compressed the floating thermal shield, closed the next vacuum gap, compressed the outer and inner insulated containers, encountered a small but deeply cold slug of solid deuterium, compressed the deuterium inward and started to heat it.

All these processes, proceeding through microseconds, prepared the K-15 device for thermonuclear burning. Now the remnant X-radiation of the fissioning primary, still quite potent, heated the compressed deuterium at its boundaries, the increasing thermal motion of the deuterium nuclei pushed them together until they passed the barrier of electrostatic repulsion between them and came within range of the strong nuclear force, at which point they began to fuse. Some fused to become a helium nucleus--an alpha particle--with the subsequent release of a neutron, the alpha and the neutron sharing an energy of 3.27 million electron-volts (MeV). The neutron passed through the electrified mass of fusing deuterons and escaped, but the positively charged alpha dumped its energy into the heating deuterium mass and helped heat it further.

Other deuterium nuclei fused to form a tritium nucleus with the release of a proton, the triton and the proton sharing 4.03 MeV. The positively charged proton dumped still more energy into the deuterium mass. The tritium nucleus fused in turn with another deuterium nucleus to form an alpha particle and a high-energy neutron that shared 17.59 MeV. The 14-MeV neutrons from this reaction began to escape the hot, compressed deuterium plasma and encountered the U238 nuclei of the vaporized uranium pusher. Under this intense neutron bombardment, the U238 nuclei began to fission, flooding still more X rays back into the deuterium mass from the outside, just as the original fissioning primary charge was radiating them from inside, trapping the deuterium between two violent walls of heat and pressure. Deuterium-bred tritium fused with tritium as well, producing a helium nucleus and two neutrons that shared 11.27 MeV. Somewhat less often, deuterium captured a neutron and bred in turn tritium. Deuterium-bred helium fused with the deuterium and made heavy helium plus a highly energetic proton or captured a neutron and bred tritium plus a proton.

All these reactions added power to the force of the K-15 explosion.

Moving outward from the cauldron of the secondary as gamma and X radiation and as escaping high-energy neutrons, that explosion swelled back across the path that the radiation-driven implosion had just taken. Just as the uranium pusher had served as a tamper for the secondary, so now did the thick K-15 outer casing serve as a tamper for the entire complex explosion, holding it together a few microseconds longer to give the fuel more time to react, but strong as the casing was, first bomblight from its outer surface revealed the breakthrough of the developing explosion long before the mass had time to even to swell, much less to move.

Once the explosion broke through the bulbous forward casing, it expanded in seconds to a blinding white-hot fireball nearly three hundred feet in diameter, rising over the darkened trees of the Tarata beachhead like a second fiery sun.

Less than a second later, the struggling Marines of the First and Second Battalions were blinded again, as another K-15 detonated overhead, this one a quarter mile further out to sea. Four more fireballs air-burst in the following fifteen seconds, at heights ranging from eight hundred to a thousand feet, their detonations concentrating blast force and heat to multi-kiloton range, searing and obliterating all living matter below in a few eyeblinks.

In all, six two-kiloton warheads lit up the rainy, windswept night sky over northwest Cuba. Their staggered detonations were seen on the flight deck of the Iwo Jima, some twenty-four miles off shore, as a pulsing, throbbing pearly white and red glow on the horizon.

It was a sight that few would ever forget.

11-7-62, Wednesday

The Chesapeake Bay

4:30 a.m.

For Osvaldo Carrera, the night had been anything but pleasant, even if the late fall wind was surprisingly light and the temperatures across the Bay not nearly so cold as he had once feared they might be. He knew nothing of the weather anyway, as he had been stuck in the lower cabin, troubleshooting the long-range Gorizont transmitter. The damn thing had been on the blink all night, failing to power up, then dropping out of frequency lock as the tuner had steadily gone bad. He had cursed and sworn at his crewmates and downed too many beers but at last, it seemed, the balky tuner had come around, nursed back to health with some new wiring, a better mount and a few prayers.

Now, going on five o'clock in the morning, they had the onboard ship-to-shore radio cranked up to near maximum volume, dialed in to WDCI Washington, an AM station, which was at this moment pouring out still more election news from the day before. The men were tired, sore, thirsty and in a sour mood, having labored in close, sweaty confines in flashlit darkness for nearly seven hours. Out on the aft deck of the Fancy Dancer, the breezes freshened into a sharp, steady westerly wind. The air tasted good, the cold beers even better.

"We can't sit around, compadres," Carerra complained. "Get some fresh air and get back down to the radio room. We've got a job to do."

And indeed they did, as Fidel Castro's go-signal, a simple line of poetry from El Libertador himself, had come in just before four a.m. Unable to transmit to the mainland the authorization to prepare for detonation of the K-5 warhead in New York, Carrera had nearly torn his hair out with frustration. It was only when the tuner had come back on line and power was flowing into the transmitter once again that he had broken into a nervous smile.

Fancy Dancer would be able to complete her historic mission after all.

Now, beer in hand, Carrera and his three crewmates giggled as they gathered around the control panel of the Gorizont, snugged against the bulkhead in what had once been a sleeper cabin fit for five. With a toast to victory, and several viva Fidels, Carrera gave the order to begin the operation.

The first order of business was to locate WRUL Harlem, New York, nominally broadcasting in the AM band at 850 megacycles. Carrera watched closely, holding his breath, praying, as the tuner did its job. After a few minutes, the sweet tunes of Iglesias and Ritchie Valens came scratching through the speaker. The men smiled, then laughed, humming along with the songs. More toasts, backslaps.

The plan he had worked out with 'Florio' was to broadcast an interrupting message on the same frequency as the station, during the hourly news show. The Gorizont transmitter drew many megawatts of power; indeed, Carerra had had to invest in a separate generator and cabling to supply the transmitter power to reach the commandos along the East Coast. He did so gladly. Anything for Fidel. Anything to help La Revolucion.

Now it was only a few minutes before five a.m. Outside the cabin, Fancy Dancer tugged at her anchor, bobbing on four-foot swells in the stiff early morning wind. Buckles clanked along her mainmast. Her running lights were out, only the interior cabin lights were on. Strictly illegal, according to American maritime law but then she wouldn't be staying long in her current position.

The radioman handed the microphone back to Carrera. Glad hands pushed him to the front, smiles, nods, more beer. It was a big moment for all of them. A dream fulfilled for Osvaldo Carrera. He waited, as the radioman, Porto Minaya, cleaned up the signal, checking frequency drift on the tuner, checking wattage output on another dial, finally nodding with satisfaction, looking back at Carrera with a big grin.

At last, the chirpy tune signaling the five o'clock news. WRUL's Morning Show, Salida del Sol, came on the air, "with Manny Gomez." said the announcer. Carrera cleared his voice, coughed, tried the mike button several times. A buzz of feedback hummed with each press. The Gorizont signal was getting through, overtaking the station signal. More smiles.

The news broadcaster came on the air, Manny Gomez, with a bright Buenos Dias and began detailing more results from national and New York elections yesterday. Democrats were winning in 25 of 39 contested Senate seats. They appeared to be losing in about four of the House seats. As for local races, there were several surprises, among them the borough president in the Bronx....

Two minutes later, Manny Gomez ended his lead-in segment and paused for a commercial break, segueing right into a Winston commercial. Over the jingle, Carrera silently mouthed the code phrase he had received from 'Florio', caressing the words around his tongue, trying out different inflections, auditioning for his greatest moment.

At the very end of the commercial break, Carrera was squeezing the microphone so hard, his fingers hurt. In an overly dramatic voice, with all the feeling he could muster, he read the lines.

"Muerte esta mas felicidad. Muerte esta mas felicidad."

The instant he handed the mike back to Minaya, cheers erupted in the cabin. Quickly, Manaya made sure the mike wasn't live. Carrera was jostled, kissed. He smiled, not too modestly, accepting their gratitude. A great and glorious day for Cuba, was it not? It had been an impressive performance.

Now the wait. Each hour, for the next three hours, the same routine would prevail. Carrera had already decided that he would let the crew takes turns broadcasting the code phrase into the mike. It was only fair. They too had come into the enemy's waters, sharing the same risk. Each hour, at the end of the lead-in segment, at the end of the first commercial break, the Fancy Dancer would send 250,000 watts of signal hurtling through the atmosphere north to New York City, momentarily interrupting the early morning silky smooth tongue of Manny Gomez. Each time, the message would go out from Fidel:

Now is the time to deliver Cuba, Cuba o' Patria, from the Yanqui devils.

And it would be done.

Feeling quite pleased with himself, Osvaldo Carrera left the celebrations and the tinkering with the Gorizont, and went aft to the liquor cabinet, well stocked for their week-long run out of Miami and back. He broke out some whiskey and rum bottles, made him a strong drink and took the cup topside, holding carefully to the railing. Growing Chesapeake swells were beginning to toss Fancy Dancer about. Carrera let the chill breeze wash over his sweating face. A front was moving in from the west. He could see clouds scudding across the dim starlight. They wouldn't be able to stay anchored here much longer.

Carerra sipped thoughtfully at the rum concoction. He thanked God, God and Fidel Castro, for the chance to participate in this momentous event. Cuba free! Cuba libre! It was strong wine indeed.

Carerra wondered about atomic bombs. He didn't know how they worked. But wouldn't it be fitting, he told himself, if after all his work and dedication, and the risks he and the crew had taken getting here, that there might be a bright glow to the north, a pulsing evanescent radiance to commemorate all they had done?
CHAPTER 20

11-7-62, Wednesday

New York City

5:10 a.m.

The van looked like any utility truck plying the streets of Manhattan, with its big Consolidated Edison signboard and blue-capped driver, but the white Ford was anything but routine. Inside the rear compartment, all spools of wire, cable, and buckets of brackets having long since been removed, were four men: Soviet agents assigned to the United Nations Mission. Oleg Kalugin and Pavel Troyanov were field officers of the rezidentura, nominally assigned to Department 10 of the First Main Directorate, a clandestine service with responsibility for operations in North America. Georgi Volkogonov was the third man. He was listed as a "communications and public relations specialist" at the Mission, a Pravda employee to all outward appearances. The truth was rather more alarming as Volkogonov was a trained officer of the Soviet Army, a Spetsialnye Nachnacheniye or Spetsnaz operative. A specialist in what the Russians liked to call mokrie delyi, or "wet affairs." Wet as in human blood, spilled in copious quantities by trained assassins.

The fourth men in the back of the van was Valery Kudinov, a dour Major in the KGB's Third Chief Directorate, Department 8, a specialist, among other things, in nuclear weapons security.

The van driver was Alexei Maximov.

Maximov turned east off Broadway at St. Paul's Chapel, where he had been traveling south through deserted city block after city block, and ran a couple of blocks toward the East River. Then, he turned south onto Nassau Street. Traffic picked up as they passed the AT & T Building, growing steadily the further south they went. Not normal traffic for lower Manhattan, not at five o'clock in the morning. Primarily military and police vehicles, two-ton trucks with American infantry and several tanks constituted the traffic out on the streets this morning. Passing Maiden Lane and the Federal Reserve Bank Building, they ran into the first of the barriers.

Maximov slowed the van at the checkpoint. He waited for the soldier, a riflemen from the New York National Guard's 69th Infantry, to come alongside.

"Got some ID, mister? Nobody gets any further south without permission."

Maximov had already extracted his Soviet Embassy and United Nations credentials. He handed the blue diplomatic folder over. The young sergeant squinted, looking up at him with growing amazement.

"You're Russkie, huh? What's in the back of the van? Is this a real Con Ed truck?"

Maximov didn't really want to open up the van. He judged the sergeant, whose name tag said Longley, was somewhat confused by all the activity. A sense of urgency, an authoritative voice might work...Maximov had already concocted a story, true in parts, that he was assigned to the Bomb Task Force, and he was bringing specialists into the secured area, for the upcoming assault. He related the tale to Longley, who frowned doubtfully, looking on.

"What kind of specialists? More Russkies? Let me see."

"Help yourself," Maximov told him starting to open the door. "But we're late and we've got to make a deadline. These men are bomb specialists. They're needed, urgently at the site, now...."

For the briefest moment, Maximov was certain Longley was going to call his bluff and yank the back of the van open. They had prepared for the possibility. It was Volkogonov who squatted in the front corner, ready to slip the garrote cord around the soldier's neck and snap his spine with a quick jerk. But it never happened. Longley started to move around to the rear, but something, perhaps a premonition of being yelled at by a superior officer, changed his mind. With a sour jerk of his thumb, he motioned Maximov through the barrier, dropping the diplomatic folder in the Russian's lap as he climbed back in the van.

It had been Kudinov's idea to assume the identity of Con Ed utility workers. Maximov had been skeptical but the rezident himself, the senior coordinating State Security officer at the UN Mission had reminded them of their duty.

"The Americans can't be allowed to get their hands on our bombs. Comrades, these are critical to our Rodina. State Secrets. We must seize this device before the Americans do. We have to act first."

"What if the Cubantsy detonate the bomb," Maximov had asked.

At that, the rezident had smiled and shrugged. "Then our worries are over, aren't they? At least, they'll be nothing left for the Americans but radioactive atoms and rubble."

A small-scale assault had been planned in the rezident's office. Maximov had witnessed much of the American planning for the combined assault on the Sisters of Mercy ambulance on Wall Street. He had studied the area around the Stock Exchange, the buildings, the subway lines, the schematics of sewage piping, power lines, drainage conduits, street lighting, traffic signal boxes. On a small tourist map of the Wall Street area, a map he had simply taken from an abandoned street vendor's cart, he had marked key elements of the infrastructure of lower Manhattan. This map, a GrayLine TourGuide map, had become the central planning document at the Soviet UN Mission on 68th Street.

Now, having passed the first security barrier at Maiden Lane, and knowing how the defensive perimeter tightened further south, Maximov swung the van onto a darkened side street, Cedar Street the sign said, in the hulking shadow of the Equitable Building and parked. Lights off, he went around to the back of the van, and stepped in. He hoped no passing patrols spotted the truck and investigated. He didn't want to try his luck again.

Ten minutes later, five Russians, all wearing the khaki coveralls and blue caps of Con Ed utility workers, emerged from the van. The street was empty though the thrum of generators and heavy equipment being moved was audible.

The Americans were on the move themselves, laying the groundwork for their own assault. They would have to hurry if they were not to be caught in a deadly crossfire between Army Rangers and NYPD Special Forces officers.

Phase one was to control the environment. To accomplish that, Maximov and Kudinov had studied the layout of the Wall Street block encompassing the Stock Exchange. Normal street lighting had been left on, as well as traffic signals, to avoid alerting the Cubans to anything unusual. Though the Stock Exchange had been evacuated during the evening, a skeleton staff refused to leave, wishing to safeguard the records and files of the Exchange, come what may. That had precipitated a minor crisis with the police but the Mayor's office had intervened. Beyond the immediate block surrounding the Stock Exchange itself, concrete barriers had been erected, blocking the Cubans and confining them to the area. Additional blockades had been erected with Army three-quarter and two-ton trucks, sealing off any vehicular escape from the street. All of this was kept out of sight, beyond visual range. Also, beyond the immediate environs of the Stock Exchange, the police arranged for all subway lines to be stopped, the tunnels barricaded and the entrances guarded. Utility corridors and access hatches were sealed. Power was shunted away from the area, except for the Stock Exchange block; from the Army's UH-1 helicopters cruising at one thousand feet overhead, it was as if the Stock Exchange was a beacon of light in a dark void. Much of the rest of lower Manhattan had been completely blacked out, the better to control what the Cubans could see and to hide the movements and positioning of the assault force.

Alexei Maximov had agreed with the others that, for any assault to succeed, the lighting around the ambulance would have to be controlled. Off during the critical seconds of the assault force approach, then on at the last second, augmented with portable spotlights and floods to better blind and stun the Cubans during the actual assault. Toward that end, Kudinov had pored over the schematics of the utility grid underlying Wall Street and surrounding areas, finally locating a critical junction box.

"This is the one," Kudinov had said, tapping his finger on the prints. "Controls power to the surrounding four blocks. Broadway to William Street, Exchange to Pine Street. The trunk lines run in, here and here...here are the switches and relays...there's the transformer right next to it, and all the feeders go out to the service lines. From there into the buildings. And streetlights, through this box."

Maximov knew they would have to move in a controlled pattern, quickly, without detection to the west end of the Pine Street intersection with Nassau, then more deliberately to the control stand where the junction box was located. He knew that much of the Wall Street block was under camera surveillance, not to mention aerial coverage by Army and police helicopters, but he wasn't sure about Nassau and Pine.

"We'll have to act and work, as if we belong there, like we know what we're doing and we are assigned to the job. Otherwise, the American police will suspect."

The five men made their way without incident to the corner of Pine and Nassau. On the east side of Nassau loomed the ancient Federal Hall complex, a national monument from America's colonial past. Kalugin and Kudinov crept out of the shadows, leaving the others behind for a moment. Two minutes' reconnaissance of the intersection located the utility controls box, mounted and bolted to a concrete pad at the edge of the street. Quickly, Kalugin forced the box door with a combination bolt cutter-prising bar and the door swung open. Kudinov shined a flashlight onto the maze of terminal strips and relay panels, using his finger as a guide. After a tense few moments, he found what he had been looking for.

Kudinov extracted wire pullers and a shunt strip and went to work. After safing the power wiring, he unscrewed terminal posts for the lighting network along Wall Street, having memorized from the prints the patch number and location, and severed the right connections.

Instantly, the area was plunged into darkness. Emergency light standards on several buildings still gleamed red and white, unaffected by Kudinov's handiwork. The two Russians waved frantically behind them. Soon, they heard hurried footsteps, clipping quickly down the street. The remaining Russians materialized out of the dark, right behind Kudinov.

"Let's go!" he whispered. They headed south, hugging the west side of Nassau, staying in the darkest shadows of the buildings, formless black shapes shifting and sliding against the lighter stone of the building, south toward Wall Street. Under cover of an awning, a sub-street entrance to a service room below Federal Hall, they stopped, checking weapons, exchanging clips and magazines. Each man bore an assault rifle, AK-47 Kalishnikov, and ten clips of 7.62-mm ammunition. Volkogonov had an additional piece of equipment, experimental, one he himself had stolen from an Army base in Georgia just a few months ago, from Fort Benning during a night infantry exercise. It was a starscope, amplifying starlight, enabling him to see ghostly images where ordinary eyes would see only deep black. The Spetsnaz man fastened the sight to the top of his weapon.

Two blocks away, in the basement of the Equitable Building, the task force command post came alive with alarm.

"What the hell-??"

Mike French started upright from his folding chair and stared, in disbelief, at the flickering television screen. "Who turned the lights out?"

At a table next to the screen, Bernie Krantz had seen the same thing. For a few moments, Krantz, French and the task force stared in horror. The entire block had gone dark. Krantz was moving before Mike French could blink again. He snatched up the handset linking the command post with the tactical net.

"Garden Spot to Buckeye. What the hell's going on down there? Somebody trip over a cord or something? The whole place's gone dark."

'Buckeye' was Captain Will Hunter, NYPD Special Forces, in the back of a black assault van, corner of Wall and Nassau, just out of sight of the ambulance. He'd been in the midst of a briefing, covering fire zones and passwords with his squad leaders. He had seen the streetlights drop out.

"Unknown, Garden Spot. I'm checking now--" he motioned one of the squad leaders to slip outside, and take a peek. The black-uniformed officer, bearing a Garand M-1 rifle, crouched low to avoid being silhouetted and scurried up the edge of the Bank of New York Building. Momentarily, he was joined by several others. They dropped to their stomachs, crabwalking out into the middle of the street. Ahead, sixty-five yards was the Sisters of Mercy Ambulance, dark and deadly.

"Look\--!" an officer hissed, flat on his belly, pointing off to the right. There...along the south face of Federal Hall...five men, single file, were creeping in and out of shadows, hugging the face of the building. Only by contrast with the pale granite of the Hall were they visible at all.

"Who the hell are they?" whispered the squad leader.

"Don't know, sir. Not one of ours--" came a whispered reply.

"Move up!" whispered the squad leader, slightly louder. "And spread out--" He handed off the handset and radio clipped to his belt, shoving a Spec Forces man off back to the assault van. "Tell the Cap'n we got company...unknown bad guys coming up from behind the ambulance...move it, man!

The officer scuttled off, knocking a loose pavement stone halfway across the street as he turned the corner. The squad leader, Evans, winced and flattened himself as low as he would go. He knew the bad guys, whoever they were, had to have heard that.

Inside the ambulance, Felix Calderone had just lit a Lucky Strike when the stone clattering alerted him. He sprang upright from his makeshift bed beside the bomb and pressed hie face to the rear window, squinting to see anything.

""Luis, you hear that? You hear something? And the lights are out--"

Luis Gallegos had crawled up beside the teniente, clambering over the top of the K-5, to peer out. He closed one eye, an old trick, looking off at angles, trying to see something, anything. He had heard the noise too. He wondered, maybe the FBI's got my message after all....

"You see anything?"

Calderone was tense, his fists balled around the door handles. They had heard the code phrase on WRUL a few minutes ago--unmistakably, in the midst of a commercial had come muerte esta mas felicidad, repeated twice, so there was mistaking it. That was the ready signal. The bomb was to be made fully ready, the squad prepared to detonate on the very next signal, within minutes, seconds, if they could. On hearing the code, Calderone had taken the switch block and cradled it like a baby in his lap. Now, he left it on the floor of the ambulance, while he twisted left and right, trying to see, trying to--

"Si! Damn them!--look there, Luis--look! Figures...men, along the street, there, under the light post--

Gallegos pressed forward, keeping one eye on the switch block--now Calderone was reaching for it, now he was fumbling, twisting the cable, but he got it untwisted, turned around and held it out, checking everything--

"Si, I see them---they're going to attack--" Gallegos reached over for the Kalishnikov, rammed a clip in place and checked the action, then crouched against the door, ready to fire--

"Forget that! The bomb, Luis, let's do it now!--"

Gallegos turned and saw he had already toggled the first switch down. That bypassed the barosensors, two sequential timers, and the original arm/safe circuit.

"Teniente, no...we can't...we don't have the signal--"

But he had already toggled the second switch down. That opened a final arming relay, and bypassed inertial switches. Now the electrical path to the high-explosive lenses was clear. The last block had been removed.

Gallegos' eyes went wide, his mouth open in a silent, unmade scream. His eyes stung with sweat..."Felix." His voice cracked. There was a noise outside, feet running, loose gravel crunching, he was sure he heard a rifle bolt click--Jesu Maria, they were right outside the door..."Felix, we can't...Fidel hasn't--"

But Calderone had closed his eyes. His face was calm, composed, the barest tickle of a smile tugging at his lips. His right hand twitched and the last switch toggled down--closing the circuit from the capacitor in the base of the bomb to the detonator caps on top of the high explosive lenses. An audible click--

\--and then nothing happened....

The moment seemed to last an eternity, as if time itself had congealed. Gallegos subconsciously counted heartbeats, his and Calderone's. They tolled like distant bells, striking some final hour of deliverance. Gallegos shook himself free of the cloak of the stilled moment, and realized, startled, half choking with laughter, that he was alive. Still alive!

At that same moment, Calderone's eyes popped open. He had screwed them shut at the last instant, but now he was wide-eyed, incredulous, stunned to see Gallegos' sweat-stained face in the half-light of the window, the round top of the bomb, still there, the hoses and IV tubes still stashed in the corner of the ambulance.

"What the--" He looked at the switch block, toggled the last switch again and again. It was dead, not working. In a rage, he tossed the wooden block aside, and started kicking at the K-5 bomb, ramming his boot again and again into its aluminum-honeycomb ablative-alloyed surface. "Go!...damn you...Go!" He pounded a fist into the bomb casing, then reached for the switch block again--

"Luis...do something...fix it...we've got to detonate--"

But Gallegos only stared at him, dividing his attention between the teniente and the assault forming outside. Now, there was no mistaking what was coming. He could see formless shapes and shadows dashing across the street. Calderone, sobbing, had fallen over the bomb, hugging it like a hurt child.

"Felix. Felix, it won't work. It can't work, compadre. Don't you understand that? It's like Fidel Castro, like the Revolution he betrayed. This bomb's a dud. She won't go, not now, not ever."

Calderone looked up, eyes narrowing, hatred brewing in his face. "What are you saying, Luis?" He sat back, feeling behind his back for his own Kalishnikov. It was too far away. But not the pistol. The Makarov was still tucked under his belt....

"Felix, give up. It's over. Moncada's a dream. It always was a dream. Fidel isn't the way. You know it and I know it. Our people know it. He has to go. That's why I'm here." His finger tightened on the Kalishnikov's trigger. "That's why Marti is here."

The effect was instant. "Marti?" Calderone came fully upright, a snarl spreading on his face. The Makarov was nearly in reach...just another twist. "Marti's trash. Gutter trash. Merde." The teniente leaned on the door, hearing shouts behind the ambulance. Gallegos' eyes were diverted for a split second. In that instant, snapping the Makarov around and firing in one motion, Calderone screamed, "You're a traitor, Luis! A goddamned traitor!" He emptied the clip into Gallegos' chest and head.

Confined in the cramped dark space, the Makarov's report deafened Calderone He winced at the concussive slap of the sound waves, seeing from his own nearly blinded eyes how Gallegos had jerked sideways, his own Kalishnikov discharging a five-round burst as his finger clamped a death grip on the trigger. The traitor spun into the door and hung there for a second, absorbing the last shred of the bullets' momentum, then as the steel of the ambulance resisted, all momentum was lost, and he collapsed to the floor, his head striking the forward frustum of the K-5 bomb as he hit.

Calderone floated unblinking in the smoky space for a few moments, still stunned, disoriented, but his own soldier's conditioning and reflexes took over, and he dropped to the floor as the first rounds of the assault weapons began peppering the ambulance.

The window exploded in a shower of glass, as heavy caliber rifle fire poured into the cabin, ripping the air, stitching death and metal shrapnel and plinking tubes of medicines crashing in glass-flecked spray scant inches over his head. Twenty yards behind and a quarter to the side of the ambulance, Valery Kudinov rammed home another clip, scrambled to his feet and sprayed the Sisters of Mercy vehicle with 7.62 fire.

The next round of bullets shredded the rear tires, one at a time, and the ambulance, canted over, before hissing down to its wheel rims, the wheels now bearing the rear weight of the vehicle. Kudinov slid sideways, crouching in the very center of the street, finding shelter in the lee of a manhole cover partially raised. To his right, Maximov and Kalugin were already moving up along the right side of the ambulance, jumping from doorway to doorway, along the façade of the building. To his left, Volkogonov was flanking, creeping carefully along the sidewalk, an armed cat in the shadow of the Stock Exchange itself, seeking a more frontal firing position. Kudinov crawled on his hands and knees, fifteen feet from the ambulance's rear door, when the door cracked half an inch and muzzle flashes erupted in the night.

Calderone had seen the Russian, though he didn't know who it was. Instinctively, he got off a few bursts through the open door, then slammed it shut and dropped into a ball on the floor again. He kicked Gallegos' dead body away, and slithered up to the front of the cabin, wishing he could find a way into the cab itself, to get going, get away from the hail of bullets. He was surrounded, he had a rifle and a pistol, and he knew he wouldn't be long for this world if he didn't do something quick. They'd practiced tactical evasions and combat scenarios like this a time or two at Camp Columbia and at the deserted village of Matacumbre but nothing like this.

Kudinov, for his part, had stopped breathing, checking himself all over. The burst from Calderone had thrown up dirt and pavement chips and slashed his face like razors. He stayed on his stomach, backing and turning, then leaped to his feet in a dead run, heading left, for Volkogonov and the cover of a row of postal boxes. At that moment, Calderone nudged open the rear door again, spying the fleeing Russian, and got off another burst of fire from the Kalishnikov. The last two bullets found their marks.

Kudinov's head exploded in blood and brains and he pitched unconsciously to the pavement, five feet from the sidewalk, rolling the last few feet until his body came to a stop wedged against a signpost. The sign read "Stock Exchange Tours--Form Line Here." Volkogonov had seen what happened and ripped the rear of the ambulance with his own weapon, playing the stream of automatic fire across the back of the vehicle. He crawled out into the street and checked Kudinov's pulse. The man was already dead.

On hearing the first gunfire, Calderone's shot into Gallegos, NYPD Spec Force squad leader Evans had hollered his men forward, keeping low and flanking the fusillade of gunfire. He had gotten on the radio and ascertained that two more squads of Spec Force officers were approaching from the west, with some Rangers forming up to help out.

Jesus Christ, it's like fucking Dodge City up there, he muttered, He ran forward, head down, dropping to the pavement when Volkogonov loosed his burst over Kudinov's dead body. Who the hell are these cats\--?

The battle raged for seven minutes, though later, in debriefings, the participants would swear that it seemed like hours, every instant an eternity of life and death decisions, every twitch and breath a story of courage and daring and calculated risk.

Captain Will Hunter had hooked up with Mike French in the CP just after the Russians had been discovered, just after the shooting started.

"The warhead, Captain...we have to get there. I mean, we can't waste a single second. That sucker could go off any second now--"

"Tell me something I don't know," Hunter replied. His told French the Spec Force squads were moving up now, trying to get make sense of the situation.

"Maximov's not here," French reported. "Nor is Kudinov. I'll lay odds they're in the middle of this."

Hunter had ducked out of the assault van right after that and hustled up to the edge of the fighting, then hurried forward, ducking, crawling, getting off a few rounds of his own. He spied Evans, hunkered down under a traffic signal stand.

"What's the situation, sergeant?"

Evans' face was cut by glass and pavement chips in a dozen places. "Not sure yet, sir. We're taking fire from several locations ahead--up there--" he pointed to a recessed door along the street level of the Stock Exchange--"and over there, behind those postal boxes. Identity unknown. Plus, the Cubans are shooting too. Small arms fire, so far."

Hunter ducked as another spray of rounds whizzed over their heads. "That's our Russian friends. Looks like they've decided to take matters into their own hands. I'm calling Colonel Reeves...get his Rangers up here. We need more firepower."

For ten minutes, Wall Street in front of the Stock Exchange was a darkened nightmarish chaos, lit by muzzle flashes and careening flashlights, as men sought cover and position. Volkogonov, Kalugin and the rest of the Russians found themselves separated and pinned down by crossfire from the NYPD unit and, moments later, several fire teams of the 75th Rangers. Both ends of the block were sealed off and a free fire zone existed for a few minutes. Slowly, foot by foot, doorway to doorway, the NYPD unit advanced on the ambulance. From the west, lead troopers of the 75th Rangers crawled and ran, firing cover for each movement, a textbook urban combat assault. Like a drawstring around a sack, the noose steadily tightened, but the going was slow and costly, as there was little cover, even in the darkness.

Somehow, unseen in the black shadows, Felix Calderone had slipped out of the back of the ambulance and made his way to the front cab. Only twenty-five yards separated Fire Team Alpha (Rangers) from the front grille of the ambulance. Sergeant Brayton was preparing his men for the final push, when a dim, indistinct figure was momentarily silhouetted in the glare of muzzle flashes and moonlight reflecting off the ambulance.

"Sarge! He's on foot--!"

Fire Team Alpha unloaded eight 30-round clips of 7.62 ammunition on the spot in less than fifteen seconds, a thunderous fusillade that echoed across the street, reverberating with the tinkle of raining cartridges dropping onto the pavement.

"Cookie, GO! GO! GO! GO!

The urban combat textbook had six important lessons for the infantryman to learn and live with and Pfc. Seth Cook, eight-year rifleman and five time expert marksman in the division competitions every spring, knew every one of them by heart:

Don't silhouette yourself and stay low

Select your next position before running

Conceal yourself with whatever's available: buildings, rubble, etc

Move rapidly

Don't mask covering fire from your buddies

Don't move in a straight line; move to minimize exposure to enemy fire

Pfc. Cook was the first to spot Felix Calderone's shadow sliding along the ground, moving like a formless black blob along the asphalt. Mindful of the first rule of urban combat--Stay Low\--he crouched and scurried up to within thirty feet of the ambulance, pitching headlong onto the street, facedown, as another volley of fire erupted from the Russians. By the time he had looked up, the blob had disappeared and Cook was momentarily confused, pissed he had lost the target. He raised his head up an inch, and caught a glint of something inside the cab, something metallic, moving and then, he heard it...

The ambulance engine turned over, chugging for a few turns, then caught, and black smoke poured from the exhaust.

"He's inside the cab!" Cook yelled. He brought the M-1 Garand assault rifle around and squeezed off a quick burst. Simultaneously, the rest of Fire Team Alpha fired pointblank into the ambulance, aiming low, as they had been instructed, aiming for the engines, tires, anything they could see and hit.

Calderone was half-lying in the front seat, wincing as slugs tore into the skin of the ambulance, whizzing overhead, and he reached forward and let off the brake. He tapped the accelerator with his hand and the ambulance jerked forward, rolling. He let her roll for two seconds--something heavy thudded off the front bumper, maybe a traffic sign--and he cautiously raised his head enough to try and see what was ahead.

It was at that moment that Pfc Seth Cook disregarded every lesson he had ever learned in the urban assault course they had finished last summer. Cook scrambled to his feet and ran straight at the ambulance, emptying yet another clip into the rear tires of the vehicle. A voice in the back of his head told him to aim low--there was supposed to be an atomic bomb aboard this thing--but in the dark, blinded by flares and muzzle flashes, it was hard to be sure. He just kept running and firing, as the Sisters of Mercy ambulance rolled forward, bending off to the right, bouncing up onto the sidewalk.

Inside the front cab, Calderone felt the tires shred. He was rolling on wheel rims now but he didn't care. He sat up a little straighter in the seat, peeking through the wheel, wrenching the wheel left just in time to avoid a glass front window, then gunned the engine and the vehicle jerked and jumped at the same time as the last four 7.62-mm bullets from Pfc Cook's assault rifle penetrated the back of his skull.

Felix Calderone's head slammed forward into the windshield at the same time his shoulders pivoted left onto the wheel, turning the wheel left. Calderone slumped over the wheel, then rolled to the right onto the seat, the last ounces of life oozing out in a spreading stain on the front seat. The ambulance, now out of control, its steering wheel jammed into a hard left turn, pivoted nearly one hundred and eighty degrees and kept turning, the radius of each turn expanding as it skidded across the pavement.

Pfc Cook jumped behind a light standard just in time to avoid being struck by the vehicle.

"LOOK OUT!!!"

In all, the Sisters of Mercy ambulance, a modified Ford F-150 truck bed weighing, with attached laboratory and care unit and other alterations, something like six thousand pounds, made three and a half complete turns, careening about the center of Wall Street like a mad horse throwing a rider. On its last orbit, the right front fender struck a utility pole and knocked it over, sending a four-thousand volt transformer box and high-voltage lines slashing to the street. The truck finally stopped, jammed against the pole, engine still running, with the Con Ed lines draped over the back of the vehicle. There was a bright blue flash, a shower of sparks like a Fourth of July parade, then utter black.

The impact, though not more than two or three miles an hour, could have dislodged the fission plug trigger in the core of the bomb, setting off a chain reaction. The voltage spike from the crashed transformer could have caused a discharge into the high-explosive detonator caps at the front of the K-5 bomb. Captain Will Hunter, now joined by Mike French, hunkered down behind a row of concrete planters. Both men held their breath.

Though only a few seconds, the moment lasted for what seemed like eternity.

It was Mike French, his voice a hoarse whisper, who spoke first. "Captain, we need to get to that bomb now and safe it."

Hunter made a quick call on his field radio and got some lights going on the street. In the pale glow of scattered streetlamps, the scene was chaos and wreckage, glass and spent cartridges littering the street.

Before anyone could approach the ambulance, Fire Team Alpha approached cautiously, weapons out in assault positions, to make sure the Cubans were dead. With quick hand motions and steps, the airborne troopers converged on the vehicle from all directions. Two kicked open the front cab doors, spying the remains of Calderone's head on the carpeting inside. The other two sprang the rear door to the care unit. Inside, blood and trash everywhere, and a large bulbous object deep in the rear. One trooper stuck his head, his nose wrinkling at the smell of Ortega's now decomposing body.

"Two males, Hispanic, both dead!" he called out.

"Clear front!"

"Clear to the rear!"

At that, Hunter, French, Jeff Torburg and others rose and started running. From the sides of the street, other men appeared, dressed in strange khaki, with Con Ed emblems. The Russians halted halfway across the street, finding themselves suddenly surrounded by the 75h Rangers and officers from NYPD Special Forces. They whirled, saw no escape, and put their hands up.

"Drop your weapons...NOW!!"

Volkogonov, Kalugin Troyanov and Maximov did as they were told. Their Kalishnikovs clattered to the street. In seconds, the troopers were upon them, kicking the rifles away. Maximov spied Mike French.

"Alexei, come\--wait!--" he intervened when a trooper started to push Maximov back into the circle--"he's with me. Mike French..." French held out his badge. "FBI Bomb Task Force." The trooper looked a bit dazed but lowered his weapon to let Maximov pass. The other Russians were searched and herded off to a police van now pulling up in the center of the street.

Jeff Torburg ran back to the corner of Wall and New Street, where another police truck carried his neutron detection gear. He waved at the driver frantically, motioning him on, and the truck eased through the wreckage, around the front of the Sisters of Mercy ambulance, and parked alongside.

Behind them, Captain Hunter and then Colonel Reeves gave orders for both west and east approaches to the block to be sealed off. All unnecessary personnel were evacuated as quickly as possible.

Cautiously, Mike French, followed by Jeff Torburg and Maximov weeded their way through the troopers.

"Sergeant, " French called over to Cook, "get your men out of here. We don't know what we're dealing with here."

Cook, seeking approval from Reeves, got it and yelled for Fire Team Alpha to pull back and secure a one-hundred foot radius perimeter around the ambulance. Two minutes later, only three men remained inside that circle.

"My God," said Torburg, as they approached the opened rear doors. "The smell--"

"Hold your breath, then," French advised him.

With high-wattage flashlights, they entered the ambulance, stepping carefully over things slippery and sticky, finding the K-5 device tucked partially under a white sheet, draped with IV tubes and surgical tools. French threw back the sheets to expose the bomb completely. Its steel and aluminum alloy housing gleamed dully in the yellow light.

"Yours?" asked French.

The Russian played his own flashlight over the object, from nose cap to baseplate. "It is."

"There has to be an access panel somewhere." Torburg stooped to look at the baseplate.

Maximov leaned over with him. "It should be just above the baseplate seam, there...right where your finger just passed--"

"This little lip here?" Torburg asked. He bent to examine the casing.

"That's it. Please be careful--"

Torburg snorted in the stench, blew and coughed, then ran his fingers around the panel, feeling the flush-mounted screw heads. "Screwed down. Looks like this one might do the trick--" he extracted a small screwdriver, tried it, no luck, then tried a size smaller. "Metric." He muttered to himself. He grunted, turning the handle. With a crack, the screw gave and began turning. "I got another one--want to help?"

Maximov was glad to do something, anything, to get Mike French's angry stare off his back. He bent down, snuggled under Torburg, and went to work on the bottom row of screws.

"Gentlemen," French announced, "I don't have to remind you to take extreme care at what you're doing. This ain't no Christmas toy. Take your time."

Torburg's chuckle, issuing up from below the bomb, seemed strangely out of place. "What's the matter, Mike, no sense of adventure?"

At length, the front panel to the relay boxes was removed. Torburg peered in with his flashlight. A series of Hmms followed.

"What's the problem, men?"

"Well, I don't know, exactly. The way this thing's wired up--"

"Jeff, I don't need explanations. Just safe the bomb, will you?"

"I think it's already safed. Yessirree, I surely do."

"What?"

"Come down here and take a look."

French squeezed in to see. Torburg had his flashlight playing over a quartet of relay terminal strips mounted in a small cage.

"See these patches here?" He tugged at one cable with the blade of the screwdriver. Torburg was indicating a row of wiring terminals at the center of the cage.

"I see 'em. What about them?"

Torburg's Texas face scrunched up in a puzzle. "Well," he nodded over to Maximov, "correct me if I'm wrong, but these here sure do look like bypasses and shunts, See how they overlapping the inner wiring bundle, and how their tied in, kind of sloppy-like, to the terminal posts?"

French nodded. He wasn't sure what Torburg was driving at.

Maximov flicked one wire. "I recognize this one. It the K-series design, this one is always blue and white. It receives a signal from a pressure sensor, to tell the bomb detonating circuits when the warhead is at the right altitude for detonation."

French said, "Just what are you driving at, Jeff?"

"Well," Torburg scratched his head with the blade of the screwdriver. "If Alexei here is right and I'm understanding the wiring here, this sucker could not have detonated. Not in a million years. It's wired wrong."

French was dumbfounded. "Are you sure?"

Torburg shrugged. "Sure as I can be. I have to rely on Alexei here to help me out a bit. But I know a thing or two about atomic bombs. Their designs aren't all that different from ours, from the looks of things."

Maximov sat back against the inner wall of the ambulance. "A truth we had hoped to conceal, my friends. Now, you are the first Americans to see the insides of a Soviet atomic device." Maximov looked down, averting their gaze. "And I am a traitor to my country."

Mike French tried to be sympathetic. "Your country assigned you here."

"But I have failed in my mission."

"You haven't failed, Alexei. The bomb didn't go off. We're still here. And Jeff says it was wired wrong. Jeff, is that mis-wiring intentional or accidental?"

"Hard to say. These wires are spliced and fastened down pretty tight. Whoever did it meant for it to stay that way."

French was shaking his head, peering out the open back of the ambulance, at the debris littering the street, shadows of men sliding across the pavement.

"What in God's name were you doing out here, Alexei? You could have wrecked everything. You could have been killed. If this thing hadn't been wired wrong, you could have destroyed Manhattan."

Maximov sat huddled in a ball, arms crossing his legs. Torburg continued to explore the relays and switches, trying to make sure the thing was well and truly safed.

"I have two missions, Michael. You knew about one. That part of my mission was worked out in Lisbon. Help the Americans locate our bombs before the Cubans do something rash. That was my public mission."

"But not all--"

"No, I had a more important mission. All of us did. Kudinov... everyone.

We were supposed to do whatever we had to make sure the Americans didn't get a close look at our bombs. Just as this man is doing right now. The very fact that the situation has developed to this point, developed in this way, is bad for me. Very bad." He looked up at French. "The Party will punish us severely."

French shook his head. "Friggin' politics, that's what it is, Alexei. I guess it comes down to trust, doesn't it? You don't trust us. We don't trust you. But somewhere, somehow, we have trust each other. We have another bomb yet to deal with. If we don't learn to trust each other--"

Maximov's eyes met French's. The Russian seemed to be shivering, but the air was hot and stifling in the ambulance, sweat mixed with fear mixed with relief.

"We were wrong," Maximov conceded. "State Security was wrong. In this kind of work, you can't serve two masters. Just finding the Cuban bandits and disabling the bomb is more important than hiding our technology or outwitting the Americans. We have to find the bomb and safe it, before anything else. Nothing else matters anymore. The rest is just talk, frightened men talking past each other, not listening."

"I guess you're right. We're in this thing together. Either we live together or we die together. Two scorpions in a bottle."

Maximov managed a wan smile. "An American saying, Michael?"

"Something like that."

Maximov extended a hand. French clasped it. "Perhaps, until we have the other bomb secured, we should call a truce in this so-called Cold War."

French said, "I'll agree with that assessment." He bent over to see what Torburg was clucking over. "What is it?"

Torburg was muttering to himself, nodding to some inner voice asking him a question. "She's a beaut, Mike, I'll say that much. When I first started looking at this baby, I thought: my God, it looks like it was put together by six-year olds. Drunk six year olds. But then I saw the way they've got the tamper joined, and the overall symmetry of the core and it just came to me--a toroidal compressive structure. We've never even thought of that. You guys made it work!"

"The bomb's safe, right, Jeff?" French brought the physicist back to the reality of the moment.

"What?--oh, yeah, no doubt about it. She's safe. Couldn't have gone off if we'd dropped her from the Empire State Building."

"I'll take your word for that." French eased himself out of the ambulance, with Maximov right behind. They stretched, watching as the police investigators moved in. Evidence Techs roped off the ambulance with crime scene tape. Beyond the barrier, Army Rangers clustered in knots, gesturing, talking out the assault, reliving the most harrowing moments, decompressing from the tension of the last few hours.

"Alexei," French said, as they walked back to the command post, "we need to hitch a ride. We've got some unfinished business. In the Nation's Capital."

"That is the seven-hundred kiloton device, Michael."

"I know, I know. Friggin' Cubans. I'd give my right arm for a shot at Castro's bearded chin right about now. Just one shot."

They left the cleanup and investigative duties to NYPD and the Army. Back at the command post, Maximov called the Soviet Embassy, gathering last minute intelligence, coordinating to have officials from the Soviet UN mission come to Wall Street and help secure the K-5 bomb, taking possession of their stolen state property. Mike French listened, wondering just what kind of diplomatic chaos would ensue over the disposition of the bomb. Oh well, he remarked to a sergeant nearby, better to have a bomb to dispute over.

Twenty minutes later, French and Maximov hitched a ride in a Patrol Borough South cruiser, heading for the Brooklyn Bridge, now lit up again against the night sky, after Captain Bernie Krantz had given the all-clear to Con Ed.

An unmarked federal aircraft, a small twin-engine Cessna belonging to the Justice Department's fleet, was waiting for them at the south cargo terminal at La Guardia.

11-7-62, Wednesday

Moscow

11:15 a.m.

To anyone observing the lights in the fourth floor corner office at the Defense Ministry building on Frunze Street, the discussions inside must have seemed intense and demanding indeed, for in fact, the lamps in Marshal Rodion Malinovsky's office had burned bright the entire night. Now, in the mid-morning gloom of a late autumn snowfall, Malinovsky was red-eyed and tired, though quite satisfied that Soviet Forces worldwide had acquitted themselves admirably in this latest crisis with the capitalists.

Malinovsky had not been alone in the ornate cherrywood-paneled suite of offices during the evening. Minister of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias (FAR) Raul Castro had joined the Marshal early the previous evening, both men having a keen interest in the twice-hourly tactical updates from Cuba.

The two defense ministers had emptied three bottles of Stolichnaya, and a few more of various unnamed Ukrainian brands, along with a decanter of Georgian brandy. Some of the evening had been spent in the subterranean Central War Room of the Ministry, some sixty five feet below street level, monitoring events in the Caribbean. At the moment, the Cubans, fortified with aerial and armored support from their fraternal socialist colleagues, had been holding up quite well around the beachhead at Tarata. No further air strikes from the Yanquis had been reported, after several incidents over the skies of western Havana. Both men had just returned upstairs in the Minister's private elevator from a briefing with the General Staff, when an aide appeared at the door to Malinovsky's office.

"Message for you, Comrade Marshal," reported a stern young sergeant. He passed the clipboard, posting Eyes Only messages for the Minister, waited patiently while Malinovsky signed off, and departed. Malinovsky loosened his tie and sat heavily in the leather seat behind his desk. He fixed small spectacles onto the bridge of his nose and scanned the message. As he did so, his face hardened perceptibly.

Raul Castro had been studying a tactical map of the Caribbean on the conference table adjoining the desk. He saw Malinovsky pale, put the message down and sink back in his chair.

"What is it, Rodion Pavlovich? What's happened?"

Malinovsky pushed the message flimsy across the desk. He summarized.

"What we have long feared, Minister. At 0650 hours Moscow time this morning, Pliyev's office sent an advisory that the 33rd Rocket Troops of the 74th Division had just launched a nuclear barrage against the American Marines along the beachhead. The troops salvoed six Luna rockets, each with a half-kiloton warhead against the enemy. Multiple air bursts are reported. Spotters report that casualties are near one hundred percent."

For a few moments, Raul Castro and Malinovsky were silent.

The Marshal fiddled with a letter opener. "This is a critical moment, Raul. We'd better tread carefully from here on"

Castro seemed unperturbed, even elated at the news. "It's wonderful news. The best. This is momentous. It's the first time the Yanquis have been really bloodied in their own backyard. This could change the calculus of the whole relationship between the superpowers. We must celebrate." He went hunting through the liquor cabinet for an unopened bottle, but found none.

Malinovsky steepled his fingers under his chin. "I've got to let Nikita Sergeyevich know right away." He snatched out a pad and began jotting notes and thoughts down, constantly pushing his spectacles back up his nose. "The biggest question is what will the Americans do now?"

Castro drained a small flask of brandy into a glass, then tested it with his tongue. "What can they do?"

"There's no end to what the Americans can do," Malinovsky snapped. "Kennedy could launch a few missiles on his own. They could overwhelm us in the Caribbean. We have forty-thousand men and a few rockets. The Americans could land their entire Army."

"Then you would retaliate in kind, say in Berlin. Kennedy's a fool. He has no stomach for this kind of fight. We proved that at the Bay of Pigs last year."

"Kennedy's not the problem. What if he's overthrown by the Pentagon militarists? No," Malinovsky said, "we can't play games with this. The atomic gauntlet has been thrown down. And we threw it. The Presidium has to know." Malinovsky knew from the posted schedule that the First Secretary was scheduled to be at the Sevastyanov State Farm outside Moscow this morning. Something about awards, medals for pig farmers, heroes of socialist labor. He knew Khrushchev would be traveling by motorcade today, as the farm was an hour's drive at most. He started dialing the secure line to the Chief of the Kremlin Guard. Major Malyshev would be on duty this morning, manning the communications suite that always accompanied the Secretary, in a modified black Chaika limousine two cars back from Khrushchev's ZIL. Malyshev would be able to reach the Secretary.

Malinovsky put through an urgent request to speak with the First Secretary, snapping angrily at Malyshev when the Major questioned the urgency of the message.

"Damn it, man, this is not a joke! Get Nikita Sergeyevich right now or there will be hell to pay, I promise you!"

While he waited, Malinovsky summoned Marshal Zakharov from his office just off the Central War Room. The Marshal, a thin mustachioed man with close-cropped steel gray hair and matching glasses, arrived before Khrushchev came on the line.

"Andrei Maximovich, Pliyev's troops have launched some Lunas. Atomic charges have decimated American Marines. The Americans haven't responded yet. Any indications of a threat in the War Room?"

Zakharov, chief of the General Staff, was a precise man, given to brief, concise answers, often abrupt in response. "None, Comrade Minister. Fleet deployments, outside the Caribbean, are completely routine. There has been some traffic in Germany, bringing up an extra battalion or two, but no armor, no heavy weapons. We're monitoring air bases in England and Germany, as well as Strategic Air Command in the United States. All still at Defense Condition Two, alert, staged forward, but nothing's changed."

Malinovsky waved the message form. "This may change everything. Raise our own defense readiness. Raise it to Readiness Level Two, right away. I'll countersign the order now--"he pulled out an authorizing slip, and scribbled his signature, then handed it to the Marshal. "I'm trying to get the First Secretary right now...he's at a state farm this morning, handing out medals."

"The Americans will detect this change..."

"Good," said Malinovsky gruffly, "maybe it'll give the Pentagon pause--" he turned away at a voice crackling in the earpiece, waving Zakharov out.

"Yes...good morning, Comrade First Secretary." Malinovsky bent over the desk, cupping his ears to catch the distant voice. It was plain that Khrushchev was irritated at the interruption. "Sorry, sir, but we have some urgent news you should know about." He spent the next five minutes reading the cable from Pliyev's office, and explaining just what had happened.

There was a long silence at the other end of the line.

"Nikita Sergeyevich, are you--"

"I heard you, damn it! I'm trying to think--I'm in the limousine now and there are hundreds of people outside--the awards ceremony--" Khrushchev paused, there were voices in the background, someone pleading, then a raised voice. That was Khrushchev. He came back on the line much louder. Malinovsky could well imagine the red face.

"Rodion Pavlovich, who authorized Pliyev to use atomic bombs? Did you?"

"You did, Nikita Sergeyevich. Remember the Presidium meeting in August? We discussed the rules of engagement for Anadyr, what Pliyev and Dankevich would be allowed to do. It was decided then."

"Remind me."

"Very well, sir. It's normal practice for our troops to train and exercise and deploy with organic artillery to support infantry operations. The Luna rockets are treated as artillery. They can carry chemical, high-explosive or atomic warheads. The Presidium decided to let stand normal doctrine, to let the Army do what they have trained to do. The ballistic missiles would have needed Presidium approval for Pliyev to use them. No one disagreed with that. But the Lunas have always been part of the Army. You decided to let Pliyev make the decision. His rules were to use the Lunas and their K-5 warheads only in the severest emergency, to protect our troops from imminent invasion. First Secretary, from what I've learned in the War Room, it appears that the Americans were planning to do just that. There were several battalions of Marines already on the beach at Tarata. The Americans were already attacking military targets, some of them ours, by air." Malinovsky didn't mean to sound so pleading but politicians just didn't understand the bonds between soldiers.

"Pliyev did what he had to do, Comrade First Secretary. "I'm sure it was a hard decision."

Silence on the phone was broken only by static. "And now, we have to live with it, eh, Rodion Pavlovich?" He could almost hear the Secretary grinding his teeth. "Now I know how Kennedy felt last year with the Bay of Pigs operation."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but there are important decisions that must be made, and made soon. I've already ordered Zakharov to alert out forces worldwide, in case the Americans try anything. I've ordered an increase in readiness, to Level Two."

"This matches the Americans? We're not provoking?"

"Perfectly matched, sir. A precaution is all."

Khrushchev muttered something to an aide, then came back. "I'm delegating the awards to the local Party man. He's an ass but he loves this sort of thing. The driver tells me we can make it to Frunze Street in fifty minutes, maybe less. I want a full briefing, in the War Room, all staff. And I'll be in touch with the Defense Council too." Khrushchev caught himself adding, "everybody but Brezhnev. We don't need anymore distractions right now. Have everything ready. Fifty minutes."

"I'll see to it personally, First Secretary." The line went dead and Malinovsky hung up. He accepted a tumbler of brandy from Castro gratefully, sipping thoughtfully.

"Comrade Khrushchev," Castro asked, "how is he? His state of mind--"

Malinovsky shook the sediment from the bottom of the glass , sniffed cautiously, then downed the liquid. "Worried. Perhaps apprehensive. He's not sure what Kennedy will do."

Castro snorted derisively. "Kennedy's not a soldier. He's a rich boy, spoiled and soft. What can he do?"

Malinovsky looked up sharply. "This spoiled little rich kid, as you call him, could order a general missile nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. I may not agree with his politics but at least I respect that."

Khrushchev arrived in forty minutes, still draped in dark greatcoast dusted with snow and a fur shapka. He shrugged out of the greatcoat, handing it and the fur cap to an assistant. The guard detail at the glass doors to the Central War Room stood stiffly at attention, snapping a salute. Khrushchev ignored them and went in, Malinovsky, Castro and the rest of the General Staff following.

The conference room was pine and dark blue carpet, with the requisite bust of Lenin on a pedestal in the corner. Corkboards lined one wall, and maps of Cuba, the Caribbean and the southern United States had been pinned up. Opposite the map wall, the pine paneling was divided at the center with a glass front above, overlooking, one level below, the inner desks and consoles of the Central War Room, clustered in hexagonal groups around a communications pod. Each cluster was manned by a duty staff, concerned with a major operational theater across the globe. Beyond the desks, a lighted wall of screens and monitors displayed force status and readiness levels, with each Group of Soviet Forces abroad. At the western hemisphere desk, to the far left, officers and technicians clustered, occasionally pointing at something on the lighted board.

With the First Secretary's arrival, a new tactical intelligence briefing had been prepared. The briefer was First Captain of Armor Vasily Luzhin, staff operations specialist assigned to the General Staff from the Ministry's Directorate of Fraternal Operations with Bloc Countries.

Luzhin informed the assembled leaders that indications were strong and continuing that the Americans were definitely pulling back.

"We have reconnaissance information from our submarines and from ground spotters to verify this. The task force that had been assembled for the invasion, consisting of task groups supported by two carriers, the Independence and the Enterprise, have relocated some sixty miles north by northwest, away from Cuba and past the Dry Tortugas, into the Gulf of Mexico. Also, the amphibious ship Iwo Jima, with the Marine battalion landing teams, has recovered the remnants of the invasion force and pulled out in a similar fashion."

"What about the air strikes?" Malinovsky asked.

Luzhin consulted some notes. "Diminishing, as the morning goes on. It's very early there, just after midnight in fact. From what we can tell, air operations have been cut back to surveillance actions, like before, with some bomb damage assessment going on."

"No more air strikes?" Khrushchev asked. "Bombing attacks?"

"None that have been reported since 1030 hours our time. The Americans' sortie rate has dropped to just one or two aircraft every hour, checking out targets, deployments of our forces, that sort of thing. General Pliyev has issued an order for all anti-aircraft batteries to cease fire for the time being."

Raul Castro pounded the table angrily. "Cuba will most certainly not obey any orders like that! We have a right to sovereignty of our airspace."

Khrushchev spoke up. "Comrade Minister Raul...be reasonable. The Americans are like beaten dogs. They're pulling back to lick their wounds. Every wolf hunter knows you don't keep throwing stones at a wounded animal. Especially, one with atomic bombs. Call off your anti-aircraft defenses and let Kennedy disengage."

"Cuba is not a plaything of the Yanquis!" Castro shouted. "We have the right to defend ourselves. And you promised assistance. You promised the Soviet peoples would defend the Revolution, to the death if necessary."

Khrushchev imagined he was dealing with one of his grandchildren, stubbornly holding onto a toy, kicking and screaming all the way to bed. "Of course, you do. Everybody has that right. It's just that we've tied a very tight knot here. To untie it, we have to let go, give it some slack, and let the other fellow have some slack too. That's all I'm asking, Raul. Give us room to get out of this mess. Let go of the rope, so we can pull back from catastrophe."

Castro reddened and went over to a map of the Caribbean, sulking, stroking his beard.

"Just so you understand my position. Fidel will never compromise the revolution. Cuba has suffered too much already."

"Indeed," said Khrushchev, "we are sensitive to that. We all have the same goals here. We all want to see the revolution succeed. But what good is a revolution if people have to live like cockroaches in piles of radioactive rubble?"

"It seems," said Castro, somewhat mollified, tracing his fingers around the perimeter of the Caribbean on the tactical map, "that your nuclear artillery has turned the tide. The norteamericanos respect you."

"They should;" grunted Malinovsky. "This doctrine has been in force for a number of years. We know how to use and fight with atomic weapons on the battlefield. We have this experience."

"I only hope," said Khrushchev, "that we haven't crossed an irrevocable line. To be the first to use nuclear weapons since Hiroshima is not something to be proud of. We don't know what Kennedy will do. Or what the Pentagon militarists will force him to do. Perhaps, I should send a message...."

A courier entered the conference room, bearing a clipboard with a sheaf of telex pages. He presented them to Malinovsky, who countersigned and accepted the sheets, scowling through the bottom of his spectacles as he scanned them. At length, he looked up gravely.

"Comrades, news from America."

"Well, Rodion Pavlovich, don't keep us in suspense."

Malinovsky passed the sheets around the table. Khrushchev snatched them up first.

"It seems that the standoff in New York is over. The K-5 bomb in the ambulance was captured, intact."

There were murmurs around the table. Raul Castro's face darkened.

"And our warriors--?"

Malinovsky waited until the First Secretary had finished perusing the documents. He looked up, grim.

"The Americans assaulted the ambulance under cover of darkness, with special forces troops. All Cuban commandos were killed. The Americans also suffered casualties. But the bomb didn't detonate."

There was visible relief in the room but Castro was somber. "It's a great tragedy for Cuba." He stared ahead, as if seeing across the thousands of miles to the carnage of Wall Street. "They died heroes. Revolutionary heroes."

Khrushchev was thoughtful. "Our own men suffered casualties. It says here that several members of our UN mission were taken into custody. We will, of course, protest this."

"The Americans have our bomb, Nikita Sergeyevich. It must be returned to us at once."

"I'm already drafting a note to that effect now," Khrushchev said, jotting on a scratch pad. "I'm sending Dobrynin up to New York, with instructions to demand that the device be turned over to us immediately."

"Our special agents failed to seize the bomb before the Americans got there," Malinovsky said. He shook his head. "Inexcusable."

Khrushchev was thinking out loud. " 'Dear President Kennedy, there has already been a nuclear exchange on the beaches of Cuba. There was almost an atomic explosion in New York. Only prompt and sure action by our forces prevented such a catastrophe. And Washington is still threatened. What will you do now? Will you respond with a strategic nuclear exchange? Will you launch an atomic missile at Soviet forces somewhere in the world, perhaps even against a Soviet city?

'President Kennedy, I implore you to be reasonable, to think through the consequences of every decision you make now. Two weeks ago, I spoke of our common problem as if we were tugging on both ends of a rope, and the harder we pulled, the tighter the knot. We had to work together to untie this knot. And we managed, despite all the forces against us, to do that.

'Now, once again we are forced into the breech, and must act like the statesmen we are--"

Khrushchev looked up. "Rodion Pavlovich, has there been any change in the Americans' defense readiness in the last few hours?"

Malinovsky snatched up a white telephone on the table, conferred with the western Hemisphere desk in the Central War Room, then hung up. "Nyet, no change. They're still at defense condition two. Very high level alert."

"Very well, then there is still a little room for us to maneuver. But we must hurry. There are forces gathering in the Pentagon that will soon force Kennedy to act."

'Mr President, the time has come for us to be statesmen once again. When a man is sick, he takes medicine and he may recover. If he continues to be sick, he may take stronger medicine. Perhaps, even surgery may be needed to correct the problem. At each stage of a sickness, the physician must weigh the consequences of stronger action against the consequences of doing nothing.

'A kind of sickness has fallen over us and we must take drastic action to save the patient. Toward that end, I propose that you and I meet again, in person, at a neutral site. We must cure the patient quickly or there is only death and destruction awaiting all of us. We must resolve the misunderstandings that are spiraling rapidly out of control, and that threaten to hasten the demise of world peace and security.'

Nikita Khrushchev knew that time was critical. They might have only a few hours, perhaps only minutes, before the American militarists would take matters into their own hands. By the end of the day, Khrushchev was certain, unless they acted, Kennedy would be overthrown and then dealing with the Americans would be much tougher.

He had to get the message to Kennedy as quickly as possible.

"Rodion Pavlovich, I want this note teletyped to our Embassy in America. Right now, as it is."

"Should we not let the Presidium first study it, Nikita Sergeyevich?"

"No, damn it, we don't have the time! Don't you see that? The Pentagon will remove John Kennedy from office and we'll be dealing with a cabal of reckless generals. Is that what you want? We can stop that and save ourselves if we act, now!"

Malinovsky was surprised at the First Secretary's words. Had he suddenly become Kennedy's brother?

"Rodion Pavlovich, I know what you're thinking. And you're wrong. Kennedy's not an angel. But we can deal with him. He listens. He negotiates. He's not an unreasonable man. But we must be quick about it. If we're not, some harebrained bomber pilot is liable to take matters into his own hand and drop an atomic device right here on Moscow. Now, get this to Dobrynin, right away--" he handed the handwritten pages to the Marshal "--and tell him to request an urgent meeting as soon as Kennedy can meet. At this meeting, Dobrynin will request that the K-5 bomb be returned to us at once. And then Kennedy and I can meet in person."

Malinovsky looked dubious but took the pages. Khrushchev was already halfway out the door, heading for the elevator that would take him up to the street-level garage. The First Secretary's ZIL and accompanying motorcade was waiting for him. Khrushchev climbed into the back of the ZIL and immediately, the motor transport officer shut the door behind him. With engines reverberating around the garage, the motorcade got underway, bearing toward the Kremlin a few blocks south.

By the time, the ZIL had eased out onto Frunze Street, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev had helped himself to several swallows of the hot pepper vodka he kept stashed away in the compartment's liquor cabinet.

11-7-62, Wednesday

Homestead Air Force Base

5:00 a.m.

"Mr President, we found Secretary McNamara and General Taylor. They were locked in a storage room in the basement of the Flight Ops building. They seem to be okay."

Dwight Eisenhower nodded grimly and set off for the stairs, taking them two at a time, following the airborne trooper, Sergeant Mulaney, who'd reported the find. The basement was a warren of rooms and narrow halls, filled with spare parts, filing cabinets and ground service equipment in varying states of disassembly. In a small storage room off a larger files room, a squad of airborne troopers mixed with the base Air Police detachment, surrounded two men.

Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor both appeared pale and haggard, sporting several days' growth of beard, but otherwise unharmed. Two Navy corpsmen from the 2nd Marines examined each man, in time, pronouncing them somewhat dehydrated but otherwise fit for duty.

"Haley's goons took us down here and locked us in, then barricaded the doors," Taylor was telling Lieutenant Evers, 2nd Platoon of the Fourth Brigade, 82nd Airborne. "We banged and made as much noise as we could but the planes outside probably masked it. There were no windows. I checked out a ventilation shaft but it was too narrow."

"You get anything to eat?" Evers asked. He nodded to a corporal to grab some rations from the platoon's mess and hustle back down.

McNamara nodded, wincing visibly in the strong fluorescent light of the files room. "Twice a day, some Marine sergeant would show up, hamburgers, Cokes, fries, a sandwich or two, that sort of thing. It got old real fast. I'd kill for some iced tea right now."

Eisenhower came forward and shook the SecDef's hands. "Gentlemen, I wish we could meet under more pleasant circumstances."

McNamara grasped Ike's hands with both of his. "Always a pleasure, General."

Maxwell Taylor saluted, then grinned. "Likewise, Mr. President. You're the last face I expected to see in this situation."

Eisenhower shrugged. "The President asked me to help out. He thought Haley might have more respect for an old soldier. Turned out not to be the case." He described the meeting with Kennedy, the flight down, the confrontation on Runway 18 and the assault on Haley's plane.

"The General's not hurt. Except for his pride. We put the rest of his men in the base stockade. Haley's already on his way back to Washington. The Government has accommodations set up for him at Fort McNair."

"I'll bet," McNamara said. He winked at Taylor. "With all the amenities too, I'm sure."

The men made their way back up several flights of stairs into the ground floor lobby of Flight Ops, now thick with armed men. Base Air Police had already secured the stairs to the control tower and comm rooms. McNamara asked for a quick briefing on the situation. They went to the radio room. Moments later, General Shoup and Admiral Anderson appeared. Greetings and salutes were exchanged.

"We couldn't recall the Marines in time," Eisenhower remarked. "Haley had parts of several battalion landing teams, from the Iwo, already on the ground at Tarata, a small beach town a few miles northeast of La Esperanza. About two companies' worth, with some light aerial support. The whole operation was pretty slipshod, if you ask me."

"I guess he was figuring on keeping it quiet for awhile longer," McNamara observed. "Hard to do when you start landing battalions on foreign soil."

"The hell of it is that he was able to get this far," Taylor said. "Haley was smart in his way--he used the Missile Crisis and deployments supporting our positions in the Caribbean to mask what he was trying to do."

"And the Russians--?"

Eisenhower was grim. "We didn't know they had tactical nukes on the ground--"

"No--"

The former President nodded. "About an hour and a half ago, from the reports we're getting. Recon planes from the Independence and the Enterprise both reported the same thing: multiple air bursts, small yield, but definitely nuclear. Detonating over the beachhead itself or just offshore."

McNamara paled and sat down in a chair beside a console. He stared back in disbelief, hand nervously playing over his mouth and cheeks. "You're sure? I mean, some of our bombs have quite a concussive--"

The CNO, Admiral Anderson, nodded silently. "Mr. Secretary, all our ships have rad monitors now. Task Force 135 reported a sharp spike in radiation--fission byproducts indicative of an atomic detonation--about an hour after the observed bursts. Hundreds of sailors saw the glow on the horizon. At this moment, there's a large cloud of contaminated beach soil and seawater moving east-northeast on the prevailing winds, toward the southern Bahamas. We've maneuvered Task Force 135 and 136 out of the way. We're just praying the winds don't shift around to the north. Air Weather Service and the Weather Bureau think that could happen in the next few hours. If it does, we'll have a real calamity on our hands. She'll be dropping radioactive fallout right on the beaches of south and eastern Florida."

"My God--" McNamara realized, "--the whole Eastern Seaboard.--"

"Exactly."

"What about the President? Has he been advised?"

Eisenhower replied, "Once we had confirmation from our aircraft, the word was sent on to the White House. The President's already activated the Emergency Relocation System now. Key government personnel are moving to protected positions."

McNamara was shaking his head. "It's madness. We thought when Khrushchev backed down, we'd been through Hell and survived. We thought we'd stared the dragon in the mouth and lived to tell about it. Now this--"

Taylor was thoughtful. "No one knew they had tactical nukes."

"Or that they'd be used," said Shoup.

"We have to respond," Anderson said. "That's clear enough. The Russians could just be using this as a diversion, like some have thought all along. Berlin could be the real target."

"That's up to the President," Eisenhower said sharply.

"We can't just do nothing, General," Anderson protested. "My God, the Russians just nuked our boys. Prudence and military sense dictate that--"

McNamara interrupted. "Admiral, you and I both know we can throw normal procedures out the window. We faced this two weeks ago, when the quarantine went up. Remember you and I had a little confrontation in the Tank?"

Anderson reddened at the memory. "With all respects, Mr. Secretary, you were interfering in routine matters. The Navy does know how to conduct a blockade."

"Not when the enemy has atomic bombs, you don't, Admiral," McNamara said. "It's a whole new ball game and you don't have any more experience than anyone else. That's why I got involved. You make a mistake in a normal blockade, what's the worst that can happen? You might lose a ship or two. That's bad enough. When the enemy has atomic bombs, and you make a mistake, or a send the wrong message, you can lose a helluva lot more than a few ships. I'm not sure how well that's realized in the Pentagon. That's why I came down to the NMCC and yelled like I did."

Anderson looked around for support, pleading his case with Shoup, Taylor, Eisenhower. "You're all military men. Look, the President pays us for military advice. If we don't give it, we're derelict in our duty. My advice, is respond to the Russians, now, in ways they can't misunderstand."

The SecDef was unmoved. "How would you have us respond, Admiral?"

Anderson shrugged. "They nuked our Marines. We should be proportionate in response. We nuke a few ships, maybe a port or two. Say, Leningrad."

"Ridiculous," McNamara said. "Then what happens: they escalate. We nuke Leningrad. Who's next? Baltimore? New York? Where does it stop, Admiral? What'd different about what you're proposing and what Haley did?"

Anderson paused, thoughtful at the comparison. "Haley went outside the chain of command. He's guilty of insubordination."

"At the very least," McNamara replied. "Why the hell do you think we even have a chain of command? So half-cocked nutcases can't plunge us into an atomic war that nobody can win."

"And how would you respond, Mr. Secretary? What's your proportionate response?"

"Same as we did before. Give Khrushchev a warning, let him think about the consequences, and give him room to maneuver his way out of this mess without losing face."

"And if Khrushchev's not in control?"

McNamara had no answer for that. He just glared at Anderson, as though the shouting argument they had started in the E-Ring of the Pentagon two weeks before had never really ended.

Eisenhower cut in. "We better get on the horn to the President right away. I can see we're not going to resolve anything here."

They walked briskly through cool early morning breezes back to the COC, surrounded by two platoons of airborne, Marines and the Air Police detachment. By order of the Secretary of Defense, all flight line activity had been stopped and armed Marines secured the stepladders in front of every aircraft. Until the situation could be assessed, Homestead was shutting down. In the COC's radio room, Eisenhower directed the Air Force technicians to open a secure line to the White House. The patch took a few minutes.

"Mr. President," Eisenhower began, "we've successfully accomplished part of our mission. I have the SecDef and the CJCS here with me now."

The relief in Kennedy's voice was evident. "Excellent work, General. Excellent. The country owes you an enormous debt of gratitude. I've got Mac Bundy here in the Oval Office with me. Rusk and Ball are on the way. I guess we can make this a sort of ExComm meeting."

"Mr. President, I'll try to sum up the situation as I see it," McNamara said. For the next ten minutes, the SecDef gave a quick tactical summary, duly noting Anderson's concern that a response be formulated. He described, with Eisenhower's help, the confrontation and arrest of General Haley. "Mr. President, some brave men died during that assault, on both sides. I'd like to put in my recommendations that any casualties from the assault team be recognized by you personally, with some kind of commendation for valor. What they did was pretty incredible."

"Consider it done," Kennedy advised them. "But we still have unfinished business regarding this renegade operation, don't we?"

Eisenhower replied, "We do, Mr. President. Admiral Anderson is reporting that, as a result of your orders and the nuclear air bursts, both Task Force 135 and 136 have pulled back well away from the island and are in the process of re-grouping. We still have a vital surveillance mission here, as long as the Russians continue to remove the ballistic missiles."

Kennedy was quiet for a moment and background voices in discussion could be heard. In a moment, the President added, "There's some belief at this end, some debate, as to just what Khrushchev and the Russians will do now. Will he keep the ballistic missiles coming out? Will he stop, figuring the equation's changed now? Or will he move against Berlin? You already know about the incident on that German highway?"

"I do, Mr. President."

"And the Aurora," Admiral Anderson interjected. "Don't forget her. Another reason we should nuke 'em right now."

Kennedy's voice suddenly firmed, as if he had made a decision. "Before we do anything rash, we better make sure what's what at our end. Haley's on a plane right now--they tell me it's already circling for a landing at Bolling Field--and I want Stone arrested too. I want this Operation Sierra shut down now, and shut down for good. Khrushchev will use this unauthorized combat action as full justification for the atomic bombs he's already used. I have to take that reason away. Then, we can issue an ultimatum. We want the tactical nuclear bombs removed too."

"And if he refuses?" asked Eisenhower, seeing the growing consternation on the faces of the military men around him, knowing what they were thinking. "What happens then, Mr. President?"

Though separated by nearly fifteen hundred miles, Kennedy could well imagine the red and angry faces of the men surrounding Eisenhower. "Then I'll authorize a limited strike with limited objectives. We take out a Soviet base in Cuba with a small atomic device, a Lance or an Honest John missile, of our own."

There were murmurs around the COC's radio room, but Eisenhower waved them quiet.

McNamara cut in. "Mr. President, that may not be enough--"

"Worthless," muttered Shoup, the Marine Commandant.

"Militarily useless," Anderson said.

"Goddamn it, gentlemen!" Eisenhower yelled over all the talk. "That will be enough! The Commander-in-Chief has issued us direct orders. We are going to obey them, is that understand?" The former President glared from one man to the next, daring each in turn to speak, his own forehead shiny with sweat. The room fell silent.

Eisenhower turned back to the speaker. "Sorry, Mr. President."

Kennedy's low chuckle crackled through the air. "Very eloquent, General. I doubt I could have said it better myself."

"Your orders are to arrest Admiral Stone, sir?"

"That's right. I want Bob McNamara and Max Taylor to stay there at Homestead, stay on top of the military situation in the Caribbean. General Taylor, I want our ships in position to keep an eye on the Russians, make sure they're pulling all the missiles out. Any subterfuge, any backing away from our agreement, I want to know that right away. And keep our task force in position for a limited strike option. That has to be preserved, in case the Russians decide to hunker down. One way or the other, all the missiles and all the atomic bombs are coming out."

McNamara spoke for both of them. "Understood, Mr. President."

"General Eisenhower, you and General Shoup and Admiral Anderson, continue with your original mission. I want Stone. Arrest him and shut Sierra down and get our men and ships the hell away from Cuba. No more targets. No more unauthorized assaults. I want that made completely impossible, without specific orders from me. Is that understood?"

"Perfectly, sir," Eisenhower said.

"One more thing, gentlemen," the President's voice added. "I know some of you have had misgivings about the way this whole thing's being handled. I know-- believe me I am very well aware-- that some of you want to go a lot further in responding to the Russians. Frankly, the Joint Chiefs, if the truth were known, wouldn't vote for me for dogcatcher right now. And that's okay. It's okay to disagree in our system. But the chain of command has to hold and the civilians have to be in charge. What Haley's done may have done lasting damage to that idea, with long-range consequences to our system and our Constitution that remain to be worked out.

"But understand this; though some of you may disagree with the way I've handled this crisis, I expect you to do your duty to uphold the idea that civilians are in charge. Whatever you think about me personally, you obey the Commander-in-Chief because you took an oath, same as I did, to do just that. When you disobey the Commander-in-Chief, you violate that oath. As far as I'm concerned, even a barrage of atomic bombs directed at the United States won't do the kind of lasting damage you could do by violating your oath. We're all sworn to defend and protect the Constitution. We may not all agree on the best way to do that, but undermining the very foundation we depend on means the Russians can win without ever firing a shot.

"I don't think any of us wants that on our conscience."

"No sir, Mr. President," Eisenhower added. "I know these men will do their duty."

The conversation ended and the men immediately began making plans. A pair of Coast Guard SH-3A Sea Kings were summoned from a small detachment assigned to the Port of Miami Coast Guard station. Ike, Shoup and Anderson would make the three-hour flight southwest to the Dearborn, where they would be met by four more Navy Sea Kings from the Iwo, embarking several platoons of Marines, just in case. No one knew quite how Jack Stone would respond, though Anderson was fairly sure that "Slip" Stone would cave when confronted when the kind of assembled brass soon to descend on his command.

They found the Dearborn underway on a heading of 265 degrees, making about twelve knots and enveloped in light morning fog, with two DDEs, the McKinley Ford and the Conklin, escorting her westward. Admiral Anderson directed the Navy Sea Kings to make a low sweep over her bow, while Anderson established communications.

"What's your plan, Admiral?" asked Eisenhower.

Anderson pointed out the obvious: Dearborn had only a single small helipad aft of her aft 5-inch gun mount. The pad had been added on, almost as an afterthought, after removing the ship's three-inch guns. She had been laid down and built well before there were such things as helicopters transporting admirals around.

"Even if Stone surrenders, we're going in as an armed boarding party, General," Anderson told him. "We don't yet know who's aboard, who might be having second thoughts or just not be willing to cooperate like I think Jack Stone will. We'll cycle the Navy choppers through that thirty-by-fifty foot helipad at the stern, one after the other, and let the Marines disembark. We've got the equivalent of several platoons of Marines in the skies here. Once aboard, the Marines will secure the helipad and all aft areas. The platoon leaders will then detach a squad or two to go forward, securing the bridge, all the three and five-inch guns, rocket launchers and AA mounts, the Combat Ops spaces and the engine room. When we get the all clear, we'll set this chopper down and see about Jack Stone. Of course, all during the process, I plan to be on the horn with 'Slip', seeing what his state of mind is, making sure we have his full cooperation. Last thing I want is a repeat of the assault at Homestead."

Eisenhower grinned. "Amen to that, Admiral. It's your show."

Moments later, Anderson had Stone on the air-to-ground circuit. From the sound of his voice, it was plainly obvious that Jack Stone was a defeated man.

"We won't offer any resistance," Eisenhower heard Stone's voice say, crackling through the steady beat of the Sea King's sixty-two foot main rotors. "I've given orders to assist the boarding party in every way possible."

"That's wise, Slip," Anderson admitted, not really surprised. His eyes met Eisenhower's, then David Shoup's. "By order of the President, Operation Sierra is shut down immediately. Once we're aboard, bring the Dearborn around to a course heading of 165 degrees. Make turns for ten knots. And secure your COC, especially the combat radios. All COC personnel to lay below to quarters immediately. You will turn over the keys to Lieutenant--" he checked with Commandant Shoup, who mouthed the platoon leader's name--"uh...that's Lieutenant Watkins. We're heading back to Miami."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The boarding party procedures went off without incident. After two of the four Navy Sea Kings had disgorged their Marines, they cycled off and orbited the ship for ten minutes, while the command Sea King, Coast Guard 6022, bearing Shoup, Anderson and Eisenhower touched down. At Anderson's radioed all-clear, those two Navy choppers departed the area for the hour-long flight back to land, there being no space to set them down on the Dearborn or her escorts. Once aboard, Anderson went immediately to the Dearborn's bridge and signaled the escorts that the three-ship detachment would be making a battle turn in five minutes: new course heading 165 degrees. The CNO had ordered that the two remaining Navy Sea Kings land their Marine units on the McKinley Ford and the Conklin, just to ensure that all elements of the force would cooperate with command authority. The Marines would have to rappel down to the deck, as neither DDE had a stern pad for helicopter operations. The entire process took another twenty minutes.

No one wanted a repeat of the Homestead assault.

Anderson found Jack Stone in the CO's chair in the bridge, chin resting in cupped hands. Stone came to attention.

Anderson snapped off a return salute. He nodded for the Marine rifle squad to come forward. Distasteful business, this, he thought. Better to get it over and done with.

Reading from a slip of paper, with the President's express orders scribbled on it, Anderson intoned, "Admiral John Stone, as Chief of Naval Operations and senior officer aboard this vessel, I hereby relieve you of your command authority and assume control of the Dearborn." The Marines moved in a silent signal to form a tight cordon around Stone. He flinched, but said nothing. "Further, by direct order of the President, I am ordering you to be placed under arrest and be confined to quarters for the duration of this mission. When we get back to Miami, you'll be taken in custody to Washington. At that time, you'll be charged with treason, gross insubordination and dereliction of duty and will face general court-martial proceedings." Anderson hurried through the words as fast as he could. Just saying them on the fighting bridge of an American warship was an abomination. His stomach churned. He looked up.

"Have you anything to say in your defense at this moment?"

Stone blinked. "I'm sorry, George. For everything."

Anderson had thought he might feel some compassion for Slip but none came and his face hardened. This was an American naval warship, goddamn it! Admirals didn't go off half-cocked in the middle of an assigned mission, and run their own little wars. "Take him below."

The Marines hustled Stone out of the bridge compartment. When he was gone, Anderson found Eisenhower looking over the engine room telegraph. "I'm sorry, General. That was tough for me. Damn tough. Arresting a ship commander on his own bridge isn't why I signed up for the Navy."

"None of us did, Admiral. It goes with the territory." Eisenhower smiled without humor. "And the times. You did your job."

The Dearborn's skipper, Captain Stephen Murdock, was also on the bridge, though not charged with Stone's offenses. He had cooperated completely when contacted by the CNO from Homestead.

"Admiral, we're ready for your course change." Murdock seemed to want to bury the moment in the routine of shipboard operations. Anderson nodded, understanding.

"Very well, Captain, execute the course change now."

Murdock commanded the helmsman to turn to port, advising the DDEs also to begin their course change. The Dearborn heeled over and Anderson watched the ship's inclinometer bubble slide left: soon, they were holding a ten -degree list to port as the ship's rudder bit into the Gulf waters.

The course change took about ten minutes. At the end, Murdock reported satisfactorily that Dearborn was now on course 165 degrees, making ten knots, as ordered.

"Very well, Captain. Maintain course and speed."

"Aye, aye, sir. Admiral, we have additional data on the atomic warheads that detonated off the coast of Cuba. Air Weather Service planes from Patrick are tracking the cloud of radioactivity right now."

"Is she going to clear the coast?"

"It looks like it, sir. We're advising shipping along the eastern seaboard to make west and north for the next few hours. A notice to mariners has already been drawn up, for your approval, to that effect. AWS says the prevailing winds this morning are from the southwest, seasonal at eight to ten knots, gusting higher. The winds are driving the radioactivity offshore. They should be steady most of the day."

Eisenhower said, "That's the best news I've heard in hours."

Anderson was thoughtful. He propped a foot on the ladder rung leading up to the bridge wing. "Maybe so but we're not free of the threat yet. Until we're beyond MiG range, I'm keeping us at battle stations - nuclear, just in case. Once we get to the five-hundred mile point, or in American territorial waters, then we can relax."

"You think the Russians will launch again?"

"General, I don't know what the hell the Russians'll do anymore. Who does? But I intend to get out of here as fast as I can and not give Ivan any more reasons to go nuclear or attack our ships. Then, whatever happens, it's beyond my control."

The bridge telephone rang. Murdock scooped it up, grunted a few words, then handed the handset to the CNO. Anderson answered.

"Anderson."

"Admiral, this is Lieutenant Watkins. Second Platoon. We've found a couple of chopper pilots below in the wardroom. Marines. They claim to have overflown Tarata just an hour or so ago. They've seen the battlefield."

"What?" Anderson explained the find to Eisenhower and Shoup. "Send them to the bridge at once."

The Marine pilots appeared, still in sweat-soaked flight gear, five minutes later. They saluted smartly. Both were UH-1 "Huey" pilots, supporting the battalion landing team off the Iwo.

"How the hell did you wind up here, on the Dearborn?" General Shoup asked.

The pilots, Lieutenants Chapman and Petty, looked down a bit sheepishly. Petty had a thin line of black moustache that twitched like a mouse's.

"Well, sir, we were standing offshore during the evac, keeping the tamales off the beach, watching our behinds for MiGs when the bombs went off. Chapman here, I seen his Huey practically come apart in the air, just disintegrated. All the pieces went in the water. For me, after the light, the shock wave hit me. I was already pretty much blinded by then. The Huey heeled hard over, practically on her rotor ends. I thought I was a dead man but somehow she righted herself and she was still flying. For the life of me, I don't know how. I had one eye I could see out of--" Petty fingered a white gauze patch over his burned left eye--"and first thing I see was Chapman here, bobbing around in the water, surrounded by all this flaming wreckage. My own aircraft, see, had been blown almost into the water. In fact, I'm sure the blade tips struck the water. But somehow I stayed airborne. Since I was already at an altitude of about two feet, I signaled Charlie to get the hell in. Then I goosed it and we got up to about five hundred okay. That's when I saw what the bombs had done."

"Describe what you saw, son."

Petty shuddered. "The LSTs were melted, absolutely melted. They looked like slag heaps of metal. Sinking too. I looked up and down the beach, and all our equipment--the tanks, the amphtracs, the trucks, what was left of them, had all been blown into the water. I mean...hundred of yards out into the ocean. The sand and the rock and the trees around the beach was just liquid, like bubbling black oil."

"--and the treeline, too--"

"--Oh yeah, up on the ridge line overlooking the beach, all the trees were down, blown down and just smashed to toothpicks, but they were all in the same direction, inland, like the shock wave hit 'em that way."

"And the men? What about casualties?"

Petty swallowed hard. His eyes met Shoup's. "General, sir, I didn't see any casualties. No men, no living things at all, up and that down that damn beach, as far as I could see. It was dark, but the men were gone. I'd swear on my momma's grave, sir, there were several hundred men in the shallows and lining up to embark when the bombs went off. After the light cleared and the winds started dying down, they were gone. And I mean gone gone. No bodies, no nothing." He was practically in tears.

Shoup squeezed Petty on the shoulder. "Son, you still didn't answer my original question. How'd you wind up here?"

Petty choked back a sob. "Sir, my instruments were shot. I basically had no instrument panel. It was pitch black, hot as Hades, and I had to dead reckon my way off that beach. I found me some stars after a few minutes. I thought I was headed northeast." He shrugged. "I guess it was the wrong star. Couldn't find the Iwo...didn't have any radio. Then we saw some ships. Turned out to be the Dearborn. Man, was I off course. I missed Iwo by a hundred and fifty miles. Sir, I'm sorry, it's just that--"

"It's understandable, given the circumstances, Lieutenant. Lay below. Sick bay, on the double."

"Yes, sir," Petty saluted, Chapman too and they ducked out of the bridge.

Shoup just shook his head, muttering. "An entire landing force, an entire Marine battalion landing team, two companies of men, all their equipment, just--what--?"

"Vaporized," completed Eisenhower. "That's what an atomic bomb does. Two companies of dedicated and courageous Marines, on an unauthorized combat mission, reduced to the atoms they came from."

Anderson was silent, gloomy. "I just want to make sure we stay upwind of that radioactive cloud, the whole beachhead. We need to get the whole assault force upwind of the beach, to clear any possible fallout hazards. I got measurements and indications from the Met officer that fallout and radiation levels are still high and moving east, toward Havana."

"Thank goodness for small favors," said Eisenhower.

Shoup was defiant about the Cubans. "No more sunbathing in paradise for awhile."

"Yeah," said Anderson, "like about five hundred years."

The men studied the bridge plot of ship deployments standing off the north and northwest coasts of the island for a few minutes. Anderson got on the secure V-1 line to the NMCC at the Pentagon, to get a reading on Soviet moves. After a few anxious consultations with CINCLANT in Norfolk, there was consensus that there was no general Soviet move to strike posture, no radical upgrade in readiness. There had been incidents all over the map; not unusual when superpower forces maneuvered in close proximity. The brief tank shootout on an East German highway. The torpedoing of the Aurora in the western Atlantic. Some indications of a Soviet Kilo-class boat damaged in depth-charging. But no further general mobilization could be detected.

"Both sides seem to want the other side to make the next move," Eisenhower muttered, poring over nautical charts of the Florida Straits and the Bahamas Channel. "But the next move is general thermonuclear war."

"I want to go back to DEFCON Two," Anderson said. "Just in case. The President's wrong on this one. We've got to match the Russians at the highest alert levels, General. If we don't, they can catch us with our pants down, disable our first-strike weapons in one blow."

Ike stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I'm not disagreeing with you, Admiral, but the President's got a tough nut to crack here. We don't want to exacerbate the situation. We've already seen small scale combat incidents in Germany and the Atlantic. It's a hair-trigger out there. We're ordered to stay at DEFCON Three for the time being. I guess the real explanation is that you can't just go charging around shooting up places if the next step is thermonuclear war and the next casualty might be Washington or New York or Chicago."

Anderson wasn't convinced. "Begging the General's pardon, but why the hell then do we have nuclear warfighting plans and ships like this? What good is a weapon if you can't use it? What good is it if the enemy thinks and calculates you won't use it? What's so different about atomic weapons and a simple anti-tank round? They both blow things up."

"Hiroshima's the difference. Anti-tank rounds kill tanks. Maybe a few crewmen. Atomic bombs kill entire cities. We can't trade Chicago for Minsk, or San Francisco for Kiev and expect to have a viable nation for very long. The President knows that. Hell, I knew that once, when I was in the Oval Office. Atomic bombs aren't just bigger bombs. It's a whole new scale of warfare and we haven't really come to grips with that."

Anderson was still doubtful. "The Chiefs don't agree. I don't agree. The whole point of war and fighting is to win."

"And like someone said," Ike was sarcastic, "if the last man left standing is American, we win. I know you don't believe that. You guys are trained professional soldiers. You believe we can fight and really win a nuclear war. I'm not so sure we can."

"The Chiefs are practically in open revolt against the President," General Shoup admitted. "They think he's prepared to let Castro get away with murder just to keep the peace. Chamberlain had the same thoughts at Munich."

That made Eisenhower mad. "Look, General, I'm a Republican and a patriot. Kennedy's a Democrat and I don't agree with his domestic politics for a second. But the President is a war hero and you both know that. Nobody needs to be questioning his patriotism or loyalty. Besides, the man is also Commander in Chief."

Anderson seemed to give a little. "What's the next step, then?"

Ike shrugged. "We're sitting on a powder keg here. But CINCLANT's got good men in the chain of command. We're needed back in Washington, where we can influence strategy and decisions better."

"I'll have the chopper crew get our bird ready." Anderson scurried out of the bridge, leaving Shoup with Eisenhower and the Dearborn's CO, Captain Murdock. After he had left, Eisenhower watched as Jack Stone, clad in handcuffs and a Navy flight jacket, was hustled out of a deck-level hatch and across the helipad to the open door of the Sea King.

"He doesn't agree with any of this," Eisenhower observed.

Shoup agreed. "I don't either, General. It stinks, what's happening. Khrushchev or Castro or whoever just nuked the United States Marines. It's a sad day for America when the Marines can't take that kind of pasting and fight back. Makes me want to turn in my stars."

Eisenhower clapped the Commandant on the back. "Come on, David. Let's get down to our ride before they leave us behind. And save your stars. This isn't the last battle, I'm sure. Not by a long shot."

The men made their way down several flights of metal stairs and headed out to the waiting Sea King.

11-7-62, Wednesday

The White House

5:30 a.m.

The knock, when it came, was soft, more like a gentle rapping. At first, John Kennedy was half awake, sure he was pitching on the deck of the Anne Arundel in dark blue Long Island Sound whitecaps, her main mast buckles slapping metal. But the knock was softer and he squinted and fingered his eyes open to see better. He was still in the Oval Office, late night or early morning, he wasn't sure. The TV set was on in the corner by the fireplace, it's black and white images of Walter Cronkite having long ago lost vertical hold. Cronkite flipped upward, screen after screen, like a bad carnival ride.

Kennedy shook himself more fully awake. It was then he saw the black horn-rims of Ted Sorenson peeking in through the side door. He sat up groggily.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but we have more information on the atomic bombs that were used against the Marines."

Kennedy rose, a bit unsteadily from the sofa he had been sleeping on and sat down gingerly in the high-backed chair at the desk, his back stiff and sore from inactivity. He motioned Sorenson on in to the room.

"What have you got, Ted?"

The President's speechwriter and admin aide entered, followed by Evelyn Lincoln and Mac Bundy, looking a bit disheveled himself.

"Sir, this just came off the AP wire down in the press room" He handed the flimsies to Kennedy. "I thought you might want to see it."

Kennedy handed the flimsies back with a wry smile. "Summarize for me, Ted."

Mac Bundy cut in. "Mr. President, before Ted starts a briefing, I think you should know something. Overnight, in the midst of all this mess, I informally polled the White House staff. There's a clear consensus: we think you should leave for the time being and set up shop at Camp David. Most of the Joint Chiefs agree with my assessment of the situation. It would be better if the Commander in Chief were safely away from one of the enemy's prime targets."

Kennedy had to chuckle, in spite of the gravity of the moment. "The Chiefs would love to have me stay at Camp David permanently, I'm sure."

"It's really best for the country, Mr. President. You can still exert visible leadership from there. It's not that far away, yet far enough to--"

"--to be upwind of the fallout, eh Mac?"

Bundy flushed and pushed his glasses back up his nose. "Something like that, yes, sir. The First Lady and the children are now safely tucked away at Glen Ora. Really, there's no reason--"

Kennedy held up a hand. "Relax, I know when I'm beaten, Mac. Tell General Clinton to get the chopper ready. I'll need to get a few clothes together."

Bundy cleared his throat and glanced over at Sorenson. "Well, sir, actually,. we've taken the liberty to get that going already. The truth is, you're already packed. All you have to do is step out of this office. Marine One's already turning, warmed up and ready for lift-off."

Kennedy smiled ruefully. "I guess you guys feel a bit strongly about this, huh?" The three of them nodded in unison. "Then, I want Evelyn to come with me. Somehow, she didn't make the Emergency List. That's ridiculous. This President certainly needs his favorite secretary."

Evelyn Lincoln blushed slightly as she helped the President to his feet. "We'd better have Doctor Travell prescribe some more medicine for your back, Mr. President."

"I want George Thomas too. A President needs his secretary and valet. I've still got a little pull left in this Government."

Once they were airborne, Mac Bundy showed the President the list of invitees to a national security briefing to be held in the great room of Camp David's Aspen Lodge. The SecDef's name was at the very top of the list.

"Bob McNamara's okay, then? He's all right?"

Bundy nodded. He clung to his seat as the pilot banked the huge green Sea King northwest, right off the South Lawn helipad, to avoid the free-fire zone inside the Federal Triangle defensive perimeter.

"He is, Mr. President, though a bit tired and dehydrated. Evidently, Haley didn't mistreat them. Just locked Taylor and the SecDef in an old files closet. They'll both be at Aspen when we get there."

"Good." Kennedy stared down at the massed concentration of firepower now assembling on the streets north and south of the White House...tanks, anti-aircraft artillery, tracked and towed howitzers, jeeps and trucks everywhere. Like a big wargame exercise, he thought, wishing that were true. Yet the sight of the Nation's Capital inexorably being turned into an armed camp was both chilling and sobering.

What about the ones who couldn't get out, trapped inside the District by the blockade of the highways?

"Okay, men, fill me in on everything." Kennedy adjusted his reading glasses and prepared to deal with the world's next curveball.

Bundy briefed the President on the assault on the bomb-carrying ambulance in New York and the successful disarming of the bomb. The President's eyes widened at the realization that the bomb had been deliberately miswired. There was no realistic chance of an atomic detonation.

"What exactly are you saying, Mac? That this was deliberate sabotage?"

Bundy shrugged, as best he could in the flight harness required of all occupants of Marine One. "Hard to say, Mr. President. All the Cuban commandos were killed. Turns out one had already died of radiation poisoning. This bomb was the leaker. There were two Cubans left."

"And the Russians--"

"'Freelancing', was the way it was put to me by Captain Schwartz, NYPD. Apparently, from what we've been able to determine, all the Russians assisting in the bomb task force have standing orders to do whatever they can to recover the bombs first, to keep us from getting a peak at their technology. Kudinov was the leader of this particular cell. He was KGB--we know that much anyway--and in direct contact with the highest levels at Moscow Center."

Kennedy was thoughtful, watching the early morning lights of the Maryland countryside wink on below them. "It's a sure bet the same orders apply to the bomb in Washington. Has General LeClair been alerted to this?"

Bundy searched through some hastily scribbled notes. "Impossible to say, Mr; President. When we get to the Camp, I'll call back to the command post and make sure. We've had no real progress in locating the Washington bomb, final update I heard last night. But we have to assume the Cubans are here, somewhere."

Kennedy was grim, running a hand over stubbly beard on his chin. He had been up most of the night. "In light of the detonations in Cuba last night, and the Soviets going to increased alert, we better assume the worst. The Chiefs are screaming at me to go back to DEFCON Two. But if we keep ratcheting up the alert level, at some point, something's got to give. It's just like two weeks ago, Mac. You can't back a wounded animal into a corner and expect him not to come out fighting. Khrushchev needs a way to back down and save face."

Bundy was sour. "With all respects, sir, the Chiefs and a lot of other people have heard that argument before. It worked once. Will it work again?"

Kennedy grew irritated. "Damn it, Mac! It's got to work. What choice do we have, really? You know, I started that book I was telling you about the other day. 'The Guns of August.' Great book, too. About how the major powers blundered into World War I from the same kind of ratcheting up and miscalculation and miscommunications we have with the Russians now. The leaders of all the powers had their systems for mobilizing troops and rearming their armies and navies, all neat and systematized and organized. Everything proceeded by the book. Nobody took the horse by the reins and said stop. The Generals were in charge and the political leaders let them be in charge. That kind of thinking led to the greatest war the world had ever seen, stupendous carnage, a whole generation slaughtered in the trenches." Kennedy leaned back in his seat, weary and fatigued. "I wonder if the same thing is happening to us now."

No more was said for the remainder of the flight.

The President rode in a small golf cart along Camp David's winding leaf-choked paths up a mountain-side trail to Aspen Lodge, which glowed warmly in the early morning chill. Inside, in a corner of the great room dominated by a fire stoked high in the flagstone fireplace, Bob McNamara sat huddled with the service Chiefs, looking strangely incongruous in their uniforms amidst the informality of the lodge's hunting and camping memorabilia. Kennedy shook hands all around, then grasped McNamara by both arms.

"Bob, you're okay?"

McNamara smiled, a bit sheepishly. "I'm fine, Mr. President. Really, quite well. Haley didn't mistreat us at all."

Kennedy spied the circle of men, noting them anxious, even nervous. He grinned. "I don't think this type of group can sit still for too long. How about a brisk walk in the woods before a working breakfast?"

The Chiefs were agreeable. The President set off with McNamara, Taylor, LeMay, Wheeler, Shoup and Anderson down a winding footpath, covered with frosty November leaf-fall. Light snow flurries danced in the beams of Secret Service flashlights, from the watch detail discreetly following twenty yards behind and to the side. There was a stiff wind blowing up-mountain, from the west, and Kennedy gratefully accepted an additional muffler from one of the agents, wrapping it around his neck and chest.

For the next half hour, the SecDef briefed Kennedy on the situation in the Caribbean, re-deployments of Task Force 135 and 136 away from the airburst clouds of radioactivity, Soviet ship movements, additional counted removals of ballistic missiles.

"We believe that makes twelve they have definitely removed from the island, Mr President. We can verify from counts at sea twelve, possibly thirteen of the SS-4s, the intermediate range missiles, like the ones at San Cristobal."

"Are the Russians cooperating?"

Admiral Anderson, having just arrived an hour before from the Dearborn, took that question. "Not fully, Mr. President. Most of the ships are keeping their tarps open or back so our P-3s can count the missiles. But we have run into a few who simply won't cooperate, or even slow down when we request. "Corky" Dennison calls 'em 'cowboys.'"

"What are we doing about them? Khrushchev promised me that all ballistic missiles could be visually accounted for."

Anderson said, "Sometimes, cowboys need a little convincing, Mr President. We have some pretty good 'six-shooters' ourselves in the Navy."

"You mean you're firing on them--Jesus Christ, Admiral, who gave that order--"

Anderson was quick to reply, "No, Mr. President, we don't fire a shot. We just make them think we're going to. A few low passes usually does the trick."

Curtis LeMay, an unlit cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, cut in. "Mr. President, the situation warrants going back to DEFCON Two, at the very least. I've got half my SAC force on airborne alert as it is. The other half's on 15 minute alert. Where I come from, that would be called a wartime footing."

Kennedy stopped short along the path and glared over at the Air Force chief. "General, we are not at war. Is that clear? Only the President has that power. We can't just keep tightening the noose more and more without some thought to the real consequences of what we're doing. I want all of you to understand this completely: the President makes decisions here, on what we do and say. It's your job to advise me, then obey the Commander-in-Chief's orders. We can't have generals and admirals running their own little private wars without authorization. If you disagree with the policies of this Administration, fine, say so, in the proper setting. But once policy has been set, by the President, it's your job to carry it out. You've all sworn an oath, as I have, to do that."

"Mr. President," LeMay didn't like being lectured to, "we've all been in uniform a long time. I think we all know a soldier's first duty is to obey orders. But when, in good conscience, I see the situation differently then--"

"--then you do your constitutional duty to bring them to my attention," Kennedy finished. "This President will listen to your arguments. But make no mistake, this President will also make a decision. And when that's been done, the arguments stop. You get my meaning, General."

LeMay switched his cigar to the other cheek and started chewing nervously, a tic fluttering at one eyelid. "Mr. President, I respectfully suggest that we ought to bomb Castro back into the Stone Age while we have the forces there to do it. If we don't. he's just going to cause more trouble again."

Kennedy turned away and resumed walking. "Your opinion is so noted, General. For your information, we will not be bombing Cuba back into the Stone Age, anytime soon. There are larger issues here, global strategic issues. If I do what you say, and Khrushchev decides to call my bluff, are you prepared to lose Chicago or Detroit, or Washington, for that matter, to a Soviet atomic bomb? Do you think we can afford to test Khrushchev's resolve on this?"

"If we don't," said Admiral Anderson, "what's to keep Khrushchev from doing the same thing again next week, with say Mexico or Canada, or Berlin?"

The President was growing weary of this argument. "What's to keep him--? We can do the exact same thing to Moscow and Kiev and Leningrad and he knows it. It's terror, gentlemen. A balance of terror. All of you are prepared to gamble that Khrushchev won't press the button if we invade Cuba. But that's one hell of a gamble. If you're wrong, we'll lose millions in casualties. I'd rather find another way to deal the cards. And that's what I am doing, trying to keep a little maneuvering room for Khrushchev to back down now, while he still can."

"It's a lousy hand," LeMay muttered. The President pretended not to hear.

The men were met at the next turn by a uniformed Marine courier, a corporal, bearing a pouch, which he handed to the President. Kennedy tore open the pouch and read the dispatch.

"It's from George Ball, at State," he announced, scanning the page quickly. "Looks like our friend Ambassador Dobrynin has an urgent message from Khrushchev."

"I'll bet he does," said Mac Bundy.

"Corporal, here--just a minute--" Kennedy scribbled a reply on the back of the dispatch sheet. "Get this to the message center right away. Dispatch to the State Department."

The Marine saluted and hustled off down the path.

Less than two hours later, the President was hosting the Soviet Ambassador over a breakfast of Virginia ham and eggs in front of the fire in Aspen Lodge. Dobrynin, for his part, ate like a man denied a good breakfast all his life. With McNamara and the Chiefs present, the men ate heartily and soon retired to a corner table in the great room of the lodge, beneath a huge moosehead mounted on the wall timbers.

Over the next half hour, Anatoli Dobrynin presented the latest offer from Khrushchev.

The gist of the message accorded well with Kennedy's own thinking. He was glad to see that, after the inevitable posturing and rhetoric, Khrushchev was plainly worried that events were spiraling out of control.

Mr. President, we must continue to act like statesmen and find ways to seek common ground. The meeting I propose should be held quickly, in the next few days, at a neutral site of our mutual agreement. At this meeting, we should lay out the facts as we see them, free of suspicion and hatred, but as human beings with a common interest in living together peaceably on this planet, which we must do in any case. We have, for our part, certain concerns about American actions, actions in Europe and the Middle East, as well as the Caribbean. You, for your part, I am sure, have equally serious concerns. Let us address those concerns and untie the knot of nuclear war before we reach the point where no man can untie it, before we slide off the cliff into catastrophe....

"It's a trap," said Admiral Anderson, upon scanning the message. "We can't let him drag Berlin into this. Cuba is the issue, not Berlin."

"Begging the Admiral's pardon" said Dobrynin, "but--"

Kennedy held up his hand. "This is not a debating society. I'm ready to accept Chairman Khrushchev's offer, as long as the agenda is limited to events in the Caribbean and Cuba and other events related to the offensive missiles you have placed there."

Dobrynin looked pained, as if indigestion had attacked him. "Mr. President, the Soviet Union has legitimate security concerns regarding the missiles you've placed in Turkey and in the United Kingdom."

Kennedy leaned forward and glared at the Ambassador. "Mr. Dobrynin, Soviet officials have baldly lied to me about their intentions in Cuba right in the Oval Office. I don't intend to be lied to again. The Chairman already knows our position on the missiles in Turkey. The agenda here is the Caribbean and reducing tensions stemming from an uncalled-for nuclear attack on American forces."

"American forces in Cuban territory," Dobrynin observed tartly. "I would hardly say unprovoked."

"In any case," Kennedy said firmly, "we intend to limit the discussions to the matter at hand. We are open to suggestions as to a location. But speed is vital, as events are taking on a life of their own. And if the Cubans should carry out their threats to detonate a nuclear device in our nation's Capital, then the results may well be beyond anyone's control."

Dobrynin paled, fork in mid-air, bacon dripping grease on his plate, as he listened to Kennedy. General Taylor saw the moment opportune to offer a suggestion.

"Perhaps the meeting site should be as far as possible from Cuba, and from Europe. Someone place equally accessible to both leaders."

"Yeah," said LeMay, "like Alaska."

"Actually," Taylor said, "that might not be such a bad idea. Or perhaps aboard a ship in the Bering Strait, equidistant between American and Soviet territory. Alaska and the Bering Sea would both be about eight hours flying time from the two capitals, wouldn't they?"

Maps were located and distances calculated. The more the idea was discussed, the more reasonable it sounded. After some calculations and adjustments for time zones, the Chiefs determined that a trip from Moscow to Elemendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, and a trip from Washington D.C, would be within ninety minutes of nearly equal, accounting for flight plan differences and high-altitude winds at polar latitudes. Dobrynin nodded, gravely, as he studied the maps. The CNO, Admiral Anderson, made a further suggestion.

"Perhaps Chairman Khrushchev could fly into our base and then chopper out to a Soviet ship or task force using Soviet choppers. The President could do the same with our own Navy or Coast Guard. There are already several destroyers on radar picket duty on station, part of the ballistic missile warning net. They could be in positions like these in a few hours, a day or so at most. Looks like a perfect setup to me."

John Kennedy was satisfied. "Mr. Ambassador, it's your call."

Dobrynin brushed toast crumbs from his mouth with a monogrammed napkin. "I can only advise the Foreign Minister but the setup, as you call it, also seems reasonable to me as well. I'll recommend it to Moscow as soon as I get back to the Embassy."

"There is one more point I want you to make to your superiors, Mr. Ambassador," Kennedy added. "As a courtesy and in the spirit of negotiations to come, I want the Chairman to know that we expect he will order his forces in Europe and the Atlantic to back off and standdown to a lower level of readiness. We are already doing that and we expect no less from the Soviet Union."

Dobrynin didn't seem to notice the scowl on the faces of the Chiefs around the table. "Mr. President, as a sovereign nation, we have the right to do whatever we think necessary for self defense and defense of our fraternal socialist allies. You understand this?"

Kennedy was sharp. "Mr, Ambassador, understand me...there will be no meeting and no standdown in readiness, under any circumstances, unless we receive reciprocal cooperation from your side. We too are a sovereign nation. Chairman Khrushchev mentioned in his letter that we should seek 'common ground like statesmen'. That's what I'm trying to do here."

Dobrynin could sense the President's temper rising. "I shall pass along your concerns from the Embassy. If I may--" he stood up and Kennedy indicated to a Secret Service detail man to accompany the Ambassador back to the helipad a few hundred yards away.

After Dobrynin had left, Kennedy sat wearily in the seat and steepled his fingers, resting his chin on top of them. His eyes were heavy and puffy with fatigue. He said nothing for a few moments, then asked, "Where's Ted?"

Sorenson was located and he came to the table, tablet and pen in hand.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Advise Colonel Fitzpatrick to get Air Force One ready at once. We're making a trip to Alaska, probably this afternoon, if it works out okay."

Mac Bundy was dubious. "You really think he'll go for it, Mr. President? What if the Presidium won't let him do it?"

Kennedy shook his head. "What choice does he have? Hell, what choice do any of us have? This may be our last chance to stop the madness and bring events under some kind of control. I want to be ready to go at a moment's notice. How long does it take to get to Alaska?"

LeMay did some quick figuring. "From Andrews to Elmendorf, fastest possible jet route, is about nine hours flying time. You'll have some polar winds and the jet stream to avoid on the way. I'll check Air Weather Service, see if I can get a better estimate of conditions. Nine hours plus, I'd say right now."

"And Khrushchev?"

LeMay shrugged. "Depends on their departure time and route. Great circle from Moscow would put a Russian transport right into the polar easterlies right now. They could probably make it in seven, maybe eight hours."

Anderson said, "I'll call the Navy Department now, get an idea of who we've got in the area. There's normally an Arctic squadron detailed to picket duty in the Bering Sea most of the time. Couple of destroyers, a frigate or two, maybe a DDE. Depending on positions, it could take several hours to get into positions. I'll need to liaison with the Soviets on exact coordinates."

Bob McNamara asked for recommendations. Anderson consulted a small nautical map in his leather satchel. "The Diomede Islands would work well. Big Diomede is ours, Little Diomede is theirs. Maybe an anchorage midway between them would be politically acceptable."

Kennedy was about to say something when a phone rang and was instantly snatched up by the chief of the Secret Service watch detail. After mumbling a few words into the receiver, he brought the set over to the table.

"From Glen Ora," he said. "I believe it's John Junior."

The President's eyes lit up and a smile materialized on his face. "Hello? Yeesssss...could I please speak with a Mr. John Kennedy Junior? Oh...is this he?" The President chuckled, covering the mouthpiece, saying to the others "he's on the line with Caroline. They just finished breakfast themselves."

The President chatted for a few minutes with the children, then a few more with Jackie. The conversation ended in about five minutes. Kennedy handed the phone back to the Secret Service watch.

"They're headed out for a morning with the horses. Perfect morning, she said. Cold, crisp, a little frost on the ground." A hint of tear welled up in his eye. Damn it!

"Men, we have just got to get control of this situation in the next twenty four hours. We're slipping, sliding down a deep hole and none of us knows how deep it is. If we don't do our jobs, there won't be much of a future for John Junior or Caroline. Your kids too.

"There won't be much of a future for any of us. You've all seen the same stories I have: fistfights at the supermarkets, people getting stabbed over the last can of pork and beans....it's insane. Is this what's in store for us?"

Mac Bundy shook his head. "I don't know, Mr; President. A lot of people think so."

Kennedy glared down at the woodgrain of the table, noting the random swirls and fibers of its polished veneer. "Damn it, I say we can do better than this! Human beings made this mess. Human beings can find a way out."
CHAPTER 21

11-7-62, Wednesday

Washington, D.C.

6:00 a.m.

For Mike French and Alexei Maximov, the sight of the encamped Company A, U. S. Army Third Infantry, along Lafayette Park and Pennsylvania Avenue brought a quick splash of cold water back to what had been a grim sense of satisfaction from the Wall Street assault. Both men, strolling toward the company command post, near the statue of Lafayette, knew that whatever the similarities between the Cuban commandos and their training and the threat they posed to the city, all assault situations were unique and had to be treated as such. They reached the big green field tent that enclosed the CP, flashed their task force IDs and went inside, there encountering the company commander, Captain Wryley. Wryley was clad in field camou and full combat load. He was a tall lanky Virginian, with a black crewcut. He held a field phone in one hand and was talking loudly in another phone in the other hand.

French and Maximov waited patiently beside a makeshift sand table set up in the center of the tent, a plywood and plaster layout of the inner zone defensive perimeter, the western end anchored by the White House, the eastern extremity anchored by Capitol Hill. Both men knew they had been extremely lucky in New York. Half the threat had been disarmed but the Nation's Capitol might not be so lucky. Without saying as much, both men sensed that time was running out. It had been a day and a few hours since Castro's original ultimatum. In the time since, a renegade American combat force had apparently assaulted Cuban territory along her northwest beaches. In retaliation, the Soviet command had released half a dozen tactical nukes, incinerating the assault force, the first combat use of atomic bombs since the closing days of World War II. Moreover, the Cuban force in New York had apparently attempted to detonate their own stolen atomic device--the K-5 Maximov had called it, unsuccessfully, due to miswiring, whether deliberate or accidental, could not be yet determined. More worrisome, the Russians had tried to intervene on their own, very likely leading the Cubans to attempt the detonation before they were ready. The investigation would last months, probably years, French thought.

It was enough the damn thing was captured before it went off. That was all that really mattered. He'd let the intel boys and the forensic techs study the matter to kingdom come, if they wanted to, now that the device was no longer a threat.

The truth was, the Cubans in the Nation's Capital had disappeared for the time being. Back in D.C., French had checked with Hostetler at the Task Force command post in the Justice Department building before heading out to survey the defenses. Hostetler ran down the list of sightings, all unconfirmed, attempted breaches of guard posts and defensive barricades, of which there were dozens everyday, mostly citizens smuggling personal items into and out of their homes, with the odd burglar or looter thrown in. Routine traffic through the checkpoints was carefully logged and the Bureau's task force had those logs couriered up every three hours. French ran down the list for Tuesday, 0600 hours to 2400 hours, but nothing showed.

Wherever they were, the Cubans were well hidden. And there was still the distinct possibility, as Maximov pointed out, that with a K-12 700-kiloton device, the Cubans might not be inside or near the defensive perimeter at all. The effective radius of blast damage was nearly 100% out to a distance to five to ten miles.

"They could be in a motel in Virginia," French realized, "watching The Price is Right, or something, for all we know.

While at the task force CP at Justice, French and Hostetler had talked with Ros Gilpatric, at the Pentagon. Gilpatric, an Under Secretary of Defense, was in the loop for White House decisions regarding the Missile Crisis and this follow-on crisis, and had been given responsibility to liaison with the Bomb Task Force. From Gilpatric had come word, very early that morning, that events were moving swiftly in the Caribbean. Mike French had learned less than an hour ago about General Haley's unauthorized little war against Castro and the extent of the operations surrounding Sierra and OpPlan 322. Gilpatric informed the Bureau completely on the chain of events at Homestead, leading up to the capture and arrest of Haley, Stone and other key officers. When Gilpatric had ended the call, Hostetler switched off the speaker and stared at French in disbelief.

"American officers...friggin' hard to believe, isn't it? An entire assault operation--Marines, air support, all the logistics, can you imagine keeping that quiet long enough to pull it off?"

Alexei Maximov, himself aware of the recent coup attempt in Moscow, noted tartly that "military men on both sides seemed to be taking matters into their own hands. It's a very dangerous thing...."

French agreed. "Just the sort of times that men on horseback love, galloping in to save civilization by destroying it."

"In my country, we know something about men like that," Maximov observed.

"Alexei, we have to assume Castro's going to use the power the bomb gives him. At some point, somehow, the man's got tremendous leverage now. He won't give it up without a fight. And after the Bay of Pigs, what's there to hold him back?"

"Retaliation is your only real weapon," Maximov said. "Does Castro fear the consequences enough to keep the bomb? Or does he think he has to use it now or lose that leverage?"

French nodded. "You've just answered the question, haven't you? Use it or lose it. How long can he hide a thing like that anyway?"

Captain Wryley, now off the field phones, had overheard some of the talk. "Too damn long, if you ask me. Jim Wryley, CO Able Company." The Virginian stuck out his hand. "You guys must be Bureau."

Mike French introduced himself and Maximov. Wryley squinted warily at Maximov, studying the Russian like he was a specimen from another planet. "Never seen a real live Russkie before. You fellas aren't ten feet tall after all, are you?"

Maximov shrugged, still not comfortable with American slang. "No, sir. I am in fact only two point one meters in height. The Directorate standards are quite spe--"

"Alexei," French intruded, "forget it, will you? It's a joke. Captain, what's the status of your defenses this morning?"

Wryley shrugged, indicating the makeshift sand table. "Perimeter's in place. Overnight, we've strengthened inner exclusion zones around the White House and Capitol Hill. Platoons from Baker and Charlie Companies at every checkpoint, augmented with vehicles and light armor from the 29th Infantry, Virginia Army National Guard. Boys from Fairfax and Charlottesville rolled in a little after three this morning."

"I see more chopper traffic in the air now."

"I'm sure you do," Wryley said. "We got every unit we can get our hands on flying this morning. Army air cav squads from Fort Stewart have encamped at Bolling and Andrews for the duration. They got about ten Hueys flying low-level recon. Maryland and Virginia State Police have chipped a few units too, traffic safety jobs, keeping tabs on the highway checkpoints outside the District. The Navy's got their own boys up from Oceana, the Marines from New River. All in all, I'd say we got the biggest airline going in the skies around here right now, what with National shut down and Dulles on restricted ops."

"Search strategy?"

Wryley crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. "The outer perimeter of my responsibility defines an area about two and a half by one mile, about three square miles in total area, right in the center of the Nation's Capital. Inside that rectangle, are approximately seven hundred and fifty buildings, most multi-story, many federal, along with all the streets, parking lots, decks, back alleys, garages, and assorted side streets, courtyards, monuments, museums, and a few underground tunnels. Our strategy, for the time being, has been to secure all feasible vehicular entrances and exits. We got a pretty good description of the bomb size and dimensions, from your guys at the Bureau. Not the sort of thing someone can bring into the area in a briefcase. As yet, we haven't had the time or manpower to do anything more intensive, like isolating a block and dragnetting it."

"It may come to that, Captain," French admitted. "We're well past Castro's original deadline. Plus we've already given the bastard plenty of reasons to detonate, what with the combat actions I've been hearing about."

Wryley was getting a bit testy. "Then give me more men, damnit! Give me a couple of regiments and I could dragnet the whole area, block by block, even the friggin' White House, if need be. But I can't do that and control access with the manpower I got."

French held up his hands. "Easy, Captain. No criticism intended. I think you're doing the right thing. It's just that I know what you're up against."

"Really?" Wryley wasn't so easily put off. "Then you know the whole damn District could be blown to hell and back and the friggin' spics might not even be in the District at all."

Mike French and Wryley just glared at each other.

Approximately one hundred and fifty yards away, a white CIA courier truck sat parked on the Fifteenth Street side of Lafayette's statue, surrounded by steady streams of Third Infantry squads deploying, interspersed with DC Metro police, National Park Service rangers, Executive Protective Service uniformed officers and some two dozen other police and law enforcement agencies mingling in and around the barricaded stretch of Pennsylvania Ave from Fifteenth west to Seventeenth Street.

In the back of the truck, Dmitri Davidovich Kapitonov's stomach was growling and his throat was dry and parched. He would have killed for a vodka, even a cup of steaming tea and some raw herring strips about now. It was a pleasant hallucination, for all its improbability. Perhaps herring with hot mustard and pork slices, with a garnish of orange or two. Then three eggs, poached, with the whites just so and toast with jam. A pot of coffee, a samovar of tea, and a few sips of Georgian mineral water laced with brandy. Kapitonov closed his eyes, not daring to spend too much time on the fantasy. He felt a fist grab his arm and jerk him back to floor of the cargo hold.

"Keep your face down, ruso," said Jorge Arrantes. "Or I'll remove it from your head permanently." Arrantes released his arm, and absent-mindedly whetted the field knife in his other hand on the edge of the wooden bomb crate. Kapitonov shrank back into the corner niche he had called home the last seven hours, massaging cramped head and neck muscles.

Rafael Ramirez had observed the entire exchange silently, saying nothing, though his eyes narrowed. Now we wait, he told himself. For what? That was the hardest part, the part they could never train for in Cuba. How to keep a combat-ready edge just waiting, waiting for the signal, radio on low volume, tuned to WKKJ 720 megacycles, waiting for Fidel to make up his damn mind, didn't he know by now what he wanted to do?

Ramirez knew perfectly well that combat readiness, like any fresh produce, was perishable. If not used soon, it dissipated and if the order came too late, it wasn't strong enough, it rotted and the mission failed. Fidel and the MINFAR didn't seem to understand that.

Give us the order, compadre and we'll make history for Cuba! Keep us waiting like overripe naranja and we'll fall off the vine dead and rotten.

All three of them were cold. Cold, restless, hungry, thirsty. And on edge. Waiting to take the last step, to fulfil the mission they had trained night and day for, all those months in the fields and towns, shooting up empty barracks at Libertad, assaulting assorted vehicles and buildings at Justicia before the rusos took over the airfield, night escape and evasion, urban tactics, months of unit camaraderie and shared pains and exhilarating victories over imaginary enemies, twisted ankles and sprained shoulders, bruised ribs and lacerated faces.

Now it had all come down to this. Hours upon endless hours of waiting. Poised on the lip of Hell's mouth with no breath to draw them in.

For Dmitri Kapitonov, the decision came sometime in the last hours of darkness, before the cold gray dawn began seeping in around the rear window. Today, this day, would be his final day. Perhaps on Earth, if fate willed it. Perhaps he would die, in a fusillade of bullets, attempting escape, for try he surely would, he had made at least that part of the decision over the evening hours. Perhaps he would die in less than an eyeblink, in an atomic firestorm, his mortal atoms stripped of all electrons, torn asunder in a cataclysmic chain reaction of elemental fury, so that before the nerve fibers of what had once been his earthly body could transmit even the tickle of a pain signal, the destination endings of the nerve fibers had simply ceased to exist and the neurotransmitter chemical signals would then be lost forever in the ether.

Or perhaps, miracle of miracles, he would live, and make a successful escape from this hellhole, and live to a very old age, pensioned off as a Hero of the Soviet Union, retired to a country dacha with a small plot of vegetables, bouncing two ruby-cheeked grandchildren on his knees every Sunday, regaling them with tales of adventures in far-off tropical paradises.

It didn't really matter, though each scenario was lovingly fleshed out in the last long dreary hours, with Kapitonov half awake, wedged in the corner of the truck cargo hold next to the K-12 bomb that was his only true child in this world anyway.

For Kapitonov was now completely resolved that his mission was at an end and he would escape or die in the effort. He had done his job. He had done everything the Cubantsy had wanted him to do, forced him to do. Indeed, everything the Motherland had ever asked of him, he had done. Ramirez should let him go.

Of course, he knew that would not happen. The K-12 was re-wired and fully functional. Not a pretty sight, but then field mods rarely were. You did what you had to do, with whatever came to hand. No Glavatom inspector would ever pass the K-12 bomb snuggled inside the wooden crate on correctness and safety and continuity of her electrical wiring harness. But work she would...of that, he was quite certain. She was born to die. The wiring changes, the jury-rigged soldering, the re-routing of cabling from nonexistent sensor leads, the re-rigging of the logic of the relay switches inside the "box" that formed the brains of the device--all of it had been tested and retested and checked and re-checked until he could visualize every knick of the insulation, indeed every strand of wire that shunted power and control signals at 24 VDC around the harness.

The K-12 device was ready for whatever fate men had in store. The device was armed and ready, her batteries and capacitors fully charged. Rafael Ramirez held the wooden block with the three switches in his right hand. He need only set the switches in the correct order to power the detonation sequence. Thereafter the sequence of events that would end in the utter annihilation of the District of Columbia and most of northern Virginia and western Maryland would proceed inexorably from the laws of physics.

The switch block controlled voltage and current flow from the main batteries to the detonator blocks. Ramirez had never let the switch block leave his fingers.

An hour or so before dawn, as he visualized the escape attempt, Kapitonov imagined the Cubans' resolve weakening just the slightest bit. Both Ramirez and Arrantes, the gaunt one, stirred uncomfortably. Stomachs rumbled audibly. He knew, from their hoarse, whispered voices, that their throats were dry and dusty. Before long, someone, perhaps Arrantes, would have to go for water and food. And that was the moment, he had decided, when the best opportunity would present itself.

In the brief glances he gained out the rear window, before Arrantes kicked or slugged him, he glimpsed only soldiers. They were surrounded by the enemy: of that he was certain. Police, regular Army, National Guard, other state security forces whose names he would never know. He could hear their voices through the skin panels of the truck, hear the heavy vehicles, even identify tank tracks clanking against the asphalt as armored units moved into position. It was stupid, really, even absurd, what the Americans were doing in their spasm of overreaction. What use was a tank or a hundred tanks against an atomic bomb?

Yet they had to do something. He supposed it was just human nature, even of enemies, to mistake action, however futile, for progress.

To leave the truck was probably arrest and capture, if not suicide. It was amazing, worthy of note in the annals of strategists of future covert operations, that Ramirez' boldest ruse seemed to be working. To hide the very object of one of the most massive searches in American law enforcement history in plain sight, as ostensibly a part of that very search, was not something Kapitonov could have believed possible. Yet it had worked and continued to work.

Several times, over the night hours, officers had dropped by the truck, curious, socializing and each time, Ramirez had stepped out to chat briefly with them, explaining how their "equipment" used to detect emissions from atomic bombs was still stabilizing and would be ready for use in another few hours. Kapitonov found himself under intense scrutiny by Arrantes during these contacts, staring down at the barrel of the Cuban's Makarov 9-mm, aware that even a twitch of a move toward the door, an unexpected sound would send instant death his way. In the end, though he gave thought to the fantasy of rushing the Cuban, he did nothing and the chance passed away. Then, for an hour afterward, he would silently curse himself for cowardice and resolved that next time....

The Americans were unbelievably gullible, really like children in so many ways.

Arrantes stirred in the corner and sat up, wetting down furry lips with the last drops of water from a canteen. "Capitan, we need food. I'm starving. There's nothing left in my mess kit."

Semi-conscious, Ramirez stirred too and checked his watch silently. His own canteen had already been sucked dry. "Mine is empty too. I'll check outside." He shifted around the crate, nudged forward on his knees and peered out the rear window. There was a cold gray light of half-dawn, pierced by street floods and extra lighting that had been trucked into Lafayette Park, producing sharp relief by shadows across the ground. Frost coated everything. Beyond Lafayette's statue, a pair of infantrymen trod over the well-worn grass like robots, M-1s slung, helmets low.

As he watched the scene, Ramirez gradually became aware of a certain lethargy among the soldiers and officers, dull and automatic. He could see it in the eyes of the infantrymen, the glaze of patrol duty when nothing happened, no enemy was engaged, hour after hour of monotonous routine. In combat, such lethargy was deadly. Enemies could spring surprise attacks, with even small forces, to great effect in the lee hours of the morning.

Now would be a good time to chance a little recon, he admitted to himself. And stock up on supplies.

"Jorge, there has to be mess tent or field kitchen somewhere around here, with all these soldiers. The Yanquis have C-rations, coffee, sugar, that sort of thing. At least water."

Arrantes nodded. "Si, Capitan, it can't be far away." He frowned a little. "Something tastier would be nice, though. A sandwich. Some fries. A Coke or some tea. An apple...Jesu Cristo, I'd die for an apple."

Ramirez watched the movements of the regular infantry carefully, timing the patrol rounds. From his count, there seemed only a few squads on regular duty in the square itself. There was some kind of command tent nearby. For hours, he had seen ranking field officers, some even obviously flag rank, coming and going. And where flag officers and their staffs camped out, supplies and conditions were better.

"I think we can risk a little trip outside. Arrantes, you'll go."

"Capitan, I think there's a small sandwich shop on the southwest corner of that big Gothic building, next to the White House. I saw it once as we were scouting the area."

"Would it be open at this time of day? Would it be open at all?" Ramirez mused. He decided it was worth a chance. Arrantes' fantasizing sounded too good to pass up. "Let's do it. Get your ID out. I want to look at it again."

Arrantes extracted the Agency courier's blue folder and paperwork. He studied the documents, forged in the DGI's lab in Havana for a few moments. The CIA crest and shield, a bald eagle with spear and fig leaves. Numerous stamps for controlled access, authority to enter the Langley facility via a certain gate, authorization to courier controlled documents and national security materials, sensitive compartmented clearance for handling the specific gear they were supposed to be carrying in the wooden crate. It looked airtight. So far, it had passed close inspection. Would it work again? Ramirez knew it was a risk, a big one. He decided to take the risk.

"Jorge, go get us sandwiches and coffee. And take several canteens for water. Who knows how long it'll take Fidel to make up his damn mind." He checked the progress of the infantrymen outside. "Wait--not just yet--"

Two minutes shy of 7:30 a.m., Jorge Arrantes slipped out the back of the Ford Econoline van, blinked in the bright sunlight now shining low through bare trees and started off down the north sidewalk, heading west toward Blair House. In seconds, a pair of Army riflemen had drawn up alongside, obviously seeking ID, startled at Arrantes' sudden appearance, perhaps seeking anything to liven up another monotonous hour of patrol duty.

Arrantes, heart pounding, showed them the courier documents and paperwork for the "atomic emissions detector" in the back of the van. Both soldiers studied the papers carefully, looking for anything amiss, but found nothing. They handed the folder back, and waved the Cuban on, then strolled back east toward the van itself, circling the vehicle curiously, until Ramirez himself stepped out to have a chat with the boys. He supposed the current patrol had not known the specifics of the van, or swapped intelligence with the last patrol. Or maybe they were just bored. In that, Ramirez confided sympathy, yawning and stretching with real fatigue as the riflemen examined his folder, then idly checked inside the back, spying the wooden crate marked TOP SECRET - MAJESTIC in big black letters. They spoke desultorily with Kapitonov, whose eyes narrowed, chatted on amiably enough for a few more minutes, then resumed their rounds, heading east toward Madison Place and some empty tourist kiosks full of maps and JFK memorabilia.

Ramirez slipped back into the van and dogged the door shut.

A ten minute walk did wonders for Arrantes' spirits, reviving some vital leg circulation. The thought occurred that he could just keep on walking, at least to the edge of the exclusion zone, perhaps further, never to return. They were all dead men anyway. If the mission of Operation Moncada failed, they could expect at the very least arrest, trial and imprisonment, likely for years, maybe execution as foreign agents. If the mission succeeded, and the K-12 was used as called for, Cuba would have her day in the sun, but he and Capitan and the ruso would die a revolutionary patriot's death, remembered for all time as saviors of Cuba, but die they surely would, with only atoms scattered to the winds as reminders. In any case, Arrantes knew the endgame was near.

Why not treat themselves one last time, like the condemned men they were?

In time, he found Cagle's, a small coffee shop at the corner of Seventeenth and Pennsylvania, hard by a newsstand that was closed and a candy shop, Fannie Mae's also closed. Cagle's, surprisingly, was open, and doing a brisk business, handling officers and agents and assorted officials flowing through the area. Arrantes slipped inside, and stood at the end of a lengthy line at one cash register, thankful to get out of the early morning chill, and study the fluorescent-lit menus and specials on the wall behind the counter.

Businessman's Special w/ extra coffee..............$1.95

Two eggs (any style), toast, bacon or sausage.......$ 2.25

Ham and Egg Sandwich, Hash Browns, Coffee......$2.45

Two Doughnuts, Roll and Coffee......................$0.95

Arrantes found his stomach grumbling loudly, his nostrils filled with the rich aroma of black coffee, or what the Yanquis liked to think was coffee. In Havana, ran the old joke, which was better for your car: Purolator Ultra motor oil or Maxwell House coffee? That one never failed to erupt Cubans in raucous laughter.

He studied the menus, savoring the possibilities for five minutes, before realizing he'd better get something and get back to the van. Fidel would undoubtedly chose now to send the detonation signal and Arrantes wasn't sure he wanted to die standing in line at a coffee shop while Ramirez went down in history as the new Libertador. He picked a few doughnuts from the bin, and several businessman's specials. What the hell did the ruso want? Did it matter? Arrantes got Kapitonov a ham and egg sandwich. He went fishing in his pockets for the right cash, sorting through pesos and dollars crumpled and mixed together.

"Greasy shit but it tastes good, eh?"

Arrantes looked up, saw a civilian in overcoat and fedora smile at him, a big wad of bills already out ready to slap down on the counter.

"Pardon?"

"I said this place is nothing but grease. But it hits the spot."

Arrantes nodded, momentarily startled. He studied the man out of the corner of his eye. Federales, he decided. Maybe FBI. Detective of something.

"It does, yes," Arrantes finally answered.

"You Agency, Bureau or local?"

Arrantes really had no desire to engage in casual conversation. "Agency," he muttered, wondering about his own outfit. The crowd at Cagle's was a mix--Army officers in field camou fatigues and black boots mingled easily with uniformed police and plainclothes officials. Chopper pilots in zippered flight suits. "Just grabbing some coffee, you know."

"I understand. This waiting's a bitch. I just wish the Cubans would do something, tip their hand or move so we can get off dead center and get going. I'm gonna die if I have to walk this street block another hour. Or pee myself to death from this coffee, you know what I mean?"

Arrantes nodded politely. The conversation ended abruptly when an uneasy stir moved through the crowd. Several in line pulled out and shifted over to look at something outside the shop, gesturing through the glass windows.

"What the fuck--"

"Is he nuts or what--?"

Arrantes paid for his meals and pushed through the line to exit, wondering what the commotion was all about.

Five hundred yards east of Cagle's, Dmitri Kapitonov had suddenly, violently, slammed the heel of his boot into the face of Rafael Ramirez. While the Cuban was momentarily stunned, Kapitonov lunged forward and sprang the latch to the door, falling headfirst out the back of the van. He rolled onto his shoulders as he hit the asphalt, then kicked back, catching the Cuban again, as he fought and clawed his way out of the van.

At any second, Kapitonov expected to die. He had steeled himself for hours, imagining each slice of a microsecond of the entry of the first bullet into his body, counting on perhaps a short burst of three rounds from the Makarov at first, followed by a longer, more sustained spray of the plated 7.62-mm standard ammunition he was sure Ramirez would pump into his body. But nothing came and nothing happened. For a long eternity of a second, he lay sprawled and bleeding on the pavement, seeing the Cuban working with the pistol, seeing the magazine jam, seeing the rage contorting the face of the bandit.

Some primal sense of self-preservation animated his muscles and Kapitonov had picked himself up and was off running, flailing like a madman west down the center of Pennsylvania Avenue less than two seconds after he had hit the pavement.

"Over here!!!" he yelled, but the words were heavily accented, in his native Rostov-on-Don flatlands twang, and he knew they'd never understood him. "Over...here...the...bomb....it's here....in....the van..."

He ran possessed, freed from captivity, liberated from death however fleeting and momentary the feeling, his heart racing with exhilaration, as he swerved and weaved around the gathering soldiers and police officers, a skittish dog not to be corralled or calmed.

He plunged through several arms, stumbled over kicks and legs outstretched, missed a tackle at the curb, then darted back into the street, still screaming an unintelligible stream of Russian and English, half out of breath, heaving for oxygen, his eyes wild and fierce, as he fought free of more entanglements and pushed the crowd back.

Jorge Arrantes froze in horror at the sight, dropping the bags he had just purchased. For an instant, he paused, then the training kicked in, the months of reaction drills, the automatic reflexes honed for so many hours in the jungles and back alleys and darkened streets. He dropped to one knee, seeing Kapitonov push and stumble out of yet another circle of soldiers.

Someone fired a shot, then another but Arrantes' didn't flinch, by now the movements were carefully measured, the reflexes sure and well timed. He had his own Makarov out and calmly slammed a clip home, working the action to chamber a round. He stood up, spying Kapitonov now two hundred yards distant, caroming from one knot of people to another, hands flailing crazily like a man possessed, while the Yanquis closed in, steadily drawing the ring tighter, shrinking the space the ruso had to play with.

He knew he'd have one, maybe two chances, before the Yanquis were on him and had him pinned to the street.

At the precise moment Dmitri Kapitonov spun like a billiard ball with too much English and plowed through a line of advancing infantrymen closing in from the White House northwest gate, Jorge Arrantes gently squeezed the trigger of the Makarov. Six point two pounds of pressure was all it took.

He got off four rounds, and all four struck home, the last two impacting the side of the ruso's head, exploding skull and brain fragments in a visible shower over the street and the stunned infantrymen. Instantly, Arrantes dropped the Makarov and ducked behind a row of parked Jeeps, flattening himself against the pavement. At the sharp report of the Makarov, the infantrymen had all dived headfirst to the pavement themselves, though Arrantes' was not the first shot fired, and quickly unslung their own weapons, M-1s all. In seconds, they had themselves propped on elbows, ready to return fire.

A voice boomed through static on a loudspeaker across the street...

"CEASEFIRE! CEASEFIRE...HOLD YOUR FIRE...!"

Arrantes held his breath, then got back to his knees, finding himself now in a running tide of pounding feet as officers, riflemen, federal agents and scores of others dashed along the north sidewalks of Seventeenth Street, each men heading frantically back to his station, some with guns out or coming out. Arrantes found himself ignored in the general pell-mell rush to action stations, while out on the street, the crowd thickened around a spot midway across Pennsylvania from the White House northwest gate and the canopied entrance to Blair House. He brushed himself off, wishing he hadn't been so hasty to ditch the Makarov, and soon enough, started loping off northward past a card and gift shop, caught in the tide of American law enforcement moving back to assigned positions from a moment's respite at Cagle's.

No more gunfire erupted but a maelstrom of people now flowed like a cyclone into and out of the spot where Kapitonov had fallen. Arrantes look forward and backward, seeing nothing but battle faces, no one came to him, no one grabbed him, no one pointed him out as one of the gunman. Incredulous, he joined the rush northward, then turned off the sidewalk skirting Pennsylvania and made his way weaving in and out east, back to the van. Approaching, he saw Ramirez wild-eyed already at the wheel, just beginning to back the vehicle away from the crowd. He spied Arrantes, motioned him on and Arrantes made the doorway to the front seat just as Capitan dropped the van into reverse gear and began backing.

Already, a contingent of police, bluejacketed DC Metro mixed in with National Park Service rangers, were fighting their way through to surround the van, even as Ramirez backed. Two officers withdrew their guns--they had seen Kapitonov exit the van and wanted to detain the vehicle--but Ramirez leaned his head out and yelled.

"CIA!--get away!...this is sensitive gear!...we got to re-locate it! All these people...disturbing the setup!\--" and before the Rangers could react, Ramirez had begun backing and turning in earnest, bumping several times on and off the curb at Lafayette Park.

He managed to spin the van around right at the corner, and whipped forward, clipping the front fender of a Jeep careening up from Fifteenth Street, knocking the Jeep sideways as he completed the spin.

Ramirez made the turn south onto Fifteenth on two wheels, riding up and over the sidewalk, crashing through more barriers spread out from the east fence of the Treasury building. In the rear-view mirror, he saw two Jeeps spinning, fishtailing around to come after him. He slammed the accelerator forward, roaring down a slight downgrade toward Pennsylvania. More barriers, and the soldiers scattered as the van plowed through the fence barricades.

He jogged left, then right, trying to shake the gathering pursuit, and found himself careening south on 14th Street. The massive marble columns of the Commerce Department slipped by on their right, as Ramirez sped up, topping nearly eighty miles an hour as they approached the cross-streets of the Mall.

Damn! Damn! Damn! Ramirez slammed the palm of his fist on the steering wheel. That friggin' ruso has ruined everything! Now the Yanquis knew, now their cover, so carefully won, was well and truly blown. Ramirez checked behind, saw several vehicles, headlights bouncing crazily. South was the 14th Street Bridge. From the corner of his eye, as they screamed past Independence, more lights, more Jeeps. Sirens.

They'd be hemmed in long before they made the bridge. Where to go....?

Midway between Lafayette Square and the White House north fence, Dmitri Kapitonov lay on his side, multiple gunshot wounds in the temple and side of his head, bleeding to death, despite the frantic efforts of several Navy corpsmen trying to stanch the blood flow. He groaned, his voice was sandpaper, but with hand motions, indicated he wanted to be turned over. Slowly, carefully, he was re-situated onto his back. He was cold, starting to shiver, starting to slip down the black tunnel of shock...

He saw faces, soldiers, police, plainclothes officers, wavering in and out of view. Kapitonov reached out, struggled with hands he no longer felt, numb extremities, and touched someone, a man in olive drab, focusing on anything he could, the nameplate read GUNTER, and attempted to speak, croak out words that had to be said.

"The bomb..." he forced out. "The van...Soviet...bomb...a CIA...van" but now his breath was coming ragged and hoarse and he was slipping further into that tunnel and the bright streetlights seemed a bit dimmer was it daylight, sunlight he saw? and soon enough he could form words with his mouth no longer though the words were still there on his lips, frozen in mid-utterance, his lips apart as a last breath passed unseen and he was still and gone, though the corpsmen worked on his heart and lungs for many minutes after that.

"You catch that?" Captain Gunter, U.S. Army Third Infantry Company B, looked around helplessly, "Did anybody catch that....?"

"Something about a van," someone said.

"And a bomb," came another voice.

"Must have been that van we heard."

"What van--?"

Mike French had dragged Maximov to the ground at the moment Arrantes' shots rang out. They buried their faces in cold damp mud along the sidewalk, then in the scramble and shouting that followed, French had looked up in time to see the wild maneuvers of the white van with the CIA markings half a block east. He had been getting to his feet, about to head over, when Ramirez had begun backing crazily in reverse toward Fifteenth Street. Some sixth sense tickled the hairs on the back of his neck. He stumbled, slipped but pushed through the running tide of soldiers and police until they found a Jeep parked athwart the sidewalk, pointing the wrong way, but thankfully with motor running, the driver standing in the seat, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, as he studied the chaos unfolding in front of him.

"Get down, mister!" French screamed up at him, and dove for the side of the Jeep. "Get this clunker turned around...that van...follow that goddamned van...!" He sprang headfirst, landing in the side of the front seat, Maximov right on his heels, just as the driver spotted them bursting from the crowd.

"Hey! Hey, what the--who do you think--"

French held up his Bureau badge, heaving in great gulps of air as he spat out orders. "That white van--"

"No way, mister. This is a Third Infantry vehicle reserved for--" but he never finished the sentence as French jammed the business end of his .45 into the sergeant's wide-eyed face.

"Turn this friggin' thing around now, mister, or you'll have an extra pair of eyes in the side of your face!"

The driver, blanched white, sat down, and dropped the Jeep into gear.

"A white van, Agency markings, just turned south on Fifteenth. Follow it!"

Several blocks south, Rafael Ramirez made a quick decision at Maine Avenue, and swerved left. The van bumped and bounced along the street, past a marina full of yacht masts gently swaying in early morning Potomac swells, then under the Case Bridge and the Municipal Fish Pier. The smell of the morning's catch gave Ramirez an idea.

He began slowing the van. Ahead, lights and more masts. Another marina.

The sign was hand-lettered, an old Colonial-style of printing: Capitol Yacht Club. Ramirez slammed on the brakes, skidding, and bumped over the curb, pulling down and onto a cobblestone path that ran the length of the pier. Lanterns swung from poles at regular intervals. A few of the boats showed signs of activity. Lights and faint music issued up from the water's edge. Ramirez coasted to a stop alongside one boat. Her name was stenciled on the stern: Big Easy. A forty-foot two master, already rigged for a day of deep-sea mackerel and tuna fishing.

They pulled into the slip area. Ramirez and Arrantes listened for a few moments to the police band on the radio set. Directions, orders, counter-orders, call signs, confusion and chaos crackled on 455 megacycles. Ramirez began to relax a little.

"Capitan, we lost em', eh?" Arrantes grinned nervously, climbing out.

Ramirez doubted it. "Maybe, Jorge, maybe not. We'll see. Some of the vehicles will try to follow. I don't think anyone saw me turn down this street, though."

"Then we have some time."

"A few minutes, at most."

Arrantes lit a Marlboro and puffed anxiously. "What do we do now?"

Ramirez could hear crewmen shouting up from Big Easy's cabin. A deck hand was working the lines. "Get the bomb onto that boat. Get her out into the river...maybe find a cove to hide in for awhile. I can't stray too far from the center of the city. Fidel may give us the order any moment."

"Damn. What's keeping him?" Arrantes swore.

Ramirez pulled the Makarov from his jacket and changed out the clip, chambering the first round, checking the action. Arrantes did the same. They slipped and slid down a grassy bank to the wharf itself, climbed aboard the Easy. The deck hand looked up, startled, frozen in the stark light of a pierside lantern. Ramirez squeezed the trigger and got off two rounds. Both impacted the young mustachioed man in the chest. He jerked backwards, dropping the lines and tackle, falling and twisting sideways as his body plunged with a splash into the Washington Channel.

A voice, muffled and angry, called up. "Darryl, that you? Quit screwing around and get those lines secured. Customers'll be here any minute. Darryl....?"

A bearded face poked up from a belowdecks cabin, right into the muzzle end of Arrantes' Makarov.

"Say...huh?--what the fu--" the Beard started blinking and his mouth worked up and down but no words came out.

"Come up here, amigo, nice and slow. Keep your hands where I can see them."

The Beard nodded, his eyes narrowing and he hoisted himself up the tiny ladder to the main deck. He was rotund, wearing a greasy white T-shirt and soggy dungarees.

"Who are you--"

"Shut up." Ramirez jammed the Makarov under the Beard's jawline. "Do what I say or you die. Just like your friend."

"Darryl--"

"This is your boat?"

Beard nodded, after a fashion. "I'm still paying on her but yeah, she's my charter." He nodded to a sign near the pole lantern. It read Potomac Tours and Charters.

Ramirez had seen the tarpaulin and lines Darryl was working on. Some quick measurements convinced him the K-5 would fit, barely, on her deck, stashed for the time being under the heavy canvas of a tarp. There were eyelets along the desk edge to secure the tarp.

"Guys," said the Beard. "you wanna charter or something? We can talk. I can be real reasonable, this time of year."

Ramirez pocketed his Makarov. "I've got some gear, amigo. Heavy stuff. We want to borrow your boat. Take a little ride around the river."

Beard cracked an experimental smile. "Like a tour or something? Mount Vernon, that sort of thing."

Ramirez replied, "Something like that. But I'm in a hurry."

Beard shrugged. "I had a charter this morning. But for the right fee, I can be flexible. My rate is--"

Ramirez whirled around and grabbed Beard by his beard and hair, bringing them both nose to nose. Beard smelled of gasoline and machine oil. "Your rate is your life. Comprende? You give us a hand, do what I say exactly, you may live to see sunset. Otherwise--"

Beard swallowed hard. Friggin Mexican jokers. "Sure, sure, whatever you say." And I'll brain the bejesus out of both of you first chance I get.

That settled, the men went to work transferring the crate with the K-5 and the remaining crate of mission gear over to the Easy. The bomb was the heaviest, and the hardest.

A makeshift ramp was fashioned with spare planking and a few barrels nearby. With some heaving and wrestling, the thousand-pound device was wrestled out the back of the white van and rolled onto the rear deck of the Easy, the boat settling, nearly bottoming under the load. Beard was wide-eyed at the weight of the thing.

"Don't know if I can even navigate down the channel with that sucker. Must weigh a ton. What the hell is it?"

Ramirez was flexing and rubbing sore hands where the crate had gouged scrapes. "Equipment."

Beard had seen the Agency markings. "You guys are spooks, ain't you? Like James Bond or something."

Ramirez snorted. "Sure, compadre. We work for the Central Intelligence Agency, just like it says."

Beard was impressed. "No shit? You on a mission or something. Something big?"

Ramirez laughed. "Pretty big."

Beard inspected the crate. "Let's at least get this sucker centered and tied down. We're stern heavy now." The men grunted and strained, shoving the crate forward, nearly to the deck ladder. A tiny space was left to squeeze belowdecks. "That's a little better." Beard stood up, wiping sweat and grease on his jeans. "Where to, bud?"

Ramirez heard sirens and heavy trucks nearby. His eyes narrowed, and he hopped up onto the Easy's foredeck to try and catch a glimpse of any tail. Lights passed over the Case Bridge. A convoy, maybe. The Yanquis were searching frantically. He hopped down.

"Pull her out. Go down river a few miles. You know this river?"

Beard stuck his bearded jaw out proudly. "Like a whore's thighs I know this river. Been piloting and chartering something like thirty two years, that's all."

Ramirez thought. "There must be a cove or someplace nearby we can hide in. Not too far away. This gear I have, it's sensitive. It has to be near the center of the city, but out of sight."

"Detector of some type," Beard reckoned wisely.

"Near enough to do the job," Ramirez said. "You know such a place."

Beard puckered his lips, enjoying the moment. "There's several possibilities. You got your Broad Creek, just a few miles away. That's probably the best place. You got your Oxon Creek, down by Goose Island. Other side of the air force base. Or Hunting Creek a little further south, on the Virginia side."

"Show me."

Beard produced a map at the pilothouse door, tracing the possibilities. Ramirez thought for a moment. The Yanquis would be dragnetting the area soon. They had to decide now, had to move. And Fidel might send the order.

"Broad Creek. Let's get going."

Beard half-saluted. "Sure thing, bud. I'll get Easy started up in a jiffy."

Five minutes later, the Beard was in Easy's pilothouse, backing slowly out of the slip. The boat wallowed uneasily in the Channel's confined waters, catching slap from waves coming upriver.

"She's handling like a pig!" Beard called out. "Steering's mushy. Go stand forward. We'll have to move some weight up there, get her bow back down or else I'll be careening all over the river."

Big Easy's twin Mercs chugged a deep-throated rumble as she slewed sideways, first left, then right, Beard fighting the wheel, throttling back and forth to keep some way on and keep her centered in the Channel. Maneuvering room was tight. Several times, heading south past the white brick of the Harbor Precinct House, then the low red buildings of Fort McNair, Easy wandered nearly into the back of other ships moored along the sides. Cursing and sweating, Beard navigated them out into the deeper waters of the Potomac. South, the clouds were building like fingers purpled with early sunlight. Lights flickered on along the shore as Easy turned south and Beard nudged the Mercs up to a higher throttle setting. She began settling sternwise and several waves washed over her rails. Ramirez went forward with Arrantes, worried the boat might capsize completely, though the heavy load of the K-5 was fairly well centered. But she was still stern heavy and her bow was canted up at a noticeable angle. The Potomac grew cold, windy and choppy, as a stiff breeze kicked up, adding to the boat's gathering speed.

They motored south in the center of the Potomac channel for an hour or more, the lights of central Washington dwindling behind them. Ramirez checked the chart Beard had posted on the pilothouse door several times. The measured distance from the White House-Capitol axis was around ten to twelve miles. He knew the effective radius of the K-5 was supposed to be five to ten miles. The ruso had told them that. At some point, perhaps tonight after dark, he'd have Beard work them back up closer to the center of the city. With any luck, the Yanquis would never suspect a surprise attack from the Potomac River itself.

The sun was already marbling a mostly cloudy sky, approaching eight o'clock in the morning, when they made Broad Creek. River traffic had been light to non-existent, save for one nervous moment, as they came abreast of Jones Point and the Wilson Memorial Bridge. A small Coast Guard cutter hove into view and shined powerful spotlights on the Easy, from bow to stern. Beard waved at them, as did Ramirez and Arrantes. Ramirez gestured toward some fishing tackle and rigging, as though they were headed out to the Bay for a day's worth of fishing. The cutter slowed as Easy passed by--no doubt they were being scrutinized carefully. Ramirez knew they would be curious about the massive hump under the tarp. But the cutter soon signaled them to carry on and Beard resumed his best speed. Whatever the Coast Guard had been looking for, they hadn't found it aboard the Big Easy.

Broad Creek was a wide notch on the Maryland side of the Potomac, mostly rural, still and quiet as a northern lake when Beard turned them cautiously east. Easy skidded a bit, her stern sliding around, but the rudders bit and Beard was able to get them turned and headed up creek after a few minutes of maneuvering. They passed a hand-lettered sign reading Kisconko Road, with an arrow pointing deeper into the cove. Another sign came up, nailed to a tree. It read Indian Queen Estates.

"This good enough for you, gents?" Beard asked.

Ramirez studied the shoreline intently for several minutes. Mostly residential, second homes, cottages, fishing shacks, and dilapidated wharves with rotting boards and a rusting Amoco gas pump was all he could see. The place was eerily quiet, isolated. Beard revved the engine to keep them tight in a turn, and flock of geese fluttered away from one of the landings in a flurry of activity.

"Stop here," Ramirez commanded.

"Here?" Beard questioned him. "In the center of the channel? We still practically in the river. I can't anchor here. River'll knock us all over the place. Let me work us in a bit more."

Beard alternately started and stopped the Mercs, steering around some shoals and brought the Big Easy into to within a few hundred yards of shore, then dropped anchor. The chain splashed heavily in the water and more geese fled the area, their morning sunbathing disturbed.

"How deep is the water here?"

Beard chewed on the end of an old pipe, unlit. "Probably about thirty feet. Done some pretty fair bass and crappie fishin' here over the years."

"This will do."

The Big Easy strained at her anchor but held fast and Beard chopped the Mercs. The rumble below their feet died off. Beard stepped out of the pilothouse.

"You guys killed Darryl, didn't you?" He squinted over at Ramirez.

Ramirez glared back impassively. Moncada rules of engagement said kill Beard right here and now and dump the body overboard. But some sense of caution made Ramirez stop. Beard knew the river. He might be needed. He nodded to Arrantes.

"You ask a lot of questions, barbudo."

"You gonna kill me too?"

Ramirez shrugged. "You don't seem disturbed by that."

Beard smiled without humor. "I seen a lot on the river over the years. If it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon live out my days in peace."

Ramirez smiled. "A request I cannot honor, compadre. Peace is something I've seen very little of." He made a quick motion and Arrantes pinned the man's arms behind his back. Ramirez found some rope and Beard was bound hand and foot in less than a minute. "Down below. Stuff a rag in his mouth too." To Beard's face, Ramirez' gaze hardened. "No peace for any of us, I'm afraid. For now, you live. When I'm done and the mission is completed, then your fate is up to God."

Arrantes lowered the heavyset man to the deck below, and let him squirm and kick on the deck floor for awhile. Presently, he gave up and lay smoldering angrily at the foot of the ladder.

For the moment, at least, they seemed to have eluded the Yanquis. But for how long?

"Let's check the warhead," Ramirez suggested. They threw back the tarp, unfastened an end panel of the crate and examined the wireways at the base of the K-5. Ramirez ran his fingers lovingly along each wire, feeling for any breaks, any extra slack, any loss of continuity. In his jacket, the wooden block the ruso had fashioned was snug. He pulled it out, reconnected the leads to the proper wires and set the block down on top of the crate. Arrantes stood with one foot propped up on the gunwale, studying the shoreline.

"It is peaceful here, Capitan. Like a bahia I know near Santiago, where I used to fish as a boy."

"You're were still a boy, Jorge," Ramirez said, "when we left the Bolivar Barracks. Now, Moncada's made you a man, old before your time."

Arrantes glanced back. "I've done my duty as assigned, Capitan. At least, I've tried--"

"Don't worry, Jorge. You've done fine. You've done everything I asked. Everything any of us could do. Fate has brought us here. You and I are all that's left of Moncada. Cuba depends on us. Fidel depends on us."

Arrantes sat down on the deck beside the wooden crate. "Why doesn't he give the order? What's Fidel waiting for?"

Ramirez shrugged. "I don't know why, Jorge. Fidel's said nothing since the ultimatum yesterday."

Arrantes was glum, and lonely. "They got Calderone, didn't they? We heard it on the radio. A large bomb found in New York. Cubans and rusos killed. An assault."

Ramirez' face hardened in pain at the thought. "We don't know that. It could be a deception. Something to make us move, something to draw us out."

"We should have killed the ruso before now." Arrantes shook his head. "He almost blew everything. We were lucky to get away."

Ramirez had re-played the moment of Kapitonov's escape over and over again in his mind, slow-motion, fast-motion, dissecting every twitch, every eyeblink. What could he have done differently? Arrantes was right. The ruso was extra baggage and he should have been disposed of. He wouldn't make the same mistake with the Beard.

"What are we going to do now, Capitan?"

Ramirez stood up and began pacing along the railing. He was anxious, edgy. The sun had just poked above the treeline and steam was beginning to boil off the cold wasters of Broad Creek.

"Fidel has to make a decision. Now. Today. If he doesn't use the bomb soon, we'll have to ditch it, or hide it or--" he paused, whirled, glaring angrily at Arrantes, his mind focusing on what had to be done.

"--Or what, Capitan?"

"--Or detonate it ourselves, Jorge. Blow it without waiting for Fidel."

11-7-62, Wednesday

Aboard the U.S.S. Rochester (CA-135) in the Bering Sea

3:00 a.m.

"Radar, anything on the plot yet?" Commander Lemuel Elkins snuggled his face up closer to the steaming mug of coffee, while the radarman watched the sweep of the fan display. The AN/UYK-12 flickered green in the night-darkened forward bridge, revealing only Rochester's sister ships, both destroyers, and a scattering of small bergs recently calved off from a nearby glacier. Despite the coffee, an extra parka and the heaters turned up to max output, the bridge was cold.

"As before, Commander. Sioux City and the Columbia are all I have at this time."

Elkins slurped some more coffee in a vain attempt to stay warm. He didn't need to glance at the thermometer on the bulkhead. Still hovering at minus twenty-two Fahrenheit, actual air temperature.

"Very well, keep me posted. That Russian ship must be just at the outer edge of our radar."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Elkins paced the bridge anxiously, silently cursing the crackpots who'd thought up this little rendezvous at the top of the world. In the middle of winter, no less. Who the hell's bright idea was it, anyway, to seek out a Russian guided missile cruiser in the middle of the night, pitch black in berg-infested waters, and make contact, so a bunch of politicians could fly up and have a meeting? It was just plain nuts, thought Elkins.

Somebody's sure got a burr up his ass on this one.

Somewhere out there, in the frigid wasteland of the Bering Sea was another ship, a Russian cruiser called the Khabarovsk. Elkins mentally reviewed the orders radioed in from CINCPAC yesterday...transit the Bering Strait not later than 0300Z local time and make rendezvous with Soviet surface group at coordinates 66 Degrees 15 Minutes North, 175 Degrees Forty Minutes East. In the vicinity of the Diomede Islands, establish contact with Commander, Soviet surface group and prepare facilities for meeting POTUS and Soviet leadership. All further dispatches coded PRIORITY PURPLE.

"Commander, contact...no, multiple contacts, air and surface, bearing 280 degrees. Looks like five, six now surface contacts. Air contacts are heading this way."

"Very well," Elkins chewed on the end of an unlit pipe. "Officer of the watch, let's go to General Quarters. Advise Columbia and Sioux City."

The OOTW, a lanky, sour-faced Lieutenant, answered, "Aye, aye, sir. Sound General Quarters." There was a bustle of activity around the bridge. The warning klaxon sounded throughout the 717-foot length of the cruiser. The deck shuddered as her 120,000 horsepower geared turbines driving four screws sped up.

"Make turns for twenty knots. Prepare to launch the chopper. Ready all eight and five-inch guns."

The OOTW shoved the engine room telegraph lever over to twenty knots. Seconds later, the indicator snapped over to line up on the mark.

"Aye, aye, sir. Engine room answers twenty knots."

On the aft helipad, the rotors of the Kaman helicopter began turning, spitting oil smoke in the frigid early morning twilight. Several hundred feet forward, the aft five-inch mount crews began laying their guns, traversing to the bearing of the Soviet ships, while conveyor belts fed the first rounds into the breeches.

Commander Elkins grabbed a bridge stanchion as Rochester heeled hard to port, bringing her guns broadside to the oncoming Soviet fleet. At the same time, all sixteen of her three-inch, 50-caliber twin-mount anti-aircraft guns began slewing around to the coordinates identified, ready to lay down a barrage of lead if the Soviet aircraft, now identified as four Mil-8 helicopters, failed to keep a proper distance.

"Soviet commander is hailing us," came the report from the radio shack. Elkins

stepped into the cramped compartment and picked up a headset. Scratchy static, common to high northern latitudes, crackled in his ears. Just at the outer fringe of audibility--he read off the frequency on the dial as five five oh megacycles--Elkins heard a guttural voice, first in Russian, then in heavily accented English--intermittently filling the airwaves.

"--to Commander, Amerikantsy naval force, this is Khabarovsk calling, how do you read me?--"

Elkins tuned the freq tuner a bit, got more volume but no better signal, then pressed TRANSMIT.

"To Commander, Soviet surface group and the Khabarovsk. This is Rochester, United States Navy, Lemuel Elkins commanding..." From a fleet dispatch last night, he scanned the exact words CINCPAC had radioed up to be transmitted, including passwords and a few diplomatic niceties. Guess they don't trust us cruiser types with our table manners, Elkins thought sourly. He read off the required words, exchanged formal protocol with the Commander, Khabarovsk, and then set up station-keeping and navigation procedures, distances, call signs, frequencies and related matters for the next few minutes. At length, the Soviet group hove into view through patches of ice fog drifting at sea level. Elkins broke out the binoculars from a cabinet and scanned what they were facing.

"All stop," he ordered.

"Aye, aye, sir," replied the OOTW. "Engine room answers all stop."

There were three Soviet ships, cruisers from the looks of them, perhaps Sverdovsky-class. Clean and classy, they seemed to be new hulls. Light on gun armament, but Elkins wanted a closer look at the two twin-tube clusters amidships, just below the funnels. Surface-to-surface missile mounts, he surmised. Shylocks or something equivalent. Forty-five mile range, nuclear or conventional capable.

She might be light on guns but from ten miles out or more, she could blow anything up to flattop clean out of the water. He was grudgingly impressed with her lines and fittings, noting with a practiced sailor's eye the masts and antennas crammed into her superstructure, surface search, target acquisition and tracking radars galore. She could see a long way, he had no doubt, and deliver a helluva punch to anyone misfortunate enough to be caught unawares.

The next hour was spent maneuvering the three ships of the Khabarovsk group and the Rochester group to bring all ships into a line formation, more or less astride the International Date Line. Beyond the Soviet hulls, Elkins knew, some ten miles distant were the bare volcanic hills of Big Diomede Island, Soviet territory and beyond that, the icy wasteland of Siberia's Chukchi Peninsula, some fifty nautical miles distant. Off the Rochester's starboard side, lay Little Diomede Island, American territory, and beyond that fifty miles away through ice-flecked waters lay the tiny Eskimo fishing village of Wales and Alaska's Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, home to little more than walrus and sea otter and the occasional polar bear.

The symbolism of the location and the ships' positioning had been deliberately chosen, no doubt by politicians in nice warm offices, thought Commander Elkins, for

technically the Soviet group was now hove to in Soviet territorial waters, and the American ships likewise in U.S. territorial waters. A fitting environment indeed, thought the Rochester's skipper, for a meeting of Cold Warriors.

Elkins gave the order for Rochester's helicopter to be launched for the first meeting. By agreement, the Kaman would be used for inter-ship transfer of personnel and supplies. Her first mission was to fly the mile or so distance over to the Khabarovsk and pick up the Soviet task force commander, one Captain First Rank Sergei Stepanovich.

Elkins waited impatiently in the landing signal officer's shack off the helipad, dressed in regulation U.S. Navy fur cap and Arctic gear, while the small chopper made its way through the twilit skies to the Soviet ship, touching down on the fantail helipad of the cruiser. Ten minutes later, the Kaman was banking and spiraling over Rochester's stern, while the LSO wagged paddles to judge the wind and bring her in without incident. Tricky crosswinds and gusts made the touchdown something other than a routine "milk run" to the fleet supply yard but the Kaman's skids eventually made contact with pad and she settled down with no further problem, quickly being tied down and chocked by deck hands, as her rotor was chopped. A Boatswain's Mate cycled open the side door and piped the Soviet commander aboard. Elkins cinched up his parka and cap and stepped forward to greet Stepanovich.

He was a short, stocky man, dressed likewise in dark blue fur-lined parka and hood, with red stars and stripes and a braided shoulderboard with a gold anchor.

"Commander Lemuel Elkins, U.S. Navy." Elkins stuck out his hand.

Stepanovich eyed Elkins warily, then straightened up and shook hands, a strong grip. His English, though accented, was excellent.

"Sergei Maximovich Stepanovich, Captain, Morskoi Flot, Red Banner Fleet of the Pacific Ocean."

The two men wasted no time seeking shelter from the elements. Elkins directed Stepanovich into the LSO's shack, where a small presentation of gifts was made. Elkins, per direction of CINCPAC, unveiled a forged brass likeness of a U.S. Navy battleship. Stepanovich accepted the gift with great solemnity, and seemed intrigued with the detail that could be seen in the model's superstructure. For his part, the Russian skipper turned over a small box, two inches square, to Elkins. Elkins unwrapped the gift box and inside found a miniature naval cannon, on a recoilless mounting, stacks of miniature cannon balls to the side, seemingly ready to fire. He smiled in spite of himself.

"Even our gifts are tools of war," he said. "Looks like we have some work to do."

Stepanovich grinned, revealing several gold-capped teeth. "Our politicians like to play chess with live pieces, do they not, Commander? You play chess?"

Elkins shook his head, rising to escort the Russian belowdecks to the ship's wardroom. "Very little. I don't have the patience for it."

"Ah," said Stepanovich, "chess is not for the impatient. Nor for the careless. One must think ahead, anticipate one's opponent."

"Americans make better football players," Elkins admitted. "Or baseball players. Homeruns and all that. Very dramatic."

Rochester's main wardroom on her 03 level had been fitted out as a meeting and planning space. About fifteen hours were left before the President and the Chairman were scheduled to arrive, both by helicopter from Elmendorf Air Force Base, near Anchorage. The initial meeting was set for six p.m. that evening, aboard the Rochester, in this same wardroom. By then, the mechanics of the meeting and the procedures of how to transfer men and materials from ship to ship, in high winds, and icing conditions, had to be worked out. Elkins had planned a working lunch, complete with Navy bean soup, for the Russian skipper. The two of them soon reached the wardroom, and sat down to steaming bowls, ready to dig in.

Kennedy and Khrushchev had gone airborne several hours before. For each leader, the length of the trip was about the same, seven thousand miles, nearly fourteen hours in the air, with several re-fueling stops along the way. Khrushchev, it was known, had left Sheremetyevo in a special long-range Tupolev Tu-114 turboprop aircraft, reserved for the Central Committee, outfitted with polar navigation gear and extra fuel tanks. According to what Elkins knew, the Soviet Chairman would be flying a great circle route, north over the Arctic Ocean, descending south in the vicinity of Magadan, before turning east along a military jetway well marked for Soviet air defense intercept vectors. Khrushchev's route would take the Tu-114 east into the very heart of Alaska, near enough to Fairbanks for additional equipment aboard the Tupolev to sniff and catalog electronic emissions from the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radars at Clear a few hundred miles north. A priceless opportunity to do a little snooping, thought Elkins, when he had seen the route. Still, there was nothing that could be done at this point.

For his part, President Kennedy and Air Force One had left Andrews early that same morning, heading north by northwest, up over the Canadian prairie and northern Rocky Mountains. After a refueling stop at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, the Boeing 707 would turn more to the west, crossing the Yukon Territory, and the massive Brooks Range, before heading back south toward Anchorage and Elmendorf. The two leaders would not rendezvous at the American air base--protocol and diplomacy strictly forbade that but would make their ways separately to their respective ships anchored several hundred miles out in the Bering Sea, a few minutes' flying time south of the Arctic Circle. Russian Mil helicopters had been ferried up from Petropavlovsk, a northern Pacific Soviet port to Anchorage, to serve as ferry craft for Khrushchev and his entourage. If all went as planned, the two leaders would meet in person at six p.m. that evening, for the first time since Vienna in June, 1961.

Stepanovich pronounced himself more than satisfied after his third bowl of Navy bean soup. Good thing, thought Elkins, since the rest of my crew hasn't eaten yet.

Cold glasses of milk and piping hot coffee and tea were wheeled over in a stainless steel cart. The two skippers then settled down for an afternoon's work, spreading out maps, charts and ships' layout diagrams on the tables.

It was only hours later, when Elkins had called a break and retired to his stateroom to freshen up, that Lieutenant Commander Mooresby, XO of the Rochester, stopped by to ask what the Russian skipper was like, up close and personal.

Elkins snorted. "Red bastard smells like a wet dog raised on garlic to me."

Mooresby stifled a laugh, hoping things would go better for Kennedy and Khrushchev that evening.

11-7-62, Wednesday

Aboard the U.S.S. Rochester (CA-135)

6:00 p.m.

The 03 level wardroom had been decked out with Navy and American flags and red, white and blue streamers and bunting hung from every available corner and space, effectively overwhelming the few lonely Soviet flags with their yellow hammer and sickle on a red field. The ship's mess company had worked all afternoon on the decorations, and had only just finished twenty minutes earlier when John F. Kennedy stepped off the platform at the head of the room, to greet Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. Kennedy flashed a ready smile and grasped the Chairman's rough and beefy peasant's hands with both of his own.

"Mr. Chairman, a pleasure to see you again. Welcome aboard the Rochester."

Khrushchev, eyeing all the decorations, smiled slyly, and through his translator, eyes twinkling, said, "Where am I, Mr. President, at one of your political conventions? Our poor Soviet flags don't have a chance in all this."

Kennedy smiled back, conducting the Chairman to a pair of tables covered with dark blue baize, microphones, tape recorders, and a few writing tablets and pens. The standard urns of ice and mineral water adorned the tables along with a spray of plastic orchids and roses in the center.

"Sorry, Mr. Chairman, but our Navy men are proud to be Americans. They seem to have outdone themselves."

Khrushchev situated himself with effort in a chair. "As you have done in the Caribbean, no doubt. A few defensive missiles in Cuba and you've mobilized your entire Army and Air Force." He clucked disapprovingly, wagging a finger across the table. "I trust we Russians can get a fair hearing in the middle of all this, shall we say, hysteria."

Kennedy sat down painfully, his back still aching from the long plane ride out from Washington. It was going to be a long evening. He'd asked Dr. Travell for medicine, then decided against it. I need what wits I have left to be sharp tonight, he told himself. Last year, the Soviet Chairman had me for lunch, then chewed me up and spat out the pieces.

He was determined that wouldn't happen again.

The two leaders got right down to work. Kennedy had been accompanied by Mac Bundy and Ted Sorenson, who sat with him along one side of the table, selecting documents and references for review at key points in the discussion. Khrushchev, for his part, had come with his own aides and advisors, including Andrei Gromyko, the sourpuss Foreign Minister. From the end of the receiving line, after Khrushchev had been formally introduced to the ship's company of officers, Commander Elkins had remarked to Mooresby, the XO, that Gromyko reminded him of one of those Play-Doh villains he used to craft in kindergarten. "Bastard's got a face like my daughter's worst nightmare."

Kennedy briefly laid out the events leading up to and surrounding the nearly-botched assault on the New York City bomb.

"Your instructions to the men assisting our task force," Kennedy said, "nearly led to disaster. We have to cooperate in this investigation, Mr. Chairman. Free-lance operations like what happened are too dangerous. We've got to trust each other."

Khrushchev was indignant. "Our agents were instructed to make sure that Soviet property is returned to the Soviet Union. We don't let the Cubans handle our atomic weapons. Nor anyone else, including your so-called task force of investigators. It's a matter of utmost state importance. We believe no one should handle these weapons but our own trained people."

"Nonetheless," Kennedy continued, "I want your agreement, tonight, that the men you've assigned to our joint investigation won't do that again. It's too risky, what they tried to do, whatever the motive. The Cubans are liable to detonate the one bomb they still have. A wrong move, and--" he threw up his hands--"there's goes Washington. The bomb is yours. It was your own security failure that allowed Castro to get his hands on the devices in the first place."

Khrushchev reddened with anger. He didn't like the young American President taking this tone with him, a man many years his junior in age and experience. "If America didn't threaten the Cuba with invasion, attempting to overthrow the legitimate revolutionary aspirations of the Cuban people, there would have been no need to have such defensive weapons in Cuba in the first place."

"These are hardly defensive weapons," Kennedy said. "As I said in my address to the nation on October 22, the purpose of the weapons can be none other than--"

"Mr. President," Khrushchev interjected, holding up both hands, "shall we refrain from re-living the recent past? We're here tonight, are we not, to find some way to reduce tensions between our two countries? We've spoken of pulling on both ends of a rope in our letters. Now the knot is so tight, it can't be undone. Yet we have to try. You have some proposals to make, I assume. Specific proposals."

"I do," said Kennedy. "As you know, the Washington bomb is still at large. Our investigators, yours too, have been unable to locate it. Or the Cubans who have it. I am requesting, among my other proposals, that you use your influence with Fidel Castro to get him to lift the ultimatum. We cannot operate under this threat." Kennedy had been reading from a page but he put the paper down and leveled a hard gaze at the Soviet Chairman. "We have the forces available to put an end to this threat. And we will, and soon, if Castro doesn't act."

"It is you who have acted in violation of all international norms!" Khrushchev thundered, half rising out of his seat. He slapped an open palm on the tabletop. "You've already invaded Cuban territory, twice in the last year! What are we to believe...your words or your actions, Mr. President Kennedy?"

Kennedy remembered the bluster and the threats from Vienna. Mac Bundy had cautioned him not to bite. The Soviet Chairman liked to provoke and unnerve opponents.

Kennedy gripped the chair armrests. He forced himself to keep an even voice.

"I repeat...Mr. Chairman, to continue the present course will have the gravest of consequences. I think you know what I mean."

Khrushchev sat back, folding his arms over his belly. He tugged thoughtfully at a wart on his face, then a thin smile broke through. "Mr. President Kennedy, I think you're an honorable man. I also have certain, shall we say advisors, who give me advice I don't need. We both have our generals and our bombs. But the facts are not in dispute here. Despite pledges to the contrary, your own pledges, Mr. President, American military forces have conducted combat operations against both Cuban and Soviet forces. We have the right to defend ourselves. This is recognized by every nation."

Kennedy knew it was a trap. Bundy had warned him about it. Don't let him use Sierra as a weapon over our heads, Bundy had said. Kennedy glanced over at his National Security Advisor. Bundy nodded imperceptibly.

"Mr. Chairman, I won't argue facts. The facts are well enough known. The operations you're referring to were caused by a mutinous group of officers. It was completely unauthorized by me. We're dealing with these traitors now." Kennedy dared not voice what some were saying...that Haley and Stone weren't traitors at all, but heroes.

Khrushchev listened grimly for the translation, his expression growing more sour with each word. His eyes had closed almost to slits. At length, they opened. His face hardened.

"Let us hope, then, that American nuclear forces are under better control. Obviously, we must respond to each increase in your DefCon readiness levels. Prudence dictates this. And we Russians are prudent people indeed, when it comes to our own security. You also maintained, with me in Vienna last year, that your Bay of Pigs invasion was a mistake. What are we to think? That American authorities cannot control their armies? That American generals are like your cowboys, shooting up small countries for sport, as we hunt quail in the woods?"

Kennedy could feel the moment slipping away. "Mr. Chairman, despite our differences, we must find common ground. This may be our last, best hope, here, now, tonight."

Khrushchev, content that he had established more solid ground for Soviet discontent, sat back. "I am, of course, grateful to you at the same time as I criticize your policies. I'm referring, you understand, to the recent, shall we say, events in Moscow. We too have our renegade generals and malcontents. And we are dealing with them."

Kennedy seized the moment. "Do you think I would have authorized releasing that kind of intelligence information if I weren't prepared to trust you? In America, we have a saying: 'Better the devil you know than the one you don't.'"

Khrushchev chuckled, with the translation. "A good saying. No, Mr. President, we can do business together. As long as we understand each other completely. In a nuclear-missile war, there won't be any winners or losers. Only casualties. We both know this. Yet we're driven toward this catastrophe by our natures, and our beliefs. We must protect and defend what we believe in. You must do the same." He shrugged, holding up both hands "Surely, we are in this same boat together, as you might say, paddling against strong currents. Currents that will take us to a place of destruction and annihilation if we're not careful. We can save the boat if we paddle together, but not if we argue and fight each other. Mr. President Kennedy, the time has come to put our oars in the water and paddle together."

Kennedy nodded. "I've been reading a book. 'The Guns of August', about the beginning of World War I. The Germans had a general--Von Moltke--who was a key advisor to the Kaiser. When the hour of decision was at hand, and the Kaiser himself wanted to step back and say no to mobilizing the troops, step back from the brink of war itself, he turned to Moltke and asked if the trains could be stopped. Could the mobilization be halted, the trains turned around, and the troops re-assembled at their embarkation points?"

"Moltke thought about this and the very idea was hateful. He'd spent years--a decade or more--devising intricate mobilization plans. Train schedules, supply schedules, timetables, exact travel times down to the minute, an entire complicated structure of interlocking plans that would put Germany on a war footing with a maximum of efficiency and a minimum of time. He'd invested his life in these plans; he'd lived and slept with them, tinkered with them, improved them, tested them. The mobilization plans were Moltke, down to the last word, the last punctuation mark.

"So when the Kaiser asked Moltke if the trains could be stopped and the mobilization halted, even though they could have, Moltke, being Moltke, said no. The very thought of building such a complex, intricate machine for war-making and not using it, not having the satisfaction of seeing it come to fruition was more than Moltke could bear. He refused, point-blank, to accept the Kaiser's inquiries. Instead, he retired to his estate near Berlin, to his study and drank and cried himself into a stupor. The Kaiser's questions never went any further.

"And the trains rolled on." Kennedy folded his hands on the felt top of the conference table, dimly aware yet not caring about anyone else in the wardroom but the Soviet Chairman. "Mr. Chairman, we must stop the trains. Now. In their tracks. As a first step, I'm requesting that you standdown your forces in Berlin and around the world. Stand them down to a lower level of readiness. Stand down to where you were before October 22."

Khrushchev frowned thoughtfully. Gromyko raised his hand, signaling he wished to confer. The two men leaned their heads together, exchanging heated words for a few moments. When they were done, Khrushchev seemed to have made up his mind.

"We will stand down our forces to a lower level of readiness, Mr. President. You must do the same."

The matter, now out on the table for discussion, was quickly agreed to, with occasional interjections from Gromyko and Bundy. Notes were made and wording haggled over for a few minutes. Eventually, after a short recess for fresh air and replenishments from the stainless steel mess cart, both men had agreed to a standdown of forces. Orders were to be issued within the hour, from the CIC of the Rochester and the equivalent facility aboard the Khabarovsk.

"A vital first step," Kennedy observed. "You know, Mr. Chairman, what happened in New York was very foolish. This fellow, Kudinov, he was one of your KGB agents. His efforts to rush that ambulance could very well have led to catastrophe.

In my view, these actions come from lack of trust. That's what we need here. More efforts to build trust between us, like this standdown of forces. More actions to build confidence between us."

"To stop the trains, Mr. President?"

"Exactly. Perhaps we should meet at the United Nations. There are a lot of issues that could be discussed...limiting nuclear tests, for example."

"A worthy idea," Khrushchev admitted. "New York has great symbolism, does it not? Wall Street, the United Nations. Did you know that Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of your President Roosevelt, died today in New York?"

Kennedy had read the news reports. "I was informed of that on the flight from Washington. She was much loved. A great lady, indeed."

"I must tell you, in all honesty, Mr. President, many Russians still have great affections for Franklin Roosevelt. He sent us weapons and supplies to fight Germans in the Great Patriotic War against Hitler. He understood Russians...what we needed."

"He was much loved in my country as well," Kennedy replied. "A visionary and a statesman and a patriot."

"As we must be ourselves. The real issue, between us, Mr. President Kennedy, is Berlin, is it not? Berlin is a great problem for we Russians. We liberated the city with the blood of our own soldiers, fighting Hitler, yet the city still isn't free. How can this be? Our German colleagues in the east ask me every month--when will the Allied Powers settle the issue of Berlin? I have no answer. What am I to tell them? For your information, I have recently informed the Germans of the Democratic Republic that we shall conclude a final peace treaty with them ourselves by the end of the year. Then they may do as they please. Then they can settle the matter of what to do about West Berlin as they wish."

"This is something we'll never permit," Kennedy reminded the Chairman. "By agreement, Berlin is to be administered by the four Allied Powers. Any agreements with any Germans have to involve the four powers. You know this. Perhaps, this too could be discussed at the United Nations. But only the four powers--ourselves, you, the British and the French, can decide the fate of West Berlin. And the Berliners themselves, of course."

Khrushchev, a few moments ago avuncular and sentimental turned cold again. "Our patience is not unlimited, Mr. President. It is you, the West, who created a new Germany in the Federal Republic, in 1949. You didn't consult with us then. Why should we consult with you now?"

Kennedy held up his hands. "May I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that we save discussions about the Berlin issue for a summit next year. For now, we should work on reducing tensions from the current crisis."

"Agreed."

By mutual consent, the two leaders decided to take leave of the Rochester's cramped and overheated wardroom. After a few moments' discussion with Commander Elkins, arrangements were made for the politicians to take a brief stroll up to the main deck of the cruiser, and "inspect equipment." A little fresh air seemed to be needed. Both men were informed that the outside air temperature was twenty-four below zero, with winds steady off the portside bow at fifteen knots, gusting higher.

"Perfect," Khrushchev exclaimed, throwing a burgundy muffler around his thick neck. "Like a stroll around my dacha. All we need is a duck pond and some rifles."

Topside, the leaders emerged from a deck house near the forward boiler room ventilation shaft, dripping with condensation. They stepped out portside, and caught a full gust of ice-flecked wind as Arctic blasts raked the ship. Rochester heaved on six-foot swells, straining at her anchors, as the men, surrounded by aides and the ship's company of officers, made their way aft, alongside the eight-inch gun mounts. Well off the portside railing, Khrushchev could make out running lights of the Khabarovsk and her surface action group of missile cruisers, hove to about a mile to the west.

They walked aft, pausing only occasionally, as the wind gusts died off, to peer out to sea, noting the chunks of broken pack ice dotting the black waters, and the featureless humps of the Diomede Islands to port and starboard.

Approaching the fantail helipad, where the Russian Mil squatted like a shivering bird, her rotors coated with ice, Kennedy remarked, "I imagine Castro and the Cubans must be having a helluva time right about now, trying to figure out how they'll clean up the mess at the Tarata beachhead. Your atomic rockets have left the place radioactively contaminated for years to come."

"Regrettable," Khrushchev admitted, "but our commanders had no choice. American forces were on the beach, we're committed to help the Cubans defend their Revolution--what could we have done? We aren't the first people to use atomic bombs in war."

Kennedy conceded the point. "I don't know what, if anything, can be done about the bodies of the Marines who died. I guess they were incinerated in the blasts. We'll probably have to build a monument at Arlington, or somewhere in Washington. If there's still a Washington left, when I get back."

Kennedy and Khrushchev stopped at the short stepladder leading up to the helipad. Hoses and cables snaked across the helipad, supplying warm air to the chopper's cabin and the engine, power to the batteries, heat to the fuel tanks and oil pumps. The leaders regarded each other, through hooded parkas and fur caps.

"Mr. Chairman, excuse me, but you look like an old polar bear dressed like that."

Khrushchev chuckled. "And you, Mr. President, will never be mistaken for an Eskimo settler. Ten thousand years ago, so the scientists say, my ancestors crossed this very spot, and settled the Americas. Only to be re-discovered by Columbus generations later. We even had settlements, Russian settlements, here, indeed as far south as your San Francisco."

"Your Czars sold it off for pennies on the dollar. Or rubles, as the case may be."

"If they hadn't, there would be Bolsheviks in Washington today. What would you say to that?"

Kennedy smiled broadly, cinching up his parka tighter to ward off an icy blast of wind. Sleet pelted the helipad. "Some people say there already are, Mr. Chairman. Do we understand each other?"

Khrushchev nodded. "I will contact Fidel Castro when I get back to Moskva. We have some influence with the man, thought not as much as you think. Perhaps, he can be persuaded to give up this bomb. It is our property, after all."

"I think you have more influence than you're admitting."

"Perhaps we do," Khrushchev said, thinking. "We are hosting Fidel's brother. I do have Raul Castro in my clutches. Perhaps, Fidel can be persuaded that way. And we can back away from this madness."

Chairman Khrushchev and President Kennedy chatted a few minutes more, family matters, then shook hands. The Chairman gathered up his advisors and headed straight for the cabin of the Mil helicopter. Commander Elkins mustered the crew from the warmth of the ready room and five minutes later, the Mil's thirty-foot rotors were turning, her gas turbine engine whining and protesting in the bitter cold air.

Kennedy retreated to the warmth of the LSO's cabin and watched as the chopper gained engine speed and lifted her skids off the pad, slewing around to weathervane in the winds. She dipped as her pilot cranked in a touch of collective and headed seaward, for the Khabarovsk, a ten-minute flight. In seconds, the chopper was an indistinguishable lump of blinking red and white lights. Even the drone of her engine, the whump-whump-whump of her blades biting into the dense Arctic air was lost in the shrill whistling of the wind.

Kennedy retreated to the deckhouse and went at once to Commander Elkins' stateroom. He motioned the Rochester's skipper to come in too.

"Commander, how long before you can get our chopper ready?"

Elkins did some quick figuring. "She's stowed in her hangar. About twenty minutes to get her out and lashed down, another ten for fuel top-off, pre-flight takes another ten. We can be ready to go in forty to forty-five minutes."

Kennedy said, "Do it. I want to get back to Elmendorf as quickly as possible. Mac--" Bundy appeared at his side.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Call Fitz at Elmendorf. Tell him I want Air Force One gassed up and ready for

takeoff as soon as we get back to the base. I need to be back in Washington, while there still is a Washington."

"Right away, Mr. President. Will you be needing to meet anyone at the White House? Or Camp David? At your request, I've worked with Ted Sorenson and Evelyn to clear your calendar for the next few days."

Kennedy thought for a moment. "I want to meet with Ike. Ask the General if he'd mind stopping by at the White House. He knows what it's like to make momentous decisions. He might have some insights for all of us."

"Mr. President, General Taylor messaged me this afternoon, through the ship-to-shore circuit here. The Chiefs are still asking for permission to begin re-deploying back to assault positions, just in case Castro goes nuts and blows up Washington. What should I tell him."

Kennedy sighed. "Now I know how the Kaiser felt. Mac--"

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Tell General Taylor this--word for word: 'Today is the day that the trains will stop.'"
CHAPTER 22

11-7-62, Wednesday

Washington, D.C.

6:15 p.m.

Jeff Torburg was sure of it. He adjusted a vernier knob on the neutron source detector, fine-tuning the angular position of the beryllium sheets stacked inside, letting background neutrons knock off more neutrons that the counter could sense. He turned the sensing head, sweeping in a smooth arc, from the water's edge up to the wharf of the Capitol Yacht Club, watching the counter dial sweep in spasmodic jerks further and further to the right.

"They were here," Torburg announced. "See that peak--" he jabbed a finger at the dial, as it hovered around the 4.5 MeV mark, before jolting upward. "Just like a fingerprint, alloy of Uranium-238. If we tune her a bit--"he adjusted the sensitivity by changing the gain on the counter--"there, see what I mean?" Torburg punched the air with a triumphant fist--"right on cue. Plutonium, sure as shootin' Soviet composition gives off neutrons right on the money at 5.2. We been seeing that fingerprint for the last four years. Russians must have cleaned up their plutonium purification process. Much cleaner, more energetic."

Alexei Maximov was both impressed and sobered. The Americans had the equipment to detect fission products from their atomic tests and work backward to the exact composition of the nuclear core.

"State Security will be very interested in this gear," he told them. "Perhaps, we can work out an exchange of some kind."

Torburg laughed. "Not a chance, pal. I had to get the President's approval just to let you come within a mile of this detector."

Mike French spotted long scrapes and gouges along the wharf planking, right at the pier's edge. "Something heavy was moved right here. Maybe the bomb itself. Jeff, can your gizmo give us an estimate of time, like when the Cubans were here?"

Torburg shrugged "Indirectly, it could be calculated from the electron volt readings. Plutonium has a definite half-life, pure plutonium that is, of about four thousand years. What I'm picking up is pretty potent stuff. I'd have to do some figuring. But offhand, I'd say it couldn't be more than six or eight hours. We've barely dropped a fraction of a percent in electron volt strength...meaning we're in the first half life."

For the last four hours, French, with Torburg and Maximov, had been cruising the Federal Triangle area in a flatbed truck borrowed from the Third Infantry. The neutron flux detector was the only realistic method they had of regaining the surveillance. French had commandeered a Jeep in front of the U.S. Treasury Building and tried to follow the white van but he'd lost the Cubans south of the Mall, in the maze of streets along the Washington Channel and the Potomac. He'd cruised up and down side streets around the Tidal Basin and nondescript industrial districts south of D Street but found no trace of the van. Disgusted, furious, he'd taken the Jeep back to the CP at Lafayette Park and argued strategy with General LeClair and Hostetler for over an hour.

It was not until mid-afternoon that Torburg's device began to pick up a faint scent of the bomb's trail. Thank God the Russian bombs are notorious leakers, Torburg told them. And we have some idea of what to look for by now. After several false turns and dead-end leads near the George Mason Memorial Bridge and the Capitol Power Plant at New Jersey Avenue in southeast Washington, they had chanced upon a drive down Maine Avenue. There, right outside the Capitol Yacht Club, Torburg had hit the jackpot and called tallyho. The fox was cornered.

Less than an hour later, the Bureau, the Army and the DC Metro police had scores of agents and officers combing every square inch of the marina.

It was nearly six p.m., nearly dark, and though the evidence was strong that the Cubans had come through the marina, there was no further evidence of the K-5 bomb save for the residual radioactivity of its presence earlier in the day.

"I figure they have to be on a boat," French decided, standing under a yacht club lantern. He jammed his hands in his coat pocket and took off his gray fedora, rubbing greasy black hair and fatigued eyes. Jesus, how long has it been seen I took a shower?

Maximov nodded, watching as the white van was hoisted up by its rear axle, to be towed off to the impound lot. "We have the courier truck. There should be a lot of evidence inside."

French shrugged. "Probably keep the forensics guys busy for weeks. But that doesn't solve the immediate problem: where the hell's the bomb? Look around you, Alexei: several slips are missing boats. We got Torburg's gizmo going off the dial, so we know the bomb was here, probably brought in aboard that truck. I say the tamales somehow got the thing onto a boat and headed out of the marina. Question now is: where? Where the hell have they gone?"

"The K-5 weighs nearly a seven hundred kilograms. Over a thousand pounds. She would not fit aboard a lot of these craft, Michael."

"Then, it has to be a larger boat, maybe rigged for some serious deep-sea fishing. Some of them have heavy-duty winches, nets...they're designed to hoist heavy loads on and offboard. That's what we have to look for. We better let the Coast Guard know too. We're going to need planes. Planes and helicopters, as well as boats, combing every drop of water around this area. Jesus, Alexei, look at the map. There must be a million inlets and creeks they could hide in."

Maximov could well imagine the problem. "Effective blast radius is about four to eight kilometers. I think it's safe to say this Ramirez would want to stay within that zone if he could."

French said, "Good point. That'll help a little. Probably a safe bet the guy didn't go upriver, though we'll still have to check. Potomac narrows quite a bit upstream of Georgetown. I checked with one of the DC cops. He has a little one-master himself, goes sailing in good weather out of Jack's Boat House up by the Key Bridge. He said the Potomac can't support boats with a draft of greater than six feet upstream of the Three Sisters. Those are three little islands, just spits of land really, about half a mile upstream of the Key Bridge. I'd say we look in this area, or downriver about five miles. Check out every stream and creek in that radius, Anacostia River too. I just hope he hasn't put in somewhere and transferred back to dry land."

"That is what I would do, if I were a Cuban commando," Maximov said. "Under cover of darkness, I would find a vehicle and circle back to within the effective blast radius of the bomb."

French glared over at the Russian. "You wouldn't be exactly pulling for this guy to succeed, would you?"

Maximov said, "No, Michael, but I know how he thinks. What are the most visible and powerful symbols of your capitalist state here, your so-called democracy?"

French shrugged. "Washington Monument, I guess. The Capitol. White House, that sort of thing."

"Exactly. All these structures are all concentrated in a small area. Ramirez, if he's a good Communist soldier, would want to place the bomb as well centered among these symbols of American imperialism as he could. That's just good tactics."

French smiled ruefully. "I'm glad you're on my side, buddy. At least, I think I am."

Maximov smiled back. "For the moment, we are allies, no?"

"Right," said French dryly. "For the moment."

"The international situation doesn't help us, Michael. Castro issued his ultimatum at noon Tuesday. His conditions were an end to any military actions in and around Cuba and assurances that Cuba would not be invaded."

"And we've been shooting up the place ever since, from what I've been hearing."

"Exactly. In addition, your President Kennedy and Chairman Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev are meeting in Alaska as we speak."

"True," French said. "And we've rendered safe the New York bomb. The K-12. So, what are you getting at, pal?"

"Just this," Maximov thought for a moment, chopping the air with the palm of his hand. "It seems that either one or the other of several conditions regarding the K-5 device must be true: either the bomb cannot be armed and detonated. Perhaps it has been mis-wired, like we think happened in New York."

"We should be so lucky twice. I wouldn't count on that. We can't afford to count on that. And the other condition--?"

"That Castro hasn't given the word yet. For some reason, he's not issued an order to detonate the device. Or the communication channel through which such an order would have to come has been somehow disrupted."

"Pretty thin ice, Alexei. I don't know how much longer our luck will hold. We have to assume the worst. Our best bet is to get going on searching the waterways around here. Maybe you can reason like these tamales and come up with a guess as to their next move. I can't. My bosses won't let me. The Bureau likes action."

"Even when it leads to no results, Michael?"

French swallowed a warm bile of anger. "Look, you have your methods. We have ours. Finding that bomb before it goes off is all that matters. I don't care if you pull out a ouija board and start conducting seances with Stalin himself, if you think it'll help. Me, I put my faith in the Bureau's methods and good old fashioned Yankee ingenuity." He went looking for Jeff Torburg and found the physicist hunched over some broken wharf boards at the very end of the pier.

"Jeff, tell me something--"

Torburg glanced up, cautioning French to stay back. He pointed to a silvery residue shining in the glare of police flashlights along the wharf. "Could be our villain, Mike. Alloy of Plutonium-239."

"From the bomb?"

Torburg snorted. "Where else, partner? You don't find processed plutonium shavings everyday at a yacht club, do you?"

"That detector of yours," French backed off a good ten feet, while Torburg used some six foot tongs with grippers to scoop up the shavings and deposit them in a lead-lined metal box. "How sensitive would it be from a helicopter?"

Torburg finished the ticklish task and handed off the metal box to an Army EOD technician, who placed the box in another larger container, fastened to a handtruck. He wheeled the crate back along the pier to a waiting Army van. The van was marked U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, Fifteenth Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company.

Torburg stretched his back and neck. His whole body was tight with fatigue. "A helicopter? Hard to say, exactly. This baby's not real mobile, if that's what you mean. Assuming we could even cram the thing into a chopper, we'd have to fly pretty dang low."

"How low?"

Torburg shrugged. "Couple of hundred feet at the max. See, the radiation falls as an inverse square. Double the distance, it falls off to a fourth the strength. Triple falls off to a ninth and so forth. Works like that. The closer you can get the better."

"I can't think of a better way to cover the kind of ground we need to cover. Those search and rescue choppers the Navy uses...Coast Guard too...they can lift a pretty fair load. Would it fit in one of those?"

"It might. I'd have to see the dimensions. Plus we need a power source. This gear consumes a bit more power that your average drugstore batteries can supply."

"We'll have to make it work." French said. "The Navy's got choppers all over the place now. I'll get on the horn back to the Bureau and see if we can't get a big one to come by. One of their big Sea Kings would do nicely."

Less than an hour later, a Coast Guard SH-3 Sea King had gingerly alighted a block northeast of Maine Avenue, itself cordoned off by DC police and Army Third Infantry from both ends. Her sixty-two foot rotors just cleared power and telephone lines surrounding the James Watson Junior High School playground, off G-Street. Torburg's neutron flux detector was hoisted up into the cargo hold, and lashed down in the space vacated by several tiny seats. A portable generator was also stowed aboard, wedged in behind the cabinet containing the detector's sensitive beryllium elements. Cabling was run to the power leads and Torburg ran a quick diagnostic test of the device, assuring himself it was calibrated.

"We've never done a search this way," he admitted, "although the basic design was developed from detector foils we used on a U-2 sniffing around the borders of the Soviet Union a few years ago. It ought to work. But calibration's tricky."

French wasn't sure Torburg ought to be blabbing that sort of stuff in front of Maximov, then gave up worrying. The crisis at hand took precedence over everything.

It was past eight in the evening, dark and cloudy, over the Nation's Capital, when the SH-3 de-clutched her rotors, throttled up her twin 1250-shaft horsepower GE turboshaft engines and lifted into the air.

Mike French didn't know when they'd be setting down again, so he grabbed a couple of sandwiches and a Thermos of coffee from an Army mess truck at the end of Maine Avenue, part of the investigation unit processing the yacht club evidence. As the Coast Guard pilot banked southeast, he peered out over the top of the detector control panel, over Jeff Torburg's shoulders, at the gridwork of lights defining Washington, D.C. and the Federal Triangle five hundred feet below.

He had no idea how many marinas and boat docks, how many creeks and streams and inlets lay ahead of them, scattered around the drainage basins of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, but intuitively, he sensed that, whatever the number, it might well be just too many in the time they had remaining.

Only Fidel Castro himself knew how much time that was.

For Mike French, it was a long shot, and the agent was well aware of that. But it was all they could do for now--that and hope.

Once again, it seemed, Rafael Ramirez had slipped through their net.

11-7-62, Wednesday

Havana, Cuba

9:25 p.m.

Twenty miles southwest of Havana, along the Autopista Havana-Pinar del Rio, just a mile or so beyond the Rio Almendares bridge, was the guarded entrance to Camp Columbia. Marked by red and white warning signs, bordered with white guardhouses and a gun tower overlooking the intersection, the Camp was home to the Central Army Command, including Military Area Number Six, garrisoned by four infantry battalions and a cavalry regiment of the Central Command. By tradition in times of national crisis, Cuban leaders have long made a habit of retreating to the well-appointed officers' compound in the southeast corner of the base, there to huddle behind locked doors and armed sentries with trusted advisors, military commanders and scores of sycophants and hangers-on. In this well-established tradition, Commandante en Jefe Fidel Castro was no different.

Castro had been a fixture in the oficina primario of the base commandant, second floor of the drab masonry and brick Marti Barracks for several days, at least since Del Valle and the others convinced him it wasn't safe to stay in Havana itself. The military command center at Number One in Vedado had been leveled by Yanqui jets and even the underground bunker at Avenida de la Independencia was plagued by crumbling plaster and power outages, as the Americans pounded away overhead.

But the Commandante was restless, puffing anxiously on one black cigar after another, as he paced the halls of the oficina, absent-mindedly opening and closing doors, checking into file cabinets, peering up at the rain-drenched skies through blackout curtains, teeth clenched as one after another, Yanqui jets screamed low out of the clouds, pouring in to take photos of more targets in Havana, wondering, waiting, watching, furious at his enforced idleness.

He knew perfectly well that Del Valle and Guevara and the others were right. Best to be in the field with his soldiers anyway. He knew he was most likely a key target of the Yanquis, especially if he stayed in Havana itself. In any case, it was always good to be with the men who'd marched with him in '57 and '58, out of the hills of the Sierra Maestra, all the way to victory in Havana on New Year's Day. It was always good to be among soldiers. Castro had strapped on a well-oiled Colt revolver and leather holster less than an hour after arriving at the oficina of the base commandant.

Yet he couldn't help it, clenching the cigar so tightly in his teeth it broke nearly in half. Fidel Castro was growing angrier by the minute. Something would have to be done. Kennedy would learn that he could no longer ignore directives from the Commandante, nor sweep Cuba under the rug, turning matters over to the villainous corporations of imperialistas who had raped her for years.

No, this time, something would be done. This time, things were going to be quite different. This time, little Cuba would fight back, and America would pay a dear price for her arrogance.

He was, of course, quite pleased that the Marine invasion at Tarata had been so resolutely repulsed. Brave guerreros they had been: the men of the 20th Infantry, Somoza's men, who'd died defending el Patria. There was the small matter of the fact that the Russian fraternal colleagues had used tactical nuclear bombs to defeat the American Marines. And that the collateral damage along the beachhead had been enormous. Castro had poured over the casualty figures for a long time, contemplating the certainty that Tarata and La Esperanza would be radioactively contaminated for years to come. The entire beachhead, and a strip of land ten miles inland nearly to La Palma, perhaps even to Bahia Honda, would have to be declared off-limits to all but emergency personnel. Word from General Dankevich, at the Soviet military command center at Torrens was "off-limits for thirty years, at a minimum."

The cost to clean up the beachhead, remove the dead, remove contaminated topsoil, secure the waterways and guard the area against looting and sabotage would be enormous.

Moreover, the weapons experts on Dankevich's staff had informed the Commandante that a large cloud of heavily contaminated radioactive dirt and soil particles had detached from the main airburst and was now moving back onshore, at ten to twelve knots, heading directly for the Malecon, for Havana proper. Yet another reason, insisted Del Valle, why it was best to leave the Capital and relocate headquarters to Camp Columbia.

Castro had reluctantly agreed.

All these things made Fidel Castro angry, as he paced restlessly about the Comandante's paneled office, straightening papers, flicking ashes on maps, huffing and snorting like a caged bull. But nothing made him angrier than the news from New York that Felix Calderone, one of Ramirez' men, a Moncada commando, had inexplicably failed in his mission. He had seen on the television the news reports, American stations from Miami, showing the raid on the Cuban commandos, the American police assault. The K-5 warhead had been seized before it could be detonated.

Castro glared at a picture on the Comandante's desk, of the day a year and a half ago, when Castro had come to Camp Columbia to award a citation for revolutionary merit to the battalion staff. A citation for extraordinary courage and tenacity in commanding an assault on a rebel stronghold in the Zapata swamps, fighting off Presidente Kennedy's bandits at the Bahia de Cochinos. A brilliant day, for a battalion commander's superb strategy in outflanking and decimating a rebel attempt to break out of the landing zone and move inland.

Bahia de Cochinos was a glorious victory for Cuba. Why, now, had Calderone not carried that same victorious spirit with him to New York? What had gone wrong? Rafael Ramirez was a meticulous planner. He himself had reviewed Ramirez' plans in detail. There was no sense in it unless the guerreros had become complacent, unless they had somehow been betrayed.

Now, Moncada was left with only one leg to stand on. He had only Ramirez himself and the K-12 bomb in Washington.

At that exact moment, Fidel Castro resolved to use this advantage while he still had it.

He picked up the phone handset and spoke. "Send Hernandez in here. Right away. I have a mission for him."

Castro waited only thirty seconds, before Teo Hernandez, Battalion Commandante, appeared at the door to his own office, saluting smartly. Castro nodded, waving him inside.

"Si, Presidente? You sent for me?"

Castro now sat down in the Comandante's chair, which squeaked and rolled on the hardwood floor. He jabbed the air with his cigar.

"Teo, I want you to go to Havana. The centro de radio, in the bunker. Hector Munoz will be there." Castro scribbled some words on Battalion stationary and tore off the page. He handed the sheet to Hernandez. "Give him this message."

Hernandez carefully read the words, his eyes a quizzical squint. "'Muerte es mas felicidad', Presidente?"

Castro puffed contentedly on the cigar and sat back comfortably in the chair. "A code phrase. Hector will know what to do. Teo, did you know this is a great and glorious day for Cuba?"

"Si, Presidente, we've beaten the Marines on the beach. They've been destroyed."

"Not only that. In your hand is an order which will change the course of history. For the very first time, Cuba will strike the Yanqui imperialistas in their very own heartland. Do you know what that is?"

Hernandez shook his head. "No, Presidente."

"It's my order to detonate the atomic bomb in Washington. You didn't know about that, did you?"

Hernandez' eyes grew wide. His mouth started to work, but no words came out. Castro enjoyed the moment immensely.

"No, I don't suppose you do. We've been running a little operation to place two atomic bombs inside America. Our Russian friends 'donated' the bombs a few weeks ago."

"The assault at Bejucal, si, I heard about--"

"Not assault, Teo, it was a gift from fraternal colleagues," Castro corrected him. "We had a bomb in New York. Wall Street. Unfortunately, the Yanquis seized it before we could detonate. There's another one, a bigger atomic bomb, almost a megaton in yield I'm told, in Washington. This time--" Castro indicated the written message he had given Hernandez, "Moncada won't fail."

"Washington, D.C., Presidente? The American capital?"

"Through a ship we have stationed in the Chesapeake Bay. Hector relays my order to a transmitter at Cayo Coco. It transmits a coded message to this ship. The ship then interrupts a local radio station with the phrase written on that page. On the hour, every hour, for three hours. Our agents in Washington are listening. When they hear those words, they know they are authorized to detonate the bomb."

Battalion Commandante Teo Hernandez sucked in a breath. The boldness of the very idea stunned him. The daring of the Presidente was legendary, indeed there were songs and stories, but this--

Hernandez had almost lost his voice. "The Americans will surely retaliate, Presidente."

Castro seemed unconcerned. "That's the way war is, Teo. We won't be frightened of them. Cuba will fight, and if need be, die heroically, like the Libertador himself, Jose Marti. In any case, Kennedy has launched planes and bombed Havana. Despite my warnings, the Americans continue violating our airspace. Now, their own capital, Washington, D.C., will be the price for this arrogance." Castro snapped his fingers. "Let me add something to the message." Hernandez handed it back. The Presidente scribbled extra words, giving the paper up after a minute.

"I've put in additional instructions for Hector to have transmitted. The detonation will be set for tomorrow morning. Just before sunrise. Thursday, November 8. That way, we'll catch the Americans in their beds." He smiled through cigar haze at the thought of commuters on the highways into the District, witnessing an unusually early sunrise.

"Comandante, get this message into Havana, to Hector Munoz, at once."

Hernandez saluted and wheeled about, exiting the room. Castro leaned back in the Comandante's chair, which protested the extra weight. He folded his arms behind his head and shut his eyes. In his mind, he pictured the Washington Monument, the Capitol and especially the White House, heaps of rubble, as firestorms raged through the American capital, and the dead and dying littered the streets with their blackened corpses. Survivors, if there were any, would come to envy the dead, as they staggered about the city, their clothes burned and melted onto blistered skin, voices hoarse from crying out.

Fidel Castro fixed the scenario firmly in his mind. No, there would be no mercy this time. The hour had come, and Cuba would have her redemption for centuries of oppression.

He sat up abruptly in the chair, searching the desk for a map. There...he unfolded his glasses and began poring over the charts of northwest Pinar del Rio once more. The latest coastal damage reports had been laid on the desk less than half an hour ago, the results of helicoptered damage assessment teams from Havana and Mariel, and Russian rocket officers reconnoitering the effects of the Lunas' nuclear artillery barrage. Craters, miles of burned vegetation, flooding in low areas. Heavy contamination. The destruction of Washington would be a small price to pay for the damage the Americans had caused. Castro drew some small measure of grim satisfaction in that.

The phone rang. Castro picked up the handset on the second ring. An hour before, he had summoned Soviet commanding general Issa Pliyev to a meeting at the Marti Barracks, a meeting to explain Soviet military operations and movements as the ballistic missiles were being withdrawn.

"Yes?"

"General Pliyev is here, Presidente."

Castro stood up, tucking in his shirt. "Send the General up. Hernandez' office." He hung up and started pacing again.

He wanted to know when was the earliest time he could make a field trip into La Esperanza, to inspect the damage himself.

11-8-62, Thursday

30,000 Feet Over Siberia, U.S.S.R.

6:30 a.m.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was lost in thought as he peered out the window of the Tu-104 aircraft. Thirty-thousand feet below, a pale Arctic sunrise did little to dispel the dark cloak of night, yet as the minutes passed, the ice-white infinity of the Siberian tundra gradually rolled into view. The First Secretary had just checked with Captain Borodintsev, the aircraft commander, as to their current location. Back came the word: seventy kilometers due north of the Poluostrov Peninsula, just heading out over the Kara Sea on a great circle route back to Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. The navigation signals had come to the aircraft from a Vortac transmitter at Dudinka, several hundred kilometers further south. As far as Khrushchev could see, not a single living creature had marred the frozen confection of ice and snow fields that unrolled kilometer after unending kilometer below them.

He realized with a sobering reflection that if the Tu-104 went down here, it would be days, if not weeks, before their bodies could be recovered. In the crystalline, sub-zero world below, man and his works were little more than afterthoughts.

Khrushchev scanned again the telex dispatch the radio officer had just brought up, received only half an hour before on the secure circuit from the Defense Ministry's War Command Center at Frunze Street. Malinovsky had counter-signed it, authorizing release to the Codes and Ciphers Directorate of the General Staff's own Radio-Technical Troops. Via long-range RF signal out of Vnukovo Field, the coded message had been transmitted to the special receivers in the belly of the Tu-104, there to be washed through decoding equipment before being routed to the telex machine in the radio compartment. A starshina assigned to the special Central Committee aircraft had recorded the message, signed for its release, dated the receipt and brought the pages up to the First Secretary's compartment.

Khrushchev still couldn't believe it. He read the seventeen lines of the signals intercept over and over again.

At 0530 hours Moscow time, a small frigate of the Morskoi Flot, rigged up to resemble a Ministry of Fisheries processing ship, stationed off the Grand Banks of Nova Scotia in the North Atlantic, had intercepted a very faint RF signal coming out of northeastern Cuba, broadcast north at 880 megacycles, maximum strength concentrated in the mid-Atlantic coastal waters of the United States, perhaps off the New Jersey or Virginia coastline. The signal was in code, but not encrypted, primarily voice, and at first made little sense. The sender spoke in Spanish, and repeated six times the phrase: "Muerte esta mas felicidad, muerte esta mas felicidad..."

The dispatch triangulated the signal and calculated the transmitter location back to the vicinity of Cayo Coco, a small promontory on Cuba's north coast, known to house a Ministry of the FAR communications station, often used for signaling and receiving messages from DGI agents abroad. The frigate's ranking communications officer, one Capitan Plotov of the GRU's Radio and Radar Intelligence Directorate, knew nothing of the meaning of such an obvious code phrase but duly passed the intercept on to General Staff intelligence officers in Moscow. It was at the Defense Ministry complex itself, in a sealed and heavily guarded third floor decoding room, that the precise meaning of the phrase was quickly determined. Marrying the intercepted message with current intelligence from State Security organs assigned to Operation Anadyr in Cuba, the decoding staff rapidly determined that the intercepted signal was no less than a detonation order from Fidel Castro himself, broadcast to some intermediate relay point offshore, probably a small craft, for re-transmission somehow to commandos in the Washington D.C. area.

Upon reading this analysis and the intelligence sources that lent believability to it, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev felt his own heart pause, then stumble and beat erratically for a few moments. It was incredible. It was impossible. Yet, even as he read the words again, he knew they were true. His face paled and his throat went dry.

Fidel Castro would destroy everything they had worked so hard for.

Khrushchev had just spent three hours with President John Kennedy, trying to find ways to defuse tensions around the globe, trying to act like statesmen and pull back from the cataclysm of thermonuclear war that seemed inevitable at times. Kennedy had talked of World War I, of "stopping the trains," of not letting passions rule over reason and self-preservation. Yet Castro didn't play by the same rules.

Now, in a forest dry with tinder and brush, a man with a match was running amok, ready to start the greatest conflagration the world had ever seen.

Khrushchev knew there was only one thing that could be done.

Nobody's interests would be served by allowing the American capital to be obliterated by a stolen Soviet atomic bomb. The Pentagon militarists would seize the opportunity to overthrow Kennedy, just as his own generals had tried to seize the Soviet government only a few days before. The last, best hope for reason and statesmanship would vanish. Threats would come, tensions would escalate, bombers and submarines would edge ever closer to irreversible launch positions, and nerves would teeter on a razor edge. A single mistake, a chance misunderstanding, a stray signal and the match would be thrown.

No, Khrushchev told himself, rising from his seat, pacing about the cramped compartment in his stocking feet, no it must not be! Even fraternal socialist allies can't be allowed to destroy the world. The decisive battle between capitalism and communism would have to wait. We're not ready to take such a risk now.

For Nikita Khrushchev, the real issue was Berlin. Cuba was a sideshow, a lucky accident. Who could have predicted a Latin American law-school dropout would rise to power and embrace the canons of Marx and Lenin? We will, of course, do all we can to nurture the Cuban Revolution, and bring Castro along as an ally. The strategic possibilities--a missile base in America's backyard, submarine ports, a base for political activities against imperialism in the Americas were enormous. But we have to move cautiously.

No, the real concern was Berlin. Wresting control of that embarrassing outpost of capitalism was paramount. Yet Khrushchev knew he wouldn't be able to prise Berlin away from the West so easily. Again, caution was important. Hadn't he told the Presidium that too many times? What do we gain seizing Berlin or Cuba or Iran if the West unleashes a nuclear-rocket war and our beloved Rodina is laid waste? We must be patient. Marx teaches us that capitalism is full of contradictions. In time, she will topple over from internal rot and weakness. We have but to wait, and choose our moment.

Khrushchev worried about Castro. Not only that the volatile Cubantsy might trigger the very war that could bring all of them down. But also that he seemed to have less and less influence with the Cuban Presidente at a time when wise counsel and cooler heads were needed. And what of Mikoyan?

Khrushchev wadded up one piece of paper after another, until his writing tablet was empty and the compartment was littered with paper balls. At a minimum, Fidel would have to release Mikoyan from house arrest in that hotel. It really was outrageous, the way he had treated Anastas Yakovlich, not at all the way state leaders and Communist patriots should behave.

The First Secretary peered out the windows again. The sun had risen only slightly, riding like a molten ball along the edge of the world, like a kopeck coin on a saucer rim. Bare volcanic mountains blackened the otherwise pristine ice-white of the early winter tundra.

There was one card yet to be played, and Khrushchev now saw that he had no other choice but to play it. Raul Castro had come to the Soviet Union on a military equipment shopping trip, observing maneuvers, talking with Ministry chiefs and plant managers about MiGs, and tanks, and mortars and guns. The First Secretary sat at his desk and extracted a new writing tablet, beginning to compose a message for transmission to Moscow, priority Most Urgent. The message was for Malinovsky and Semichastny--the Defense Minister and the head of State Security. He intended to give them a small project to complete, before the Tu-104 arrived later that afternoon at Sheremetyevo.

Comrades, time is extremely urgent. Castro has ordered the second bomb detonated. The American capital is in danger. If he succeeds, the Americans will blame us and may well launch their own missiles. We have to act quickly.

Detain Comrade Raul Castro, on my authority as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Detain him at the Lubyanka. The charge is anti-Socialist agitation. I'll think of more charges and send them to you. Just make sure Comrade Raul is removed from any contact with Fidel.

I'm sending an emergency message to Fidel now, explaining what has happened. We must be firm in this. The time for decisive action to protect the Motherland is now.

Rodion Semyonovich, disregard my orders from the Kennedy meeting to change our defense readiness. Go to the fullest possible level of alert. We have to be ready for anything the Americans do, if the bomb goes off and Washington is destroyed.

Khrushchev sealed the note in an envelope and rang for the courier to take it to the radio compartment. Then, he began work on another message, this one to Fidel Castro himself.

With any luck, the letter could be teletyped to Alekseev, the Ambassador in Havana, by midmorning and Alekseev could then deliver it by hand to the Cuban President.

Khrushchev began scrawling the letter out longhand, hoping he could get it dispatched before matters went too far. As he wrote, the First Secretary thought about the American President. The John Kennedy he had just met with in Alaska was a far more composed and resolved Kennedy than the young squirt he had bullied about in Vienna in June last year. Khrushchev realized that he no longer felt so confident about the American President. He had changed. He wasn't sure how Kennedy would react if Washington went up in a mushroom cloud. Would he even survive?

And if didn't survive, Khrushchev realized that could only mean that the hotheads in the American military would be in charge.

Uneasy with that thought, Khrushchev wrote even faster.

11-8-62, Thursday

Moscow

2:00 a.m.

Raul Castro was convinced the time and expense of the wait was well worth it. He had been in the Soviet Union for several weeks now and not once had he found anything a real Cuban could eat and enjoy the entire length of the country. By the first day of November, he had had about as much blini and potatoes and beet dishes as a reasonable man could stomach. It was well past time for a proper meal and when he'd put in a request for some eggs and rice and pollo and rum, the Cuban Embassy on Granovsky Street had to scramble to requisition the items requested and see that they were flown without delay on the next Tu-114 flight out of Campo Libertad airfield near Havana.

By early evening of 7 November, the Embassy had sent an urgent message to the Ukraina Hotel, twelfth floor suite, where Raul and the Cuban delegation had been staying, indicating that the "special shipment" from Cuba had arrived at Sheremetyevo and was being transported over right away. By midnight, Raul and the other chiefs of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias were hard at work, devouring pineapples and chicken breasts and eggs fresh from Cuban farms. Capped off with several liters of rum and trago, the men had enjoyed themselves hugely, and lay sprawling about the ornate dining room of the suite in varying states of intoxication when a series of hard knocks on the suite doors was heard over the low rhythms of the salsa band playing on the turntable.

Raul Castro staggered to his stocking feet, buttoning his field jacket over his full belly, wondering in a mildly irritating daze why the doorman of the evening watch hadn't just quietly slipped in with a message. He padded over and pulled open the double doors, surprised when a trio of leather-jacketed men pushed their way into the suite.

Castro stumbled back and caught himself on a divan near the door. His eyes narrowed as he tried to focus on the faces of the intruders. The lead intruder wore a light moustache with a prominent scar along the side of a slightly misshapen mouth, and a black fur shapka, pulled low over bushy eyebrows. He made a quick motion behind him and the others filled the room quickly, blocking the doorway. Struggling back to his feet, Raul Castro saw that each man had a drawn pistol, Makarov style, covering the room.

"What is the meaning of this?" Raul Castro slurred. "You've entered a private room...without authorization...who are you?"

The lead man briefly flashed a badge that Castro couldn't make out.

"State Security, comrades. Which one of you is Raul Castro?"

Before Castro could answer, the three intruders, all of whom were dressed similarly, were joined by four other men. Quickly slipping through the door, each man took up a position to cover every possible firing angle. These were no ordinary cops. All were Ministry of the Interior troops, wearing field-gray greatcoats with MVD rifle division insignia, men of the Moscow-based 80th Guards, the Cuban realized with a start. He had inspected this very unit on his second day in the Soviet Union, accompanied by Marshals Malinovsky and Zakharov themselves. What the hell was going on here....?

"I am Minister of the FAR Raul Castro of the Republic of Cuba," Castro announced. He realized the words had come out hoarse and a bit slurred. "Who are you?"

The lead intruder affected a disdainful sneer at all of them. "Major Podriannikov, State Security. That's all you need to know." Podriannikov snapped his fingers. Instantly, the other State Security men rushed forward and grabbed Castro, pinning his arms behind him. Metal clanked and soon the Minister of the FAR found himself handcuffed and forced face-down to the musty blue carpet. The other Cubans started to react but were stopped when the MVD troops chambered rounds in their Makarovs and stooped into firing positions. The Cubans froze where they were.

Podriannikov jerked his thumbs and Castro was hauled roughly to his feet. "We're taking a little trip tonight, Comrade Minister. You'll enjoy the ride a lot better if you don't give me any trouble."

Castro was livid, flexing his arms and wrists against the cuffs. "This is an outrage, comrades. Who ordered this? We're guests of the State...you have no right to--" but his words were muffled as the State Security men hustled the Cuban out of the suite.

Podriannikov warned the others. "My advice is for you to stay calm. Don't follow us. Don't make any phone calls, either. We're monitoring everything you do. You'll only make it worse for yourselves."

One of the FAR Ministers, Julio DeFlores, Deputy Commandante of the Ejercito Revolutionario (Revolutionary Army), suddenly dove for his holster on a nearby sofa. A sharp pop-pop-pop was heard, and three rounds of 7.62-mm steel-jacketed ammunition slammed into DeFlores' side, knocking him sideways off the sofa. His body jerked, fell heavily to the carpet and he groaned, gaping wounds in his stomach and neck.

The remaining Cubans stood still, fists and fingers flexing angrily, itching for weapons that were too far away to reach. Podriannikov snarled:

"Your first lesson, comrades. My friends here--" he indicated the MVD troops, including the one who had just fired--"will be spending the night with you, just to make sure you know the rules. Right outside this door--so don't be foolish." He pocketed his own Makarov and slipped out. The MVD thugs stayed behind for a few moments, then one by one, they backed out, peeling off in a classic armed fallback procedure. The last one out slammed the door, and locked it.

Twelve floors below the dying DeFlores, Raul Castro had been hustled out of the Ukraina Hotel through a well-hidden side service entrance into a pebble-strewn alley lit only by a pale streetlamp at the corner of Kutozovsky Prospect. A few cars sped by but the streets were mostly dark and deserted, slick with overnight snow and buried in piles of gray slush.

Now bundled in a heavy overcoat, Castro was thrown to the floorboard of an unmarked Volga sedan, and quickly surrounded by two of the three State Security men who had burst into the Cubans' suite. The car was already moving before the doors could be shut. Two other cars, also unmarked, fell into position, one in front, one behind. The small motorcade pulled out and turned east, heading for the center of Moscow.

Heading, though Raul Castro did now know it, for the dingy bowels of the mustard-yellow Lubyanka Prison, at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square.

11-8-62, Thursday

Washington, D.C.

4:30 a.m.

Situated at the tip of a peninsula bounded by the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, Fort McNair was home to the National War College, Headquarters, Military District of Washington and Company A of the Old Guard, the U. S. Army Third Infantry. Tucked in among the complex of buildings clustered around the main gate at Third Avenue and the Parade Field was another structure, unremarkable in a low tan brick building notable chiefly for the extra high fencing surrounding the grounds, fencing topped off with multiple strands of concertina wire. That and the larger than usual complement of armed guards were the only distinguishing features of the base stockade. At the moment, the stockade housed exactly three prisoners. One was an AWOL corporal from the Third Infantry, sentenced to a ninety-day stay before his general court-martial proceedings due in February.

The other two were Admiral Jack Stone and General Olin Haley.

The SecDef, Robert McNamara and the CJCS, General Taylor, had come to Fort McNair to have some questions answered. They arrived together in an unmarked Department sedan at the Third Avenue gate. Escorted in by MPs from the Provost Marshal's office, they parked on A Street, directly in front of Headquarters, Military District of Washington. The stockade occupied a secure wing on the southeast corner of the building. Floodlight stands cast stark pools of light all around the perimeter of the building.

McNamara and Taylor were shown in and taken to a small windowless room at the end of a hall. The door at the other end was barred, with a guard shack outside. Presently, Olin Haley was escorted from behind the barred door. He was unshaven, though still defiant, his dark eyes narrowing to a squint in the bright fluorescents of the room.

Haley sat down opposite the two men.

"General," McNamara began, "I presume you know what you're facing. Full courts-martial, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You're charged with--"the SecDef read off from a list--"violating Article 81, which is conspiracy, Article 90, willfully disobeying a superior officer, and Article 92, failure to obey direct orders and regulations. These are serious offenses."

Haley blinked, his face a bit puffy, but otherwise his expression was sour. "My only crime was that I didn't go far enough."

Taylor sat impassive beside McNamara, his face hard, eyes cold. "General Haley, your conduct has discredited all military officers in this country. I don't care what the law says. Or the Secretary here. You deserve to be shot."

Haley glared back, unmoved. "General Taylor, you of all people should understand. My God, sir, what's at stake here? The future of our country, that's what. The future of civilized, free men everywhere. Sure, I've broken some laws and regs. I admit it. I'll admit to anything you throw at me. These things don't matter."

"Then what does matter, General?" McNamara asked.

Haley rubbed a several-days old beard. "What matters is winning, that's what. Men, we're in a struggle. The President himself said so...'a long twilight struggle', he called it once. Survival's at stake. You got Cubans running around the country with atomic bombs. Russian armies with nukes in our own backyard. Berlin hanging on by a thread. I say that calls for some strong medicine." Haley shook his head. "No, my only crime is I didn't act faster, didn't make the medicine stronger when I could have."

"Supposing you're right, General," McNamara surmised. "What makes us different from the Communists? If I understand what you're saying, it's okay to trample on anyone's rights, ignore any and all regulations and laws, disobey the direct orders of your Commander in Chief, all to achieve what...some kind of victory over Communism? What kind of victory is that? It's just anarchy, or worse, strong-man dictatorship. Fascism, if you like. The operation was a success, but the patient died. That's what would happen to democracy if we follow your approach."

Haley snorted. "We live in dangerous times, Mr. Secretary. The enemy's everywhere, and he's not bound by the same rules we are. If you play by the rules, and your opponent plays to win, who comes out on top? No, sir, I reject that. I reject it completely. All my life, all my training, every fiber of my being, is dedicated to keeping America strong. The things you claim to treasure, Mr. Secretary, things like laws and rules and order, are pointless if America doesn't survive. Don't you see that? General Taylor, you see that, don't you? I know the Chiefs think the same way."

Taylor said nothing.

McNamara folded his arms and regarded Haley as a wayward child. "You're fighting the wrong war, General. The wrong war, with the wrong enemy, at the wrong time."

"The fight is now, Mr. Secretary, and you know that. Hell, you both know that. Confrontation is inevitable. Why not here, now, in the Caribbean, when we have the forces? Khrushchev has actually done us a huge favor. He's gambled and lost and left his pants wide open. All we have to do now is grab his little Red balls and squeeze hard. We squeeze hard enough and Ivan'll go squealing back to Asia where he belongs."

McNamara smiled indulgently, shaking his head. "Wrong argument, General. It won't play today. The same argument was made by Patton in Europe in 1945. He was wrong. The same argument was made by MacArthur in 1951 in Korea. And he was wrong too. You know why?"

"They were fools, both of them."

"Dangerous fools," McNamara admitted. "They were fighting the wrong war. Just like you are. See, General the real enemy isn't Khrushchev. It's not Castro or Mao or even Communism in general. The real enemy is us. Our own tendencies. Our own weaknesses. Man on a white horse and all that. If we follow your line of reasoning, General, we fight Khrushchev's battles for him. We let the generals run things, like you're suggesting, and we might as well hand America over on a platter. No, the health of our democracy depends on keeping the civilians in charge. We succumb to the strong-man temptations and we've already lost. The rest is just mopping up."

Haley eyed them coldly. "You didn't come here to debate philosophy."

"No," McNamara replied. "No, I had several questions I wanted to ask. One was why? You've answered that. The other question is more specific. I want to know who else is involved. You and Stone didn't plan this operation all by yourselves. Who else knew about it?"

Haley smiled faintly. "You mean: how high does it go?" He laughed at the thought. "What if I said all the way to the top? The President himself."

"The President never authorized anything like Operation Sierra"

"Didn't he?" Haley leaned forward, his eyes locking first with McNamara, then with Taylor. "Didn't he? Ask around, Mr. Secretary. Ask Bobby Kennedy about something called Mongoose. Ask Dick Bissell at the CIA. Ask General Lansdale. You asked who else was involved. Try those three, for starters."

"Lansdale's an asshole, out for whatever he can get. A mercenary."

"You're sure of that?" Haley pressed the issue. "I've just cited three people who'll swear, if the truth means anything at all to them, that the President has indeed authorized Operation Sierra. Maybe not in so many words. But there was nothing drastically different about Sierra anyway. Mongoose was the same thing, just different people, different strategies. 'Get rid of Castro'...that was the order. And that came from the top, gentlemen. I'll swear that in any court-martial. Hell, I'll swear that on my deathbed. No, sir. I did nothing that wasn't authorized by the President."

McNamara glanced over at Taylor. A flicker of doubt crossed the SecDef's eyes, but it quickly vanished. "No President would authorize combat action with the prospect of nuclear war staring him in the face. Especially, since the Russians had already agreed to remove their missiles. The ExComm went through all those scenarios time and again."

Haley spread his hands in triumph. "Then why mobilize half a million men and send the Navy out to quarantine Cuba? Why order Gitmo beefed up with several Marine brigades? Why send the entire 1st Armored Division on trains from Fort Hood to Fort Stewart and order transports to make ready for shipping out on short notice? Mr. Secretary, it's staring you right in the face: the President didn't have to order any combat action. To do that puts him in the role of aggressor in the world's eyes. All he has to do is make sure the forces are there, on the scene, in close proximity. The Russians or the Cubans can be counted on to do the rest. A single, tiny provocation and we have our pretext. That's all Sierra was, gentlemen. A logical extension of the President's own stated policy. A natural outgrowth of things that we were already doing. And with the missiles, and those stolen a-bombs, we had the perfect excuse."

McNamara closed up a small folder he had extracted from his briefcase. "General Haley, like I said before, the real enemy is us. What do we gain by destroying Castro if America itself is also destroyed? And that could happen. It could happen tonight. It could happen tomorrow. Apparently, the military mind can't think beyond the first battle. But this isn't 1914. And it's not 1944 either. The first battle may be the last battle. It may be the only battle. And it's a battle we can't afford to fight." McNamara stood up. Taylor joined him.

Haley stared straight ahead, not watching as the SecDef and the CJCS gathered their papers. Two stockade guards re-appeared, ready to take Haley back to his holding cell.

"History will show that I'm right." Haley muttered.

"If there is a history," Taylor replied.

Haley was escorted back behind the barred door. He said nothing further, didn't turn around.

McNamara said, "Let's get over to the Pentagon, General. We have a lot of business to look after."

The National Military Command Center occupied several secure rooms on the second-floor of the Pentagon's E-Ring. Adjoining the main operations room and the Current Action Center, was a small windowless Emergency Conference Room, dominated by an oblong maple table and padded chairs. A paneled presentation lectern with audiovisual controls and microphone and recording equipment formed a "T" at right angles to the table. One wall of the ECR supported a huge black-matte display screen, subdivided into smaller screens, each flickering with readiness information and deployment status of America's worldwide forces. The bottom center screen read "WELCOME TO THE NATIONAL MILITARY COMMAND CENTER."

SecDef McNamara had called a briefing for 0500 hours in the ECR. The Joint Chiefs and the Service Secretaries were present, along with Robert Kennedy, who had just driven over from the Justice Department. McNamara was still seething over his failed sidetrip to see Haley when he called the briefing to order. By tradition, Current Indications had priority position on the agenda.

Admiral George Anderson, the Chief of Naval Operations, led off.

"From all intelligence we've been able to gather over the last twenty-four to thirty-six hours, gentlemen, the Soviets have not made any efforts to standdown their forces or change their levels of defense readiness. I repeat, there has been no discernible change in their posture."

McNamara wanted to be sure he understood the Admiral correctly. "The President just phoned, not four hours ago, from Air Force One, to follow up the communiqué that went out from the Rochester last night. The text of the communique, which I have here, Admiral, specifically says Khrushchev agreed to reduce the defense readiness levels of his forces. Immediately. You're saying that hasn't happened yet?"

"Yes, sir," Anderson replied. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

McNamara leaned back in his seat, drummed a pencil on his teeth. "Show me the details."

"Very well, sir." Anderson, with help from a Navy captain, worked the screen controls, to display the European theater. "NATO and the Warsaw Pact, areas of operation. The Soviets continue to maintain elements of five separate armies deployed forward on the East German frontier. The units are Second Guards, Twentieth Tank, First Guards, Eighth Guards and Third Shock Armies. There are assault vehicle transporters on highways within three hours of the Fulda Gap. In regimental strength. Along with T-55 concentrations, similar to what we have seen in their armored exercises, in other words platoon strength, staging forward at Erfurt and Hillersleben. Accompanying the tank platoons are POL carriers for fuel, and ammunition supply trains, all concentrating on an arc centered on a Leipzig-Erfurt axis. Basically a dagger pointed right at the Fulda Gap."

McNamara frowned at the display. "No signs of movement? No signs of pullback?"

"On the contrary, Mr. Secretary, the intel sources we're getting show forward movement, closer to the border. Plus some filling out of units with additional capacity from rear supply and reserves further east."

"Damn them. What about the naval picture?"

Anderson was on firmer ground here. "Latest indications from tactical sources show no increase in the Med squadrons. A couple of frigates, Riga-class, plus one cruiser--the Zhdanov. She's Sverdlov-class, sir. Shadowing some of our Sixth Fleet destroyers. The Russians are beginning to filter a few extra Krivak-class tin cans through the Dardanelles...we've seen two transit the NATO observation post at Istanbul in the last two days."

"Meaning...?"

"We're not sure, precisely, sir. But there's certainly no evidence of reduction in forces. Soviet skippers continue to shadow and occasionally harass. There's been no let-up in that kind of tactic."

McNamara was shaking his head. "The lying bastards...what about the Atlantic?"

Anderson checked facts and figures from a notebook. "Northern Fleet has sortied six additional destroyers, Kashin and Krivak class, in the last few days. Apparently, they're escorts for the missile ships, as they transit east of longitude line 44 degrees west and north of latitude line 40 degrees north. About a hundred miles away from the our quarantine line for Task Force 136. These six are in addition to the screening vessels, surface and subsurface, the Soviets have been maintaining in the north Atlantic."

"Any evidence of movements closer to North America?"

"None, Mr. Secretary. The Soviet Atlantic force has been essentially stable since the quarantine was announced. We've had a few incidents--the Aurora sinking was the worst and we prosecuted those contacts until we were fairly sure at least one submarine was sunk. After that, the Russians seemed to back off a bit. Even their freighter skippers are being more cooperative, with our surveillance of the missiles being removed."

McNamara looked about the table. Generals LeMay, Wheeler and Shoup were all hunched forward, hands folded into tight fists, grim and determined. Secretary Vance, of the Army, was doodling something on a pad. "Opinions, gentlemen?"

LeMay spoke up. "The Air Force is convinced the Russians are preparing to move in Europe. Probably against Berlin. I recommend we stage a few more '52's and '47's to RAF Lakenheath and Fairford, at least another two squadrons. And I want release authority for the nukes we already have. This business of holding release authority in Washington stinks. How the hell are my pilots supposed to do their missions if they have to phone home for permission to go wee-wee?" LeMay practically bit off the end of his cigar.

McNamara scowled. LeMay was a loose cannon. "General, we're not dealing with the Japanese here and Moscow isn't Tokyo, or Hiroshima for that matter. The President wants final say-so on whether we escalate to nuclear war."

"Well, hell, Secretary, since you mentioned it, the President ought to read up on his history. Truman didn't do that. He gave us blanket permission to go after the enemy the best way we saw fit. And we did. Firebombed and nuked 'em into surrender in less than six months."

"We are not at war, General," McNamara said firmly. "Release authority stays here."

LeMay sank back in his padded chair and sulked, crossing his arms in disgust.

"I assume," the SecDef went on, "that we're in agreement that the U.S. should maintain DEFCON Two, for the time being?"

There was a murmur of assent around the table. Anderson interjected, "Mr. Secretary, the Russians are challenging us on the ground, along the German frontier and they're not making any great effort to back off in the North Atlantic. I don't know how the other Services feel, but the Navy's main concern is that we be ready to go to a war footing with a minimum of fuss, should the President give the order."

"Explain, Admiral."

"Well, sir, we simply must have our Task Force ships and the rest of our deployed ships of the Second, Sixth and Seventh Fleets moving forward into contact range with the nearest Soviet threats. As a minimum, I need to detach some anti-submarine assets out of Norfolk to go up north and start pinging away for Soviet boats coming through the Greenland gap. We need a detachment of cruisers and destroyers to be in position to plug the Straits of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles, if need be. That takes several days. In the Pacific, I need to relocate some surface groups from the South China Sea northward, toward Kamchatka and Petropavlovsk. I'd like to bottle up as much of the Soviet Pacific Fleet in the Sea of Japan as possible. To do my job, I need to be on the move. Prudence...and the strategic situation...dictate we get going now. If Khrushchev orders a strike in Europe, I can't respond properly when I'm out of position. All I'm asking for is permission to be in position, if the balloon goes up."

McNamara swallowed hard. "I understand your concern, Admiral. You and I have had our differences in the last few weeks but I do understand. It's just not that simple anymore. The President wants to do nothing that would unnecessarily provoke Khrushchev into rash actions. He wants to do nothing that the Russians could misinterpret as a strategically threatening move--"

LeMay snorted. "He wants to do nothing, period."

McNamara ignored the outburst. "On the other hand, the President intends that American interests, in the Caribbean and Europe, be protected and defended if need be. It's a balancing act and a damn tough one. One day, we have what we think is an understanding with Khrushchev. The next day, something happens--a plane goes off course, a sub skipper gets a little too aggressive, Castro steals a few atomic bombs--and the whole plate falls to the floor and breaks and we have to pick up the pieces all over again. Right now, the President is aboard Air Force One, on his way back here. We're not even sure there will be a Washington for him to come back to. I want to write a brief summary of the Chiefs' positions and requirements--what you really need to be able to go to a war footing on short notice. But I also want options for the President--including your estimates of how far we can pull back our forces and still maintain effective defense readiness. The strategic situation is volatile. We want to give the President realistic estimates of what forces need to move when, what decisions need to be made when, for two basic scenarios: rapidly transitioning to full war footing and just as rapidly disengaging to a more relaxed posture, something like DEFCON Three or lower."

"I'd fall back about two inches," LeMay offered. "Then I'd kick 'em in the ass with everything."

"General Taylor, you'll work with the Chiefs to develop this report." The SecDef checked his watch. "It's just now 0630 hours. I want something I can transmit to Air Force One--with all options, gentlemen--by 0900 hours. Is that understood?"

Robert Kennedy had been quiet and thoughtful but now spoke up. "Bob, we can't ignore the situation here in Washington, in this report of yours. It's a critical part of the picture. It'll affect our defense posture."

McNamara conceded the point. "What's the latest?"

Kennedy related the events of the past twenty-four hours, including how the Cubans had breached the inner defense perimeter around the Federal Triangle, how the Russian Kapitonov had been shot trying to escape, and how the Cubans had managed to slip out of the exclusion zone undetected in the ensuing chaos. He added:

"I've been at Justice, meeting with Hoover and Hostetler most of the night. The field agents in charge say the Cubans made it to a marina on the Potomac, sometime after about sunrise yesterday. Investigation shows several boats are missing--we're trying to locate the owners now and account for them. But the agents feel, based on physical evidence at the marina, that the Cubans are aboard one of those boats now. With their atomic bomb. Somewhere along the Chesapeake or the Potomac or one of the waterways in this area, holed up maybe in a cove or something like that. So far, we haven't located them."

"We all heard Castro's ultimatum," Anderson growled. "What the hell are they waiting for?"

"Maybe he's having second thoughts," suggested McNamara. "Haley's private little war was still going on."

"What we don't know," Kennedy said, "is whether the Cubans here need additional orders to detonate the bomb. Or can they detonate on their own authority? Or has another signal come that we don't know about? We've got the skies full of aircraft over the District right now, we're monitoring everything we can find across every frequency we can find. But a final signal could be anything. It could be something as simple as a dead drop marker, like you read in spy novels. Maybe a billboard is changed. Or a garbage can in someone's backyard is turned upside down. Hell, there's no way we can check everything. Bottom line is we just don't know. But we have to assume the worst."

"The Attorney General's right," McNamara said. "Normally, this would be a straightforward case for domestic law enforcement. The FBI. State Police, whatever. But the international situation is the fuse that may trigger this bomb, so a domestic police matter now becomes a matter of national security, military strategy and international diplomacy. It's all tangled up together and we don't have the time or the men to untangle it."

"Like walking through a minefield under artillery fire," General Wheeler mused. Wheeler was Chief of Staff, U.S. Army. "Saw that in Korea. You were dead if you moved and dead if you stood still."

"Bobby," McNamara said, "With the President away, we've got to be in close communication on everything. Hour to hour, maybe more often than that. We move our forces the wrong way in the Caribbean and Castro may just get antsy enough to push the button."

"And if we don't put our men in the right positions, the Russians will catch us with our pants down, Mr. Secretary," said Anderson. "We can't let 'em hold us hostage like that."

"Goddamn it, Admiral, we're already hostages now!" McNamara fumed. "We have to be careful. It's that simple. Bobby, why don't you go back to Justice? Is that Bomb Task Force getting updates from the field regularly?"

Kennedy nodded. "Hoover wants 'em on the half hour. We've got big maps all over the command post, marking evidence sites, what's been learned, where the special agents are now, where they're headed next, status of the defensive screen, perimeter patrol reports, you name it. The CP's up to date on the investigation, as much as anyone can be."

"Good. I'll stay here for the time being. We can open a phone line between Justice and the Current Action desk next door. We've got to coordinate what happens, almost choreograph every move we make. General Taylor, get us some flip charts or something that we can locate by the Current Action officer's station. Anything pops on Bobby's investigation, we can chart it right away and see what impact it may have on our force deployments. Maybe a pattern will develop."

Bobby Kennedy was already gathering papers into his briefcase. "There's one more thing, Bob. It's the President--"

"I know...he'll be back at Andrews in about--"McNamara checked a wall clock, did some calculating--"about ten or so this morning. What about it?"

"I don't think he should come back to Andrews."

"You mean, divert somewhere?"

"Exactly. The President needs to be at Mount Weather, with the rest of the Emergency Relocated people. Or maybe at Camp David. It's too risky here, in the District. You know there's just a chance that's what the Cubans are waiting on...for Jack Kennedy to come back."

McNamara shifted uneasily. "You may be right. We could call up Air Force One, request they divert to another city. Philadelphia, maybe. Or Richmond. Of course, the President can veto that too."

"I know, I know," Bobby Kennedy admitted. "But we ought to try it. I've just got a funny feeling about this...like maybe Jack's the real target here." He flashed a quick smile, pushed some hair back from his forehead and shrugged. "Call it brotherly intuition. We can tell him about the growing panic around the District--you've all seen it: streets clogged with people getting out, shootouts in the grocery stores, looting, some arson, my God, the city's become a Wild West frontier town. The Army, the police, they've got their hands full, securing the city, trying to keep the roads clear...."

"We could request the Mayor to make a public appeal for calm," McNamara suggested. "Or the Vice President. Stay off the roads, so emergency vehicles can use them, that sort of thing."

"Hell, what we need is martial law," Wheeler grumbled. "That way the Army would have the power do what was needed. This working through local police and agencies is for the birds."

"General, we got this thing called posse comitatus," Kennedy explained. "Which means we don't use the Army to enforce domestic laws. That way, we keep the military doing what they do best--fighting wars--and the police doing what they do best--fighting crime."

"Hell of world, isn't it?" LeMay shook his head. "Maybe Haley was on to something after all."

The men discussed possibilities for a few minutes but every idea broached seemed as though it would only add to the growing sense of panic. For the time being, DC Metro police, the Virginia and Maryland State Police and the Army had effected a makeshift division of responsibilities, with the Army mainly handling patrol duties and investigatory work inside the exclusion zone and the defensive perimeters set up inside the District borders. DC Police would handle traffic and routine crime in the rest of the District. The State Police and federalized National Guard units would handle traffic problems and pass control at the District borders, along with evacuation routes and crowd management along the remaining highways and roads leading into the countryside. For several days, a steady flow of District residents had poured out of the Nation's Capital, by car, on foot, and bicycle, carrying clothes, grocery bags stuffed with canned food, batteries and bottled water, flashlights and odd bits of personal belongings.

By order of the President, the evacuees were allowed safe passage out. Getting back into the District, however, was another matter altogether.

The men in the Pentagon's Emergency Conference Room came to no decision about handling the crowds of exhausted and fearful Washingtonians. It was plain to each of them that a disaster was in the making on the country roads of Virginia and Maryland. Reports from the State Police feeding into the Bomb Task Force overnight had estimated nearly a million people, most of them on foot, surging out of the city, with only minimal means of survival. Food and water were already short and the weather was turning colder; already snow flurries were predicted for northern Virginia for the weekend.

"We're going to need National Guard support before that," McNamara predicted. "General Wheeler, you better draw up a list of additional units the President can federalize when he gets back. They'll be needed to distribute food, water and blankets. If we don't move pretty quick on this, we'll have a catastrophe on our hands."

Bobby Kennedy, to no one in particular, added, "If we don't find that bomb soon, we'll have an even bigger catastrophe to deal with."

11-8-62, Thursday

Washington, D.C.

6:45 a.m.

The Army UH-1 "Huey" helicopter bearing Mike French, Alexei Maximov and Jeff Torburg, banked hard over a tiny canal branching off the Potomac, and skidded through choppy air as the pilot twisted the collective lever back to level them out. Below, bathed in a string of lights like a bead of ornaments was the Francis Scott Key Bridge, snaking south through the darkened sky toward the Virginia shoreline, and the town of Rosslyn.

"Chesapeake and Ohio Canal below," the pilot, Captain Grady Forsom, 82nd Airborne Division, announced. "That road going east-west is M Street. We're right over the center of Georgetown now."

All eyes focused on Jeff Torburg's hands, as his fingers tweaked several knobs on the neutron flux detector, the B-12B. The unit was about the size of a stereo cabinet, and about as bulky; getting it through the Huey's side doors and over the empty M60 gun mounts had been an effort. The front of the cabinet held a drop-down control panel, with knobs, dials and toggle switches. A row of beer-can sized caps covered the top of the cabinet. Sniffers, Torburg had called them. Each "can" had a mesh plate on top. Ground filter units, the physicist added.

"Anything yet?" Mike French asked. He leaned forward in his seat, loosening his shoulder harness, to watch the dials jitter as Torburg adjusted the sensitivity of the device. "We been at this for an hour and a half."

Torburg shook his head. "All I get is pretty much background fluff. No real spikes that I'd say are worth taking a look at. This helicopter's bouncing us around so much it'll take a big spike to show up."

Alexei Maximov was curious about the device. He studied the controls layout for a few seconds. "Such a machine would be useful in my country. You must let me look inside the cabinet."

Torburg half smiled. "Not a chance, pal. This baby's still experimental, not to mention top secret."

French said, "What kind of reading would make you suspicious, Jeff?"

Torburg pointed to one center dial. "This is a 'mev' counter. 'Mev' as in millions of electron volts. Basically measures the energy of any neutrons nearby. See how it's fluctuating now, hanging around two to three hundred? That's background. Right now, we're over land. More mass, more elements, more decay and neutrons being knocked off by cosmic rays, small-scale radioactivity in the earth, that sort of thing. When we turn out over water, like say the Potomac, it should drop. Water's less dense, has fewer neutrons. As long as we stay in this area--"his finger made a small arc of a circle between the two and the five at the far left end of the scale--"we're just picking up normal radioactive decay of elements. We start pushing over two Mev--that means we've encountered something."

"A bomb?"

"Not necessarily. Could be a lump of iron or some other dense, high-atomic number element. A mineral lode. Even trace uranium...it's mixed in with the soil. Radon. Embedded particles of strontium and cesium from atomic tests. Truth is, from this altitude, we probably wouldn't even pick up any of that. But if saw the needle exceeding four MeV--that's four million electron volts--I'd be highly suspicious, especially since we're at a thousand feet. There's only a few things that could cause that kind of neutron flux, and most of them ain't good. Best bet is plutonium decay, a fairly concentrated unit of plutonium. Like a bomb."

"Maybe we should go lower," French asked. He tapped Captain Forsom on the shoulder, leaned forward to yell over the rotor and wind noise. "Captain, any chance we can get this bird lower?"

Forsom shrugged. "We're at eight hundred feet now," he called back over his shoulder. "I had to get ATC approval to go below a thousand as it is. You sure you wanna go down?"

French looked over at Torburg, who nodded emphatically 'yes.'

"If we can..."

Forsom seemed to take in a deep breath. "We got TV towers and power lines to watch out for below this altitude."

"I understand that, Captain," French said, "but this contraption works best at short range. Anyway, stay near the river and other waterways. There shouldn't be a lot of obstacles around the river."

Forsom shrugged again, in effect saying 'you're the boss.' He pitched them forward, easing down to just over five hundred feet above ground level. The pilot cinched up his lap belt and straightened up in his seat. Ahead of them loomed the blinking red and white lights of a radio tower atop Georgetown University Hospital.

"Mister, how far upriver you want to go?"

French checked the ground below. The first lights of morning were beginning to wink on around Georgetown and the university grounds. Ahead, through a thicket of bare tree limbs, the rounded form of Kehoe Field could be made out. To their left Key Bridge formed a brilliant bejeweled arrow across the dark Potomac.

French consulted with Maximov. "Alexei, my gut tells me the Cubans can't have come this far north. The river narrows too quickly, and there are few if any side streams or inlets. Those rocks up ahead on the left--they're called The Three Sisters. Big clumps of pine and bush, stuck right in the middle of the channel. I say we turn around and head downriver. What does your communist instinct tell you?"

Maximov smiled and readjusted the strap on his helmet. "We Communists don't always think alike, you know. But you're probably right. The Cubantsy had to leave that marina in a hurry. And they probably don't know the river very well. From what I've seen of the navigation channel, it would be easier to go downriver from the marina. Deeper water, possibly more traffic. They wouldn't want to go too far. Remember, the K-5 has an effective blast radius of about eight kilometers."

"Then we turn," French decided. He gave the instructions to Captain Forsom, who nodded obligingly and slid the collective level left. The Huey turned hard on her rotor ends and plowed sideways out over the Potomac, now streaked with the first reflections of a pale and cold November morning sun. They made the Virginia shoreline and Forsom deepened the turn to straighten them out for the downriver run, pivoting their flight path on an imaginary cylinder extending upward from the winking sign of the Marriott Key Bridge Hotel at Rosslyn Circle. They crossed over downtown Rosslyn, then Forsom eased them back left toward the Potomac shoreline, following the George Washington Parkway and the Little River branch as far south as the Roosevelt Bridge. Throughout the maneuver, both Maximov and French kept their eyes riveted to the MeV counter dial on the B-12 detector, while Torburg fiddled with gain controls and tried to physically re-orient the entire cabinet to expose more of the detector "caps" to the slipstream outside the door. The physicist began slowly shaking his head.

"I think we're just going to have drop a little lower, Mike," he said at last. "This blasted thing just has no range."

"How does it ever pick up atomic tests, then?" French asked.

Torburg snorted. "We use a variety of gear on those U-2 missions. Krypton-85 sniffers pick up the long-range particles and then we tell the pilot to fly right into the cloud of radioactive fallout." He shrugged sheepishly. "Not my idea. And no, to answer your obvious question, I don't know the life expectancy of the pilots. Sure as hell, it's dangerous. Deadly, probably. But what's the risk of a getting cancer in a few years to the risk of getting shot down by a Soviet SAM? Anyway, the Krypton-85 is the cue. Once he flies into that cloud, the B-12 onboard has no trouble picking out the neutron signature of the explosion, all the decay products. It's like one of your fingerprints, I guess."

French argued with Captain Folsom for a few minutes until the pilot threw up his hands.

"Jesus, man, I don't fly this low on strafing runs at Fort Bragg. What the hell--Colonel said you're the boss." He pitched them down even lower, finally leveling out at two hundred feet above ground level. Below them, the first car lights had begun circling the Pentagon North Lot, like fireflies seeking a porchlight. To their left, swaying masts of sailcraft moored in the Pentagon Lagoon flashed by. French felt as if he could almost reach out and touch them.

Presently, the squat gray hulk of the Pentagon itself dominated the western horizon. The air over the riverside helipad was thick was helicopter traffic, swarming like so many bees to the central hive. Maximov was about to comment on the lights blazing bright on every level of the building, when Torburg suddenly stiffened, and abruptly bent forward to the control panel.

"Bingo!" he called out. He shook a fist. "Boys, I think we got 'em!" His finger followed a wavering dial needle. French shielded his eyes from sun reflection and looked in closer. Sure enough, the MeV counter had pegged three, now three and a half MeV. It was still climbing.

"What is it? Can you tell?"

Torburg said, "Don't know. But whatever it is, at this distance, it's hot as Hades. Where are we?"

French peered out the door window. "Looks like National Airport coming up."

"Yeah!" yelled Captain Forsom, "and I'm drifting right into the climbout path for Runway 34 North. Just got an earful from National Approach. We're gonna have to break right." He eased the collective a bit and the Huey slid sideways right, veering out over the Jeff Davis Highway interchange with Shirley Memorial. "Sorry, guys. But orders are orders. We don't want get caught in the tail wash of somebody's 707."

"It's getting stronger!" Torburg exclaimed. "Four point two! Take us down, Captain! Take us down right now!"

Forsom almost broke his neck, swiveling back to glare at his nutty passengers, and trying to keep an eye peeled for traffic in the National airspace region.

"What...are you--?"

"Down!" French yelled. He jabbed his fingers toward the floor. "Down, down, down!"

Forsom chopped the Lycoming turbine engine to a third mil power and whine of the two-bladed rotor fell off noticeably. He let the bird drift down a few dozen feet, checking his speed, now falling through eighty knots indicated. "Terminal coming up!" he called out. That's the MATS building right up ahead. Military transport guys. Main terminal beyond."

Torburg watched, holding his breath, as the MeV counter needle stuttered and paused, them began to nudge lower. He waited a few more seconds. Sure enough the trend was lower. "We're past peak! Turn us around!"

Forsom just shook his head. If I were a cabdriver, we'd have a six-car pileup about now, he thought. He banked them hard right.

Below, the asphalt expanse of main terminal parking loomed, already filling up with cars and trucks, despite the controlled airspace that the bomb threat had brought to Washington's main airport. Twenty-five miles west of them, the new Dulles terminal was just cranking up operations. But the FAA, under strict orders from the Air Force and the FBI, had clamped down tight on air traffic into and out of the DC area. Even with the restrictions though, National hosted a steady, albeit reduced, flow of planes into and out of the city.

"There's a parking lot right below us, Jeff," French said.

"Circle it for a moment," Torburg. "I want to watch this dial. Take us out about half a mile and make one circuit."

Forsom complied, gingerly informing the National tower that the Huey, Flight AR1666 to all, was west of the pattern, in search mode, bearing classified cargo, with an AZTEC clearance from the Air Force and special all-altitude rights within the exclusion zone over the District. Forsom prayed they didn't snag a power line or some other obstruction too faint to see in the early morning light.

Torburg watched the MeV dial bob back and forth, centering at a little over three point eight MeV. When they had made a complete circuit, he asked Forsom to drop down right above the parking lot and made a systematic back and forth search, from one end to the other. "Whatever I'm picking up is down there, in that lot. Must be a vehicle of some type."

While Forsom dipped the Huey down to less than fifty feet over the asphalt, cutting back speed to just under twenty knots, French and Maximov scanned opposite sides of the chopper, straining through binoculars to study each and every vehicle as they flew over. Traffic was fairly light at the west lot, though growing, and as they came to each car or truck, Forsom paused and hovered, while Torburg did some adjustments and eventually pronounced "go" or "hold up."

In the southwest corner of the lot, Torburg's suspicions began to center on a white van parked by itself along one row just along the perimeter fence. Forsom played with the collective and cyclic levers, while the Huey did a dance around the van, hovering and darting in and out like a bird of prey. After a few orbits, Torburg announced:

"I think this is our baby, guys. The reading's stable from every direction. We're about thirty to forty feet away now and MeV's are holding at a hair under four point oh. Something's inside. Something hot."

"Captain, we need to set this bird down. Can you put me in the lot beside that van?"

"Negative." Forsom shook his head. "See those wires all around us? High-voltage lines for the terminal and the tower. I snag one of those with my rotors and not only are we history but we'll fry the power for National approach control too. Then you got uncontrolled airspace for a few minutes. Not a good idea."

"Okay then, somewhere nearby. And quick too."

Forsom bumped them up to about a hundred feet and weathercocked the Huey around for a look-see. Across the fencing was a small greensward, wedged in between southbound lanes of the George Washington Parkway.

"That's about as good as we can do, mister. See that grassy bank. Not too level but there's no lines. I may have to set her down on the highway itself, though. Look at those signs and light fixtures."

"Do it!" French ordered. Forsom sniffed and tweaked the lever right. The Huey hopped over the airport fencing and stirred up dust and dirt as it settled toward the grass bank, twisting a bit to avoid clipping highway signs. As Forsom maneuvered them to a landing, French got on the radio back to the Bomb Task Force CP at Justice. He described the situation to the duty officer and asked for ground surveillance to converge on National Airport, west parking lot, southwest corner. A white Ford van was alone in the last row. And Jeff Torburg's detector was practically off the scale.

Gingerly, Forsom planted the UH-1B square in the left southbound and emergency lanes of the George Washington, prompting two cars to slam on their brakes and spin out to avoid slamming into the helicopter. Following behind, an Army convoy of three two-ton trucks also slowed, immediately forming an impromptu cordon across all southbound lanes, as the drivers leaped out to assist the cars. French scrambled out of the Huey, saw what had happened, and thought Good enough for now. The Army trucks had already accidentally accomplished a key step in securing the area.

He and Maximov took off running, leaping a culvert, then plowing through thorny bushes recently planted on the uphill side of an earthen berm at the airport perimeter fence. Behind them, several more helicopters had appeared and began circling overhead. A Coast Guard Sea King hovered over the lot and shone a powerful floodlight on the scene, accentuating shadows still dark from the low morning sun. French slipped out of his jacket and scrambled up the side of the fence, losing his gray homburg at the very top, as a wind gust caught it. He fell heavily on the other side and heard the Russian land a few feet away with a pained grunt. They scampered onto the asphalt and slowed to a trot, then a walk, as police and Army vehicles roared across the parking lot toward them, headlamps bouncing crazily. In seconds, five trucks and several Virginia State Police cars had formed a circle around the van. Civilians, officers and soldiers spilled out, taking up positions around the vehicles, as the area was secured and lines of fire established.

Mike French held up his Bureau badge, signifying he was in charge of the operation. An Army second lieutenant came forward and introduced himself. His name was Perkins. His shoulder patch said 29th Infantry (Light).

"Virginia Army National Guard," Perkins explained. He shook hands with French, then more warily with Maximov. "What've we got here? I got this call from Regiment five minutes ago to move out and secure a parking lot at National."

French approached the van warily. "I'm not sure, Lieutenant. You got the area secured?"

"By the book," he replied.

French motioned Torburg forward. Together, with Maximov, they stood ten feet from the Ford van. There were markings on the side panels. French read off the markings.

National Institutes of Health

Center for Nuclear Medicine

Bethesda, Maryland

"This doesn't look like the same van I saw in front of the White House," the agent muttered to Maximov.

"It isn't," said Maximov. "I'm certain of it. The other van had CIA markings, with a different symbol. And the doors were different."

"Jeff," French called to Torburg, "you sure this is the one? Your detector readings indicated this vehicle?"

Torburg replied, "It has to be. When the pilot circled, I watched the dial. It peaked when we approached, dropped when we moved away. Didn't matter which direction. The B-12 can't exactly draw me an arrow but the neutron spike has to be coming from here."

"Then, we'll have to take a look." French consulted with Lieutenant Perkins. "Lieutenant, I need two of your men. The rest...back off at least a hundred yards. This thing may just be booby-trapped."

"What?" Perkins went pale. "We don't have any ordnance people in my unit--"

"Relax," French said, "we're experts. We know what we're doing." He hoped that sounded more reassuring to Perkins than it did to him. The Lieutenant seemed dubious, but picked two and ordered the rest of his men back.

The ticklish, tedious process of approaching the van, identifying obvious telltale indicators for bomb wiring or modifications, and forcing entrance began. After about ten minutes, Maximov and Torburg, having crawled under, over and around the chassis, examined every door handle and window, eyeballed every wiring harness and sniffed, poked and gently prodded everywhere a satchel of explosives could conceivably have been stashed, announced that the van seemed clean.

On their say-so, French took a deep breath and depressed the driver's door handle. Nothing happened. He swung the door open, looked in and around. No unsecured wiring hung beneath the steering column, or the instrument panel. No particles or fragments or flakes of plastic from a wrench or a screwdriver could be seen on the floor mat, only a few tiny loose pebbles and shards of asphalt. French felt carefully over the seat cushions, checking for hard points under the fabric, anything at all that might serve as a pressure switch. He found nothing.

"Clean up front," he announced. "Let's try the rear doors."

Again, the same process. Clear the area. All non-essential personnel take cover. The handle was depressed slowly, as French felt through heightened sensitivity in his fingers the faint vibrations of each piece of the latch and lock mechanism contacting metal, sliding into or out of place, meshing and taking hold.

The door opened without incident.

Inside, as Torburg, French and the Russian scanned the compartment, were racks of metal boxes. Each box was a foot square, bearing the yellow and black emblem of radiation hazard. A ring binder was deposited in a clear plastic jacket, secured to one end of the nearest rack. Jeff Torburg opened the binder and, after scanning the first few pages, whistled.

"What is it?" French asked.

Torburg almost chuckled to himself. "You know what these boxes are?"

French shone a borrowed flashlight around the compartment. "Obviously they're not atomic bombs."

"Iodine capsules. Radioactive iodine capsules for medical research. Look here--" he showed Maximov and French the first page of the binder.

Maximov understood immediately. "It's I-131. Isotope of iodine. Strong alpha and beta emitter. Michael, these capsules are used for irradiating organic tissues. Sterilizing beef, perhaps."

"Exactly," Torburg said. "Or thyroids. The iodine is a relatively unstable isotope. Half-life of eight days. Shoots off alpha and beta like crazy. The neutrons I picked up are secondary emissions. Neutrons knocked off other structures around this van. These babies are hot."

French was alarmed, in spite of his disappointment. "Maybe we shouldn't be so close then--"

Torburg nodded. "Realistically, we shouldn't. But the B-12 was more sensitive than I thought. And these babies are scattering secondary neutrons at close to the MeV levels I'd normally associate with fresh plutonium. That's sort of odd. But it probably means these are new. Right out of the reactor, so to speak."

French closed the van doors. "So we picked up and followed a false trail. Damn it. Damn it all to hell."

"I'd recommend we move everyone back," Torburg said. "Short exposure times won't hurt anybody but there's no use taking any chances."

French and Lieutenant Perkins spent the next few minutes discussing tactics, while the riflemen of the 29th moved out to a safer distance. Torburg told them a hundred feet should be more than sufficient. After a few minutes' discussion, Perkins radioed his regimental commander, described the situation, and was ordered to bring his platoon back to their field post in the Pentagon's South Parking Lot.

"This is getting us nowhere," French muttered, after he, Torburg and Maximov had climbed back over the airport perimeter fence and crossed the Parkway to the helicopter. Light morning traffic, mostly military and security, sped by on the northbound side of the greensward. "I'll have to report in to the CP and tell 'em we're chasing shadows."

"Sorry, Mike," Torburg shrugged. "It was a hunch. The MeV level was so close--"

French waved him off. "Don't sweat it. Hunches are about all we have to go on now." He snatched up the radio and thumbed the mike, and made contact with the dispatcher at the Justice Department task force command post a few miles away. Presently, Cliff Hostetler's hoarse voice came on the line. French briefly described

what they had found and what they hadn't found.

Hostetler's voice crackled through static over the speaker. "We're striking out in every direction, Mike. I just got through with another false alarm...DC police unit down by the Navy yard spotted a boat in the Anacostia with a big object tarped over on its aft deck. Got the Coast Guard involved too. Turned out to be a piano of all things. Some yacht club operator was having one delivered, by boat."

"Cliff, we may be living on borrowed time. I don't know anything better to do but get back in the air with Torburg's detector. We got so many helicopters in the air and boats on the river as it is, we have to turn up something soon. If Castro'll give us the time..."

Hostetler said, "Here's some more great news for you, Mike. Just before you called, the Director came by the CP with a report from NSA up at Fort Meade. Seems they have some aircraft flying between here and Cuba, listening in on every chirp the Cubans make by radio. J. Edgar told me an RC-135 flying elint off the coast of North Carolina snatched an intercept off the air sometime around midnight last night. The plane landed a few hours later at Norfolk. They just finished washing the text through some kind of computer at Fort Meade in the last hour."

French cranked up the volume on the cabin speaker, as a convoy of Army trucks rumbled northward along the Parkway. "What kind of intercept?"

Hostetler replied, "Puzzling, to say the least. It was a voice message, triangulated back to a known transmitting station on the northeast coast of Cuba we've been monitoring. Generally broadcast toward the American East Coast, from what NSA is saying. It was coded but not fully encrypted and NSA cracked the code in no time. It was in Spanish."

"What did it say?"

"'Death is the greatest happiness. There will be joy when a newborn son arises.'"

French realized the hair on the back of his neck was standing up. "Cliff, that could be it. That could very well be the last step, the go signal. This reference to a son...it's not some kind of Christmas message?"

"Translators rendered it as 'son.' I suppose it could have been 'sun.' But Spanish uses different words for what in English is pronounced the same way. It was translated as 'son.'"

French was thinking fast. "Doesn't matter if it was code, Cliff. If it's a go signal, the sender may well know the English confusion that could result from words spelled differently but pronounced the same. The Cubans may well mean sun."

Maximov nodded his assent, and said, "'Sun' could refer to a time. Perhaps dawn." Involuntarily, he scanned the skies, saw lavender streaks of the impending sunrise illuminating wisps of cirrus clouds. "A new beginning, a new day..."

"--or a newborn child." French felt his blood run cold. "Cliff, this could be the final piece...what the Cubans have been waiting on. Jesus Christ, it's almost sunrise now. A matter of minutes--"

"Mike," Hostetler's voice seemed to rise an octave. "Go with it, if you have to. We have nothing here at the command post. Hoover's already okayed evacuating non-essential personnel downstairs. In another hour, the building may be empty except for us."

"We may not have another hour, Cliff. I've never felt so helpless in my life" Mike French realized he was squeezing the microphone case so hard his knuckles were white. "We need a break now. One lousy break...."

"Get back in the air, Mike. You and Torburg get that detector up and keep looking. We've got no choice to but to keep looking, right up to the end if necessary."

French agreed. He knew that many of the designated government officials who were supposed to evacuate the city in the event of an impending nuclear attack were already gone. He also knew that he and Hostetler weren't in that group.

"Will do, Cliff. I guess if the bomb goes off, Jeff and I will have the best seat in the house."

Hostetler was silent for a moment. French could well visualize his bald head shining with sweat, knowing full well that on every floor in the Justice Department below him, Bureau and Department night-shift employees were streaming out, seeking their families, seeking shelter, reassurance, anything in the last few hours. A normal shift change, he thought. Not on your life. Ninety percent of them wouldn't be back for their next shift. And who could blame them?

Back on the line, Hostetler said, "Get yourself refueled and back in the air, Mike. And good luck."

"You, too," French said. To himself: We need more than luck now. "Air Five out." He clicked the mike off and set it back on the panel, then saw Captain Forsom poking around the back of the Huey. French called back, got Forsom's attention, that whirled his fingers in the air, saying Let's get this baby airborne now. Forsom came running.

The refueling station was just across the river, at Bolling Air Force Base. Once they gassed up, they'd take to the air again and hope and pray for a miracle. Jeff Torburg wasn't much of a churchgoer and declined to invoke any deities. He told French he'd stick with Science.

"Our best bet is to hope the Cubans need to move the warhead. If they move a neutron source like that, we have a chance of catching them. If we're not too far away."

"A long shot?" French asked, as he strapped himself into his seat and Forsom spun up the Lycoming turbine engine.

Torburg shrugged. "It's about the only shot we have now."

11-8-62, Thursday

Havana

7:15 a.m.

The unmarked, Soviet-issue GAZ truck rolled through the checkpoint off the autopista and into the compound at Camp Columbia. Preceded and followed by several jeeps mounting AKM 7.62-mm machine guns, the only concession to security that the Commandante en Jefe would allow, the convoy sped down Calle Sequito toward the tan and brick Marti Barracks in the southwest corner of the base. From a safety seat curtained off from the truck's front cab, a bearded man peered out at the scattered platoons of Twentieth Infantry still garrisoning the base and its adjoining airfield. The bearded man chewed an unlit cigar as he appraised the elan and the liveliness of step of the riflemen in close-order drill. Alongside the formation, a stocky sargento barked out orders.

It pleased the Commandante en Jefe, Fidel Castro Ruz, greatly that the drill unit had such a spring in their step. Cuba would surely give an heroic account of herself if the bastard Yanqui Marines came calling again.

Fidel Castro had just returned from a quick motor tour of the beachhead at La Esperanza, including the remnants of the village of Tarata. It had been a sobering experience, though one taken hurriedly, owing to the intense radiation still emanating from the grounds. According to the Army's medicos they had consulted, the region surrounding Tarata, including the beachhead itself, and inland for a distance of ten kilometers, circumscribing a half-moon slice of Cuban territory north and south of where the Luna warheads had detonated, would be uninhabitable for decades to come. Castro had pressed for a more precise estimate. None of the medicos had been willing to admit to less than fifty years.

So we sacrifice a beach and some fine cane land to repel the Marines, Castro had told them. Well, war was like that and there would be more sacrifices to come, no doubt. The convoy had sped on through the tiny, twisting, hilly roads leading through Tarata itself, past shattered rubble of once-proud bohios and the occasional hacienda, to the blasted moonscape of the tidal woodlands themselves. No trees had been left standing, only piles of blackened stumps and scraps, flung about like a maddened giant would fling woodchips to the wind. The beach itself was a fuzed, glazed blackened slagheap, lit in the early morning light with incongruous streaks of purple and green...silica fused into gemstones, said the medicos, by the intense nuclear fires of the blast. An oddly beautiful leftover from the tongues of Hell that had licked the beach less than twenty-four hours before.

They stayed less than a minute. To linger any longer wasn't safe. The convoy sped on back toward the coast road to La Palma and returned within the hour to Camp Columbia. Speed was essential. One of the medicos had told them offshore winds were driving another remnant cloud of radioactive fallout toward southwest Havana even now. If the winds didn't shift, the base would have to be evacuated before noon.

On the ride back, Castro thought about the atomic devastation he had just seen. He checked his watch, peered out through the canvas flap toward a faint glimmer of dawnlight in the sky, then sat back in the webbing of his seat with a smile.

Soon, norteamericanos will know what Cuba knows. Very soon, indeed, for even as they approached the bridge over the Rio Almendares, and its sentry garrison saluted smartly, Castro knew that Rafael Ramirez and the patriots of Moncada would be preparing to deliver Cuba's answer to the citizens of the American capital. Very soon, indeed, the K-12 device would make of their capital an even bigger slagheap than Tarata had become. Then, and only then, perhaps, the nortes and the Cubans could sit down together and deal with each other as equals.

His smile faded as the Commandante en Jefe realized that he still had a meeting with Alekseev to deal with when they returned to the Barracks. The ruso ambassador, once a devoted friend, had called early that morning, just after midnight in fact, to request an urgent meeting. Could he come to the Barracks and propose an agreement between their two countries? Such a proposal, Alekseev assured him, had come from the highest levels of the Soviet government, indeed from the Chairman and First Secretary himself. It was a proposal to patch up the frayed relations between the two countries.

Castro reluctantly agreed to see Alekseev. Come at eight o'clock in the morning. After the sun comes up, Castro had added, with a smile. We shall have important news to discuss.

Alekseev, bleary-eyed and fatigued, was waiting in the outer lobby of the oficina primario when Castro arrived. They hugged, in the best traditions of Cuban and Russian amity and fraternal regard. Castro immediately smelled the vodka on the Ambassador's breath. He offered the man strong black Cuban café, which the Russian gratefully accepted.

Castro sat heavily in the padded chair and rubbed at oil and grease on the legs of his fatigues. "Companero, we can't talk long. The medicos say the winds are bringing radioactive fallout this way. We're going to have to evacuate the base, this morning, evacuate to the northeast. What's on your mind?"

Alekseev ran a nervous hand through his thin blond hair and passed a sealed envelope over to Castro.

"It's from Nikita Sergeyevich, Commandante. You should read it carefully." He resumed sipping the coffee, his hand now shaking uncontrollably.

Castro adjusted his glasses and scanned the translation of Khrushchev's dictated message. His face reddened and he carefully set the letter down on the desk. He didn't read all of it.

Raul a prisoner? Mi hermano Raul, in the Lubyanka? What kind of animals were these rusos? Castro leveled a hard gaze at Alekseev.

"This is the way you treat your Socialist allies? I'm glad were not enemies."

Alekseev stuttered, replying, "Commandante, please, understand, these are difficult times and--"

Castro slammed a fist on the desk. Alekseev jumped, startled.

"I understand an ultimatum when I see one! Do you think I'm an idiot? Do you think I don't know what's going on? Batista thought I was a fool. He thought we were just a bunch of students, playing at revolution. No--" Castro wagged a finger in Alekseev's face, then got up abruptly--"we are not fools. We've fought hard battles to get this far--Raul and Che and the others, alongside me. A lot of battles remain. We're not afraid."

"Commandante, if you would only call off the attack on the American capital. Call off the Moncada operation. The bomb is stolen. It's Soviet property. Nikita Sergeyevich is desperate. Believe me. He only uses force when he has no choice. When he can't get results any other way. Give us a chance to repair relations between our countries. I know we've made mistakes. The First Secretary knows it. He accepts responsibility. But if the American capital is destroyed, all will be lost. The Revolution will be in great danger. The imperialists--well..." Alekseev stopped, groping for words--"you know how strong they are. Even Kennedy can't always control them. They'll lash out, bring the world down with them."

Castro started pacing. "Alexander, companero, come with me. This office is too small, too stuffy, for this kind of talk. I know a better place."

A hundred yards behind the Marti Barracks, a small garden had been plowed and planted with cane and pine, azalea and oleander, orchids and the flame-red flamboyans and carob trees. A vegetable patch adorned the far end of the garden, delights for the base commander's table, who had always loved entertaining. Castro and Alekseev, followed discreetly by a detail of the garrison guard in dark green fatigues, walked into the garden plot, their feet crunching on wet palm fronds. Castro went to the vegetable patch, fondled the tomato seedlings in their trellises, then the peas and the lettuce, idly rearranging dirt around a few budding heads with the toe of his boot.

"Commandante, you must call off the attack on Washington," Alekseev continued.

Castro sniffed. "I could more easily call off the sunrise, Alexander. The order has already been sent. It is a matter of minutes now."

Alekseev was sweating in the morning humidity. Beads of perspiration burned in his eyes and his tan suit jacket was stained dark.

"You cannot forsake your brother like this. Think of Raul. Think of his family. You must be reasonable. Statesmen make tough decisions. Don't put Nikita Sergeyevich in an impossible position. He has no wish to hurt Raul--you, Cuba, anybody--"

Alekseev expected an explosion from Castro's well-known temper but the Commandante was only sad. Sad and resolved.

"Raul and I have faced a lot of dangers together. Did I tell you how he and I almost were killed by Batista's thugs, when we assaulted the hills overlooking Remedios?"

Alekseev smiled, breathing at last, relieved. "Many times, Commandante."

Castro half-smiled, headed back toward a stand of pine and palm trees, where it was cooler. A gentle rain had started to fall.

"Ah, it was a sunny day. Not like today. Sunny and dry. We were outnumbered, like always. But we were brave." Castro closed his eyes, leaning his body against the bark of a palm, knocking loose a few more fronds. "Raul, yes, he was always the bravest. Raul was stoic, like a statue, resolute, giving orders. Move here! Get down! More fire over there! Watch those two, they've got automatic weapons! He was wounded there--"

Alekseev could practically recite the story by heart. It was one of Castro's favorites. "Yes, in the arm, right above the elbow, wasn't it?"

"Exactly," smiled Castro, pleased with the memory. "It's why he can't extend his arm out fully today. Makes people think he doesn't want to shake their hands. Why he salutes so stiffly. It's the injury--the bone was nearly shattered."

They walked on for a few minutes. The rainfall increased to a steady drumming. Rivulets of runoff ran down into the garden, pooling at their feet. Alekseev followed, until the Commandante stopped, breathing in the fresh air deeply, the fragrance, the smell of wet leaves.

"Alexander, this is such a beautiful place. I come here to gather my thoughts some time, think strategy, talk with my commanders." He turned sad. "By the end of the day, the medicos have told me, the rains will be bringing only death to this place. Radioactive particles will fall here. Everything you see will die. Sacrificed for a greater future. For Cuba."

Alekseev grew uncomfortable. He had heard the same warnings from Dankevich's staff at Torrens. Offshore winds, intense clouds of radioactive dirt and soil, still sifting down from the stratosphere. He didn't want to linger any longer than necessary. But the letter, the First Secretary's letter--

"Commandante, please, for the sake of Cuba and the future, for Raul, for the revolution, reconsider. Call off Moncada. Give us a chance to work things out with the imperialists. Time is against them. We both know that. Their system is flawed. All we need is patience. Don't provoke them with this attack."

Castro folded his arms behind his back and looked up at last, fixing Alekseev with an even gaze.

"Raul understands the situation. He's a true revolutionary. A true revolutionary wants to die for the cause. That's all any of us can hope for. In this, I suppose, Raul will get his wish."

"What shall I say to my superiors then? What shall I tell Mikoyan? The Central Committee needs an answer."

Castro sniffed. "Tell them, no...tell Nikita Sergeyevich, that our revolution will proceed as it always has, with or without the rusos. Moncada goes on. I am only hastening what is inevitable." He placed a firm hand on Alekseev's shoulders. "The final confrontation between capitalism and socialism cannot be prevented. Even some imperialists say that."

"Commandante, I--"

Castro wagged a finger to silence him. "No more talk. I cannot rescind the order to Ramirez. It's done. The Americans have invaded our land and bloodied our soil. They will be taught a lesson. Then history will decide who wins."

Alekseev watched, standing beside a banyan tree, as Castro turned abruptly, dismissing his old friend. He marched on deeper into the garden. Alone.

Excerpt from The Washington Post, 11-8-62

Thursday: -- Police in Virginia's Stafford County made a grisly discovery Thursday morning at a state-operated rest stop along I-95 near Fredericksburg. Three bodies, two male and one female, all semi-nude, were found dead inside a late-model Ford station wagon parked in the rear of the rest stop. All were found shot to death, apparently at close range. Stafford County police estimated, from preliminary investigations, that the time of death was approximately midnight Wednesday. The case will be investigated as a homicide.

Sheriff Pat Wriston, in a statement to the press this morning, said the station wagon in which the bodies were found, had been stripped of tires, battery and other items. Each body apparently had been partially searched and then stripped of various clothing items. No motive was immediately identified for the homicides but investigators are treating the case as an armed robbery.

Two other cars in the rest stop parking lot, one with DC tags and one from Virginia, were also found abandoned and stripped down, with gasoline tanks empty, and tires and batteries gone. Sheriff Wriston stated that "we may be dealing with an Interstate theft ring here in central Virginia." Wriston went on to cite other evidence of a theft ring, involving assaults and thefts from state rest stops. In many of the cases, the items stolen are later sold at highway gift and souvenir shops along the highway, as well as some of the makeshift "survivor" shops that have sprung up in recent days, as a result of the bomb threats and crises in Washington and New York.

Wriston observed that, with the large numbers of people evacuating the Nation's Capital, more thefts, assaults, forgeries and scam operations could be expected. He indicated that the county was already working with the Virginia State Police on several cases of aggravated assault, stemming from near-riots at area grocery stores, as local citizens stock up on canned goods, flashlights, and other essentials in the wake of the Missile Crisis and the ongoing problems in DC.

Wriston described the basic method of operation on several of these cases, stating that in the majority of assaults, the perpetrators create or cause an accident on the highway, then in the hectic moments right after the accident, appear on the scene to "help" injured or stranded motorists. Wriston noted that investigators weren't sure exactly what kinds of weapons were being used, but he surmised that the assaults occurred around this time. The victims' cars were then stripped at the accident site or towed to a secluded area off the highway and stripped down there.

The Sheriff added that, in virtually every case, items stripped or stolen were re-sold for a profit elsewhere. Items stolen typically have included survival gear such as batteries, watches, jewelry, clothing, tires, even some food items. "The perpetrators are taking advantage of the panic situation up north, and preying on people's fears," the Sheriff said. Virginia State Police have recently formed a task force to coordinate investigating agencies.

Motorists along area highways and secondary roads were urged to take extreme caution at any stop, including rest stops, gas stations, motels and restaurants. In the last three days, since Election Day, an estimated hundred and fifty thousand residents of the DC area have taken to the roads and are evacuating the northern Virginia area. Many highways are jammed and residents, both in cars and on bicycles, are now clogging secondary roads, in their attempts to move south.

Sheriff Wriston, concluding his remarks, added a warning to all visitors and motorists that, while the Army had not yet seen fit to close or restrict access to any Stafford County roads, such restrictions were being discussed with both State and National Authorities, to ensure orderly and safe movement of public and emergency vehicles in the event of further crisis developments in the Nation's Capital. The Sheriff appealed to all residents, visitors and motorists to remain calm and to obey all traffic laws and regulations.

"Sheriff's Deputies will be enforcing all County ordinances and regulations to the letter in the days ahead, as our Nation deals with this terrible situation," he added.
CHAPTER 23

11-8-62, Thursday

Washington, D.C.

7:30 a.m.

Rafael Ramirez handed a map he had been studying over to Jorge Arrantes. By the light of the pilot station aboard the Big Easy, the map wasn't easy to read. Arrantes had found a flashlight belowdecks and held it over the pages as the Capitan scrutinized the roads and waterways around Indian Queen Estates.

Two hours before, shortly after five in the morning, the coded message they had been waiting for, praying for, had come through. Both men had been dozing lightly, exhausted, rocked into a state of numb quietude by the swaying of the cruiser in the inlet waters of Broad Creek. Just after the early morning news on AM 720, WKKJ Radio, Washington, the transmit ship still stationed in the Chesapeake Bay had broken in with the words Muerte esta mas felicidad. The effect had been like a surge of adrenaline.

Listening to the broadcast, deciphering the bits of coded message broadcast over WKKJ's signal, Ramirez understood they now had orders to detonate the K-5 bomb at sunrise, Eastern Standard Time, Thursday morning. His eyes met with Arrantes. Both men grinned with relief at the same time.

"Patria o muerte," muttered Ramirez. He clapped Arrantes on the side of the face as he got up.

"Si, Capitan. At last. We can get moving."

Sunrise was two and a half hours away. Ramirez wanted to work the bomb in a little closer to the center of the city. Doing so, he knew, entailed the risk of being discovered. It was a risk they would have to take.

A half an hour after the coded message, Arrantes had been helping remove the tarpaulin from the K-5 and watching Ramirez check connections with the control switch block, both of them listening to Shelley Fabares crooning out "Johnny Angel", when the half-hour news came over the airwaves. Arrantes turned up the volume slightly, as the announcer made a brief mention that President Kennedy would be returning to Washington that morning, from a short military inspection trip to Alaska. The announcer added that Air Force One was expected to touch down at Andrews Air Force Base about 9:30 Thursday morning.

"Capitan, look at the map...see here....Andrews Air Force Base." Arrantes showed Ramirez how close the base was to the marina. His fingers traced a possible route. "North from this place to Foote Road. East to Allentown Road...here's the Main Gate."

Ramirez followed the lines on the map. "Jorge, this is what we'll do. We have to get the bomb to shore. I saw a small truck parked by the gas pumps when we anchored. Maybe she's big enough. Load the bomb and head for Andrews Air Force Base. Fidel wants the detonation at sunrise." Ramirez checked the purplish sky. "That won't be long from now. We'll never be in position by then. But I want Kennedy. I want Kennedy to pay for Tomas, for Cuba. If we go to Andrews, and detonate when Air Force One lands, we'll take Kennedy with us."

"Is that close enough to Washington, Capitan?"

Ramirez' face hardened. "The ruso said the bomb would destroy everything in a six to eight kilometer radius. It'll be close enough."

Arrantes' eyes met Ramirez. "Time to die, Capitan."

"Si, for Cuba. For Tomas. And the others. The Montaneros. The Mountain Boys."

"You've never forgotten them, have you?"

Ramirez and Arrantes wrestled with the bomb, to position it for removal. "I'll always be a Montanero, Jorge. Tomas and I used to make weekend trips into the market at Santiago de Cuba, with the family. My padre was drunk most of the time. When I was a child, about six years old, I saw my first robbery in the city. It was in 1933, only a few months after Batista had started what become known later as the "Sergeants' Revolt" at Camp Columbia. The country was in an uproar. I remember the day very well. It was sunny, dry, warm, late October of that year. We were in the marketplace, sitting beside our cart selling our beans and tomatoes, when a black car, an unmarked car, came crashing into the market. The car upset a lot of carts and stands. It stopped and pinned an old farmer man named Domingo underneath. I was horrified.

Arrantes and Ramirez grunted and strained shoving the thousand-pound mass of the K-5 closer to the edge of the boat. "We'll need that barbudo down below to help us. Before we kill him."

"I'll untie him when we make the shore," Ramirez said. He stood up and stretched an aching back. "Jorge, it was frightening, what happened in that market in Santiago. Out of the car jumped several wild-haired men firing rifles and pistols. The crowds scattered and everybody took cover, wherever they could find it. Tomas and my madre pushed me and the rest of the family underneath our cart. I was shaking so hard my teeth hurt, Jorge. Then, the horses bolted and dragged the cart off. We had to scramble for cover again, behind some stands nearby. It was later that I learned that the men were drunken Batista sympathizers, Batistianos who'd come to stir up the market crowds for a march on the police station a few blocks away. Before they could do much though, the police arrived and there was a shootout, right in the square, right in front of me. The Batistianos were all killed. One of them was hit near me. His blood sprayed my legs and feet. The police were just shooting everywhere. They killed a few farmers and a small child too. But nobody was ever brought to trial.

"That's when the Montaneros were formed?"

"Later," Ramirez said. "But not long after that. It was the first time I had seen the revolution close up, the way Tomas had described it. He had seen it before. But I didn't believe him. But I would lie awake at night for weeks afterward, thinking about that Saturday afternoon in Santiago."

Arrantes was searching the Big Easy for something they could use as a ramp, or a lever, for lifting one end of the K-5 up and over the railing. Ramirez fired up the Evinrude motor and hauled up the anchor. Then he nudged the throttle forward and the Easy waddled through the still waters of Broad Creek toward a line of piers at the marina. A faded Esso sign marked the gas pumps. Below the sign, a dark blue pickup was parked. Light breezes stirred the line of masts and rigging of other boats moored along the pier, the clanking scattering a covey of geese who had been roosting on the pier railing.

"Capitan, sometimes we spend our lives as adults finishing up things we couldn't finish as children, eh?"

"Si, you're probably right. I was an impressionable young boy. I had an active imagination. And a worthless father. I used to walk behind the mule in the afternoons, while plowing our field, thinking of those three Batistianos. They were like heroes to me at the time. Before the year was over, I was already starting to think of myself as a kind of revolutionary. Tomas started to go around with the sleeves torn off his shirts, as a kind of badge to mark our little group. Then we tied old handkerchiefs around our foreheads. My madre was horrified. She spanked us when we dressed like that.

"Tomas and I discussed the shooting in the Santiago market all through the fall and winter. After a long time, we decided that the Batistianos were probably crooks after all. Crooks who used the cover of 'revolutionary justice' for the people to hold up the market and steal the farmers' proceeds. Despite that, I was still very much taken with the idea that ordinary men could create such excitement and be part of a larger heroic cause."

"You were romantic."

Ramirez acknowledged it. "I was. Even Tomas was smitten that way. The next year, the two of us started to talk with our friends at the school, around Santo Dominguez, among the farms, wherever we could. Tomas was the organizer of a small group that discussed Batista and the poor people and the landlords and the police. We started to steal things--some money, a few pistols, some food, stuff we could sell to help our group grow and get a reputation. That's when we started to call ourselves Montaneros. We even hooked up with several groups of Batistianos in Santiago. We thought up a mission--really, it was incredible how precocious we were since Tomas was the oldest and he was only fifteen--we were going to overthrow the old city government in Santiago and get rid of the police chief. He was a real pig. His name was Federico Rictor de la Insulato. We had grand dreams. We were going to replace all the scoundrels with solid Batistianos. By then, I had started to come to the meetings. I wanted so much to belong. I was doing courier duty, running things back and forth between the groups. And some explosives too. I learned how to make bombs with fertilizer and clock batteries."

"Always fooling around with bombs, eh?"

"My madre was horrified. She forbade us to associate in any way with the Montaneros. She put Tomas and me both to work in the fields, raising and picking beans. But we still found ways to get out. Tomas and I would slip out at night, after working all day in the fields, and attend meetings with the Mountain Boys in a cave several kilometers away. By the light of a cave fire, we would clean our weapons--we only had a few...two pistols, Colt I think, and a pair of Lee-Enfield rifles. We would print or hand-write posters. Assemble our crude explosives. I'm amazed now that someone wasn't killed in that cave. It was quite an education for a youngster, a lot different from what the Sisters were teaching us at Santa Anna school during the day. By the time I was ten, I could assemble and disassemble bombs with the best of the Boys. Hunting rifles, pistols, I was an expert at field stripping and cleaning and oiling the weapons. But the Boys wouldn't let me go on any 'expeditions.' That would come later."

"Now, Moncada is the biggest expedition of all."

The Easy bumped and scraped her way along the worn tires lining the pier. Ramirez chopped the engine.

"Let's get our friend topside and see if he wants to join Operation Moncada." Both men laughed.

Beard was half-conscious and squinting as Arrantes dragged him stumbling up the stairs from the cabin belowdecks. He dropped the heavy-set man on the deck and untied his feet, leaving his wrists still bound with cord for the moment.

Ramirez stooped down, jammed the muzzle of a Makarov into Beard's face. The man flinched and came fully awake.

"Amigo, you're going to help us. But you have a choice. You can die now, at my feet, like a dog. Or you can help me get my cargo to that truck on the pier and die later. Which is it?"

Beard's voice was so hoarse he could barely talk. Arrantes let him sip water from a stained coffee cup he found.

"Like I have a choice. Why don't you bums just rob me and be done with it?"

Ramirez pistol-whipped him until Beard's nose started bleeding. "That's no way to talk, amigo, when you have a chance to be a revolutionary hero."

Beard sniffed blood, still streaming out of his nose. "You guys are fucking nuts. What the hell's under that tarp, anyway?"

Ramirez half-dragged Beard by his arms over to the Cyrillic lettering on the side of the K-5 device. "You read Russian?"

"Russian? What the hell--you spies or something?"

"You are looking at a seven-hundred kiloton Soviet atomic bomb, amigo. Treat her with respect. She has a big job today."

Beard's eyes narrowed. "No way, man."

Ramirez said, "I make an offer. You help me get the bomb to that truck over there. I'll leave you on the boat, tied up, but still alive. We'll even set your boat loose so you drift."

"Drift? Drift where?"

"With any luck, out into the river. You'll have a great view of a second sunrise over Washington, D.C."

"A second sun--"

"Amigo," Ramirez stooped down and glared at Beard face to face, nose to nose. He smelled the sweat of fear in the Yanqui's breath, knew he was winning. "Choose now...and think carefully about your choice, eh? Certain death, here and now, at my feet. Or immortality."

Beard blinked hard. He licked his lips, tasted salt and his own blood, still dribbling down. Ramirez never blinked.

"What the hell, like the man says, you only live once." Beard half-smiled, shrugged. "Mister, I don't know what your game is. But I'm in, okay? Just untie me, will you? This rope's burning my wrists."

Arrantes had the ropes off and Beard gratefully chugged several cups of cold coffee and water. He rubbed the red lacerations on his wrists as he drank.

Ramirez hopped up onto the deck pilings. It was a small marina, less than half a dozen boats. At the far end, opposite the Esso sign, was a small shack of a boathouse, half hidden behind a power pole and some spindly trees. A faint light shone from one window. Ramirez's eyes narrowed. Company?

As always, manipulating the K-5 was a chore for several men. Some sturdy planks were located along the pier, and lain across the railing of the Easy, bridging the five or so feet over the waters of Broad Creek. Hoisting the device up and off the Easy, across the planking and onto the pier would take some thought and planning. As Beard and Ramirez studied the problem, Arrantes hiked up to the pickup truck and saw to getting the engine started. After a few minutes of tinkering with the ignition harness and the battery and starter connections, Arrantes tested the current flow and touched several wires. The engine coughed and sputtered a few times, then revved into life with a cloud of oil smoke. Arrantes dropped the old Ford into gear and drove down onto the pier.

The three of them managed to sling the tarp under the bomb enough to get some leverage. By alternately pushing and pulling, they dragged it up the side of the Easy's aft railing, causing the boat to rock like she was tossed by storm waves. The planks groaned as the bomb's weight settled over the edge of the railing, and Arrantes hurriedly found more planking to shore up the makeshift ramp. At last, gingerly, the men maneuvered the squat cylinder across the planking, steadying her and the ramp held, barely. Arrantes backed the pickup truck to the very edge of the pier and dropped the tailgate. With a lot of grunting and shoving, the K-5 was finally pushed into the bed of the truck, which settled nearly to her suspension under the weight. The bomb's aluminum shell scraped against the truck bed and stuck sideways, refusing to budge any further. The tailgate couldn't be shut, so Ramirez rigged a rope harness around the base of the bomb to make sure it stayed securely in the truck bed, fastening the rope around the cab doors. At last, the job was done. Canvas from the Easy's hold and extra sail rigging was thrown over the device.

Beard was drenched with sweat. His hands were raw and red from supporting the aft stabilizing fins of the bomb casing.

"This thing ain't no A-bomb, is it?

Arrantes jumped down from the truck bed, and said, "Amigo, this is Cuba's answer to the Bay of Pigs." He grabbed Beard, forcing one hand behind his back, yanking up painfully as Beard started to struggle, then stopped. Arrantes guided the man across the makeshift ramp and back aboard the Easy. There, he found some rope and re-tied Beard's wrists tightly, then his ankles. A piece of torn canvas served nicely as a gag, stuffed into Beard's mouth. With help from Ramirez, Beard was hauled belowdecks and dumped on the cabin floor.

Before they got back into the old Ford pickup, Arrantes cast off the Easy's mooring lines and gave the cruiser a shove with his foot. The bow turned slightly and the boat began drifting lazily away from the pier, out toward deeper water.

"The barbudo will have a perfect seat for the big show," Arrantes muttered. He climbed into the truck cab and slipped the transmission into gear, as Ramirez climbed in beside him.

"I want to check all the connections," Ramirez said. "Pull up under that sign, below the lights."

Arrantes complied and parked beneath the Esso sign, leaving the motor running, while Ramirez climbed into the truck bed with a flashlight and peered underneath the canvas covering the bomb. He played his flashlight over the base of the K-5's cylindrical casing, feeling for each cable connection back to the switch block. All of them were tight, no chipping, no flakes of insulation, nothing loose, though he didn't have a way of testing continuity. Every time the K-5 was moved by hand, Kapitonov had once said, there was a risk something would come loose, a key connection or joint would break and a critical circuit would fail, aborting the detonation. Dozens of switches had to work, and current from the batteries had to flow to the right places at the right time in the right order for the bomb to work. Most important, the batteries and the capacitors had to be charged fully. The K-5 was like the mule Rosita that Ramirez had spent so much time behind in the fields beside their bohio as a child: heavy and hard to move, but sensitive to the way she was handled.

The bomb appeared ready. Ramirez patted its tough nickel-alloy heat shield and covered it back with the canvas. He got back in the truck.

"Let's go."

Before Arrantes could shift into gear, a night watchmen suddenly appeared from behind the marine diesel gas pumps, waving a flashlight and a pistol. He approached the truck from the front and aimed his weapon, a small-caliber revolver, through the windshield.

Ramirez froze.

"What ya'll up to at this time of day, eh?" The watchmen warily circled the truck around to the driver's side. "Why doncha both get out of there, nice and slow? And keep those hands up where I can see 'em."

Ramirez brushed his hand against the bulge of the Makarov tucked inside his jacket, then thought better of it. He lifted his hands to the top of his head and kicked open the side door, standing up, a faint smile at the corners of his lips.

"Reckon ya'll aren't exactly members of the marina, are you?" The watchmen was older, perhaps mid-fifties, sandy hair and an ill-fitting khaki uniform with an Orioles cap half-cocked on his head. "Let me see some ID."

Ramirez thought fast. "Our boat, see...the engine failed....she's out there now--" he indicated the Big Easy, now drifting slowly away from the pier. "We had to swim for it, look for help."

The watchmen squinted, saw the Easy, and sniffed. "I been watching you, bud. Ya'll didn't swim a lick. What the hell's that thing in the back of your truck? You wouldn't be hauling a little beer and wine, now would you? Maybe I ought to just check the supply in the clubhouse."

Ramirez smiled, more broadly. The watchman regarded them coldly. "I think we may be able to work out a little deal here," Ramirez offered. "We have plenty of merchandise. You can name your own price."

The watchman was indignant. "Trying to bribe me, eh? You oughta know I don't bribe so easily. I know a smuggling operation when I see one. I oughta call you jokers into the County right now. Maybe even the State cops. Hadn't busted a moonshine operation around these parts in years." He continued circling, keeping his pistol trained on them, and poked a finger under the canvas in the back. "This must be your still. Looks pretty big to me. Feels funny too. Some kind of real modern thingamajig, I'll bet. What'll she do...about five gallons a day?"

Ramirez forced a smile, turning to keep the watchman in view. "Oh, a lot more than that, amigo. A lot more. Want me to show you?"

The watchman stopped, abruptly. "No, as a matter of fact. I don't." He checked his watch. "I'm off-shift in five minutes. Tell you the truth, I don't much care what the hell you bozoes are smuggling. Me, I got a giant beef with Cochran, the man that owns this marina. Chintzy son of a bitch, if you ask me. He's been late with my check three weeks in a row and I'm getting sick of it. I was about to head over to his office and quit, just before you showed up."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Ramirez said evenly. "Don't let us keep you from leaving."

The watchmen, having circled the truck completely, came up on Ramirez's side, and stood, pistol half-aimed, about ten feet away. He pushed the Orioles cap back and scratched his head.

"Cochran's a thief and a crook. Everybody knows that. Steals from the poor and steals from the rich. He doesn't play favorites. Hell, if he wants to let smugglers and drug pushers and gunrunners use the marina, it ain't no skin off my back. I suppose he'll get his cut. Only I'll never see any of it. I'm quitting. Today. And, right after I turn in my badge and gun, you know what I'm doing?"

"What's that?"

"Heading over to the Spinnaker Bar and getting snockered for shit. By noontime at the latest, I'll be so wasted, I won't be able to see my hand in front of my face. Care to join me?"

Ramirez finally lowered his hands a bit and began breathing again. "Thanks, amigo, but no. We have important business in the city."

The watchman waved his pistol for a moment, then holstered it for good. "Mister, I don't know what the hell ya'll are smuggling in and I don't care. Just get off the marina grounds and do it quick."

Ramirez half saluted. "No problem, friend. We're on our way." He nodded to Arrantes, who also climbed in, slamming the door behind him. "Give my regards to Cochran."

They sped out of the marina as fast as Arrantes could handle the Ford, turning north onto Kisconko Road. The watchman dwindled in the distance and soon was lost to view. The road twisted uphill for a moment, then turned into a narrow macadam tunnel through dense pine and birch trees, morning mists still shrouding the red and orange autumn flames of the leaves. It was just 8:15 am.

The Cubans drove on in silence for a few minutes, both lost in thought. Ramirez knew they would be a target once they were in motion again but it couldn't be helped. The watchman seemed a harmless nuisance, though Ramirez had been only seconds away from emptying the Makarov in his face. I should have done it anyway, he told himself. Operational security demanded it. If he had placed any kind of call to the police\--

But there was no time now for second guessing.. Ramirez consulted a map of eastern Maryland. They soon reached Foote Road and turned east, following the highway through rural Prince Georges Country for a few miles. Presently, he instructed Arrantes to turn northeast, onto Palmer Road. The highway tended on to the northeast, through the crossroads of Palmer Village, toward Allentown Road and the perimeter road surrounding Andrews Air Force Base. Traffic was light: a few commuters straggling into DC from rural farms and raw suburbs and an occasional milk truck. Forty minutes later, they saw the first signs indicating the base.

"Kennedy's plane lands around 9:30," Ramirez said. He leaned out the window, spying several helicopters droning by overhead, wondering. "We need cover. If we hit the gate too soon, we may have to detonate before Kennedy arrives."

"How will we know when Kennedy's plane is coming?" Arrantes asked.

"It's a Boeing 707, painted with blue and white letters. United States of America on the side. We need a place--maybe...there." He pointed at a restaurant-gas station ahead on the left. "Some place we can have a good view of approaching aircraft. I'll get my binoculars out and we'll watch. When we see it approaching the runway, we'll crash the gate and head for it. Then--" he held up the switch block, safely tucked on the floor of the truck cab--"we finish our mission."

Arrantes pulled the truck into the front lot of Sam's Skillet, adjoining a Sinclair station across from the base Main Gate and entrance to the perimeter road. A highway sign overhead read Suitland Road. Another sign indicated a dogleg off Highway 337 onto the perimeter road, through the checkpoint of the Main Gate itself. To their right, buildings and floodlit ramps shone brightly through the trees.

Ramirez had Arrantes circle the parking lot several times, before settling on a slight rise near the road, a rise from which they had a relatively unobstructed view over the trees. By standing on the front hood, Ramirez found he could just make out the marker lights for Andrews' two parallel and adjoining north-south runways, approximately three miles away. Depending on wind conditions, Air Force One would be making either a northbound or southbound approach. From either direction, they would be able to watch as the President's aircraft turned onto final and settled toward a landing.

Less than ten miles away, Mike French stood beside the UH-1B "Huey" impatiently as flight line service crewmen finished topping off the chopper's tanks. Bolling Air Force Base lay directly opposite National Airport, across the Potomac, and was now home to only to the Air Force Band and Honor Guard. A few months ago, the last flight had been made off Bolling's main runway and the base had ceased active flight operations. During the Missile Crisis, the Air Force had temporarily reactivated the base to house and service many of the aircraft assigned to search and security duties around the Nation's Capital

While fuel tank caps were being secured and the hoses retracted, Jeff Torburg climbed back into the compartment and set to work, checking the calibration and sensitivity of the B-12's MeV counter. While Torburg made his adjustments, Captain Forsom bantered good-naturedly with the Air Force types, swapping lies and comparing favorite liberty ports around the world. Mike French hopped up after Torburg and squeezed in.

"We need to get airborne, Jeff. Right now."

"Only take a sec," Torburg muttered. "I'm dropping the gain on the MeV counter. Something Maximov said made me think...the Russians don't refine their plutonium and uranium quite the same way we do. Maybe if I expand the envelope for a wider range of neutron energies, we'll get a hit. It's worth a shot."

French sipped cold coffee from the base commissary in a thermos. He was tired, edgy, frustrated, they all were. How many minutes were left? How long would Castro give them? What was stopping the Cubans from detonating the bomb right now?

He realized they could be miles away or right under their noses. Torburg's gadget didn't have much range and French had already threatened Captain Forsom with severe injury if he didn't drop the Huey right on top of the treetops on this search round, the better to give the B-12 a fighting chance to sniff out the Soviet bomb. They had crisscrossed the entire DC area, from Georgetown to south of Mount Vernon--every creek, every stream, up and down the Potomac and the Anacostia, hovered over every marina and halfway suspicious boat, for hours, and they had nothing to show for it.

Hoover'll have my badge for wasting the Bureau's time on this cockamamie chase, French muttered to no one in particular as he stepped out of the Huey for a last refill of the Thermos. Torburg and his gadgets...but what other choice did they have? What the hell did the Director expect--a house to house search? 'This is the FBI...come out now and bring that atom bomb with you....'

Mike French decided to ring up Hostetler for an update.

"Air Five to Home Plate, Air Five to Home Plate." Hostetler's scratchy voice, probably as tired as we are, French thought, finally crackled through the headset.

"Home Plate, receiving. What's up, Five?"

French moved aside, as Forsom climbed aboard with maps and charts tucked under his arms. The pilot settled into his seat and seconds later, the Lycoming engine whined into life.

"Cliff, Five's gassed up at Bolling. Going airborne in a minute. Torburg's re-tuning his gadget, trying to make it a little more sensitive. I guess we'll do the southeast quadrant again, Potomac south and eastern shore, maybe go a little further south this time. Any news?"

"None good," came Hostetler's voice. "We're living on borrowed time, I figure. But I don't have any better guidance for you."

"Seems like our Cuban friends have just disappeared off the map." French strapped himself in tighter as Forsom got the engine up to speed. He pulled back on the collective and the Huey jumped into the air. They corkscrewed up to about a hundred feet, then banked left over the Bellevue Naval Housing complex and made the Potomac at Marbury Point, heading south, following the eastern shoreline. Seconds later, Oxon Creek passed below.

"Best intelligence we have is," said Hostetler, "that Castro's ordered a detonation at or around sunrise today. Nothing I've seen contradicts that. Sunrise was two minutes ago."

"Maybe they're sleeping in today," French said. "We'll advise. Air Five out."

Forsom kept the Huey down on the deck, this time, barely clearing the span supports of the Wilson Memorial Bridge. It doesn't make any sense, French thought. They've got the bomb. They've got the order. Why don't they blow it? He almost wished the Cubans would detonate the device now and end the suspense once and for all.

French concentrated on Torburg's MeV counter. The physicist continued tweaking several dials, tuning the detectors as best he could for the expected energy range of neutrons thrown off by the plutonium core of the bomb. For his part, Maximov was quiet, staring grimly at the scenery slipping by below them. Often as not, the Russian closed his eyes and seemed to mumble something to himself, something French could not quite make out. Prayer? I thought Communists were atheists, French wondered. Or is he communing with Castro through the ether, trying to divine the dictator's intentions?

Forsom took them south along the Potomac's eastern shoreline for fifteen miles, well south of Fort Washington, before turning around to head up the Virginia side of the river. French alternated studying the charts of the river basin on his knee, and Torburg's MeV counter. The needle never wavered beyond an imperceptible shiver--probably aircraft vibration, Torburg had said--and French suspected the device just didn't have the range to pick up any signals. Depressed, he was ready to pull the plug on the whole mission, thinking surely by now, the Cubans had offloaded the warhead from that stolen yacht and gone inland again, probably back toward the city. But before he could get Forsom's attention to nix another run, a voice burst in through loud static in his headset.

It was Hostetler, at the command post. The excitement in the deputy director's voice was evident, even through the static.

"Air Five, Home Plate. Do you read me? Over."

French thumbed the mike button. "Home Plate, this is Five...go ahead."

"Five, just got an advisory from the Air Force...from air operations at the Pentagon. The duty officer called up here with word, just a minute ago, that there's been some kind of...incident, I don't know how else to describe it...at Andrews Air Force Base."

Instantly, French was alert. "What kind of incident?"

Hostetler was trying to grab bits and pieces and fragments of reports. "I don't have the full picture but--"

"Cliff, what the hell is it?"

"Damn it...I'm trying\--I'm listening to an open line from Andrews now--base security frequency. Air Police, on 667 megacycles. They're saying--yes, they're saying an incident at the Main Gate...North Perimeter Road at Suitland. Yes...an unmarked truck, dark blue Ford, has just crashed through the gate...just ran the security station and barriers. The truck's now being pursued by Air Police along the north Perimeter Road...."

"What? Are you sure?"

"Sure as I can be...wait a sec, I'll see if I can patch this through to you, Five...." A few seconds of scratches and chirps and whistles, then a drone, then intermittent snatches of another voice--

"--at least eighty...maybe ninety...he's all over the roadway--whoa, watch out!...damn, damn, damn! He just sideswiped a car. Courier from Headquarters...looks like they'll be all right...we're still on his tail...."

French listened to the running exchange between the Air Police cars and Andrews tower. He didn't want to switch back to the cockpit channel so he waved to get the Army captain's attention. Forsom half turned in his seat and saw French gesticulating, mouthing Andrews...get us over to Andrews now!....

Momentarily confused, Forsom finally understand. He dialed up Andrews tower on the listed frequency and requested clearance to approach the field. Andrews Approach Control came on the line.

"Air Five, no vector possible at this time. We have VIP traffic inbound and on approach. Hold your position--"

Forsom looked back, wiping a finger across his neck to indicate no go to French. Over the engine noise, Forsom yelled, "Andrews Control won't give us a vector! Somebody big's coming in!"

French looked pained. Somebody big? It had to the President--Jesus Christ, he realized. With hand signals, he asked Forsom to let him talk with the tower. Forsom's hands played with some selectors on the comm panel, letting French's headset take the feed from the same frequency. French looked down. They were just passing the white-columned mansion at Mount Vernon, heading north.

"Andrews Control, this is Air Five. Mike French, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Do you read, over?"

Andrews Control acknowledged. "Andrews reads. I repeat, cannot give you a vector at this time. We have--"

"Jesus Christ, man!" French yelled into the mike, "will you shut up and listen! I'm with the Bomb Task Force. That pickup truck could be our boys. What's going on...describe it to me."

"Dark blue pickup, no markings, is now being chased by Air Police along the airport perimeter road. They forced the Main Gate, entered the base without authorization. They'll be apprehended, like any other--"

"Hold on a minute, pal. They will not be apprehended like ordinary crooks, you got that? This truck could be our Cuban friends, with an atomic bomb in the back. Is there anything in the bed of the truck?"

"Unknown, Air Five. I'll have to check with the pursuit..."

"Never mind that," French said. "Just tell the Air Police to take extreme caution approaching that vehicle. Keep it away from the runways, keep him pinned up, but don't cause an accident." French saw Torburg vigorously nodding, agreeing with that assessment.

"Mike," Torburg added, "the kind of impact caused by a crash, if it was a bad one, could drive the outer shell of the bomb into the core. Or there could be a spark that would set off the high explosive layer. Unlikely, but possible."

French felt beads of cold sweat on his forehead and wiped them off. "Andrews Control, listen to me. Listen to me, very carefully: keep that truck from crashing, whatever you do. Don't let it crash into anything. Clear the base, as best you can."

"Air Five, our inbound--"

"Who is the inbound?"

There was a moment's hesitation. "Five, it's Air Force One. It's the President. They're about ten miles out now. Just made the turn off base leg onto final. He's right on glide slope. Runway 18 South."

French swallowed hard. How does a lowly GS-8 agent wind up giving air traffic control instructions to the President of the United States? "Andrews, please divert the President's aircraft to another field. Or ask them to hold at least--" he checked quickly with Torburg, who mouthed a number--"fifty miles out from the DC area." Torburg nodded his assent, confirming that, should the weapon go off, that would be a safe radius.

"Air Five, Air Force One reports marginal fuel to divert. We're looking at Richmond or Baltimore now."

"Very well. Andrews, I need an immediate vector to your field right now. My vehicle is carrying critical detection gear. We need to close with that truck, to see if he's our boy."

"Understood. Stand by."

While they waited, French asked Forsom to patch him through to the Bomb Task Force air operations office at National Airport. That done, French talked with the duty officer at the National tower, explaining the situation at Andrews.

"It's got to be the Cubans," French added. "I need every available aircraft and helicopter in the area right away. I'm waiting on a vector to Andrews now."

National tower came back: "Air Five, be advised we have over twenty different aircraft in the air right now. It'll take some time to get proper vectors to Andrews. I don't want a mid-air."

"National, if you don't get some choppers over Andrews to keep an eye on this truck, a mid-air will be the least of your worries. I don't care how you do it but get me some backup NOW!"

National promised to coordinate with Andrews Control to expedite the arrival of half a dozen Air Force, Army, Navy and Coast Guard helicopters over the field at Andrews. "We're working our tails off right now, Five. Give us a few minutes."

Andrews Control came back on the line. "Air Five, we have your vector. Steer right, 085 degrees. Raise your altitude to at least a thousand. We've barely got a return on you on our scopes as it is."

Forsom acknowledged and pitched them up. The Huey bit into the early morning air and banked right, heading northeast over the Maryland shoreline, inland over Piscataway Creek and a large stretch of forested countryside. Occasional farmhouses dotted the terrain. As they approached the airfield, Forsom received new vectors, steering them first due north, then due east, perpendicular to the runways.

"Andrews, where is that truck now?"

"Wait one, Five." Then: "Five, Air Police has the truck hemmed in near the East Gate. Patrick Avenue at the East Perimeter Road. The truck seems to have stopped alongside a water tower."

"Give us a vector."

Forsom got directions and bore them east-southeast, directly over the parallel north-south runways, screaming over the ramps and taxiways at five hundred feet altitude. French hoped and prayed the tower had managed to wave off all traffic.

"What about Air Force One, tower?"

"Holding at thirty miles out. The pilot says he'll make one orbit, then divert to Baltimore. Friendship tower's already been advised and traffic's being re-routed now. We're going to have quite a stackup over eastern Maryland in a few minutes."

Can't be helped, French thought.

"The water tower!" Maximov exclaimed. "There--"

French peered out and saw the tower--a giant golf ball on a tee--gleaming in the morning sunshine. Helicopters had converged on the eastern half of the base like moths to a porchlight. French counted five already circling the tower.

Forsom dropped them lower, down to a hundred feet over a grassy plateau, and chopped the power. They crabbed sideways as he bled off speed, then circled the tower once and on the second orbit, Maximov, leaning out of the cabin, foot on a sideskid, spotted the truck, and shouted, gesturing, pointing down down down right there! The Russian slipped a service revolver out of his jacket and checked the action, chambering a round.

"Hold on, Alexei," French grabbed the Russian's arm. "Not just yet."

"Michael, look at it...that big canvas--"

Torburg's eyes widened as, all of a sudden, the MeV counter needle shot over and pegged the right side of its scale. It flickered and stayed to the right.

"Bingo! Holy Mother of God, look at that reading, will ya?" Torburg grinned, successful at last. He patted the side of the gear like a newfound friend. "Four point three, if I'm a Texas teetotaler!"

"That's it, that's it!" French was yelling and Forsom tightened his turn, wary of approaching the tower legs too close. A single man had climbed into the truck bed. Another man, the driver, slammed the truck door. Only two of them! The man in the truck bed, looked up, saw the approaching Huey, and started to burrow underneath the canvas cover.

"Now, Alexei! Now!" French yelled.

Maximov squeezed off three shots but all missed. Forsom fought to keep them from drifting any closer to the tower.

Just then, the truck started up, rear wheels digging into the asphalt, smoke pouring from its axle as it fishtailed away from the tower. The truck careened on two wheels for a moment, made an abrupt U-turn at the end of Fechet Avenue and spun around sliding on loose sand. From the end of the street, the cordon of Air Police sedans and vans opened fire, pouring bullets into the area. The right rear tire of the truck was hit and deflated instantly but the truck continued its turn, then straightened out and began turning south, down the East Perimeter Road. Abreast of Pearl Harbor Drive, the truck swung hard right, bumping over grass and low bush, tearing through a row of runway lights.

He was heading for the eastern runway. Runway 18 Right.

"Andrews Tower, tell them to hold their fire!" French yelled into the mike. "I say again, cease fire! Cease fire! There's no telling what they might hit!"

Forsom swung the Huey around and followed the truck, popping up to fifty feet to narrowly miss snagging a vortac transmitter with the chopper's skids. Behind them, Navy and Coast Guard choppers began converging on the runway, circling like birds of prey over a highway accident.

"Michael," yelled Maximov, half leaning out of the cabin, "if we can keep him pinned in here, between the runways, the Air Police can close in from the ground. He'll have nowhere to go!"

Except straight to Hell, French thought. If he presses the button now, he'll take half of Maryland with him. French was about to talk Maximov's idea over with the tower when a bullet pinged off a strut and cracked part of the door. Maximov jumped, ducking back inside, as a hail of bullets crashed through the cockpit.

"He's firing!" the Russian yelled, returning fire with his own Makarov, through a partially open door.

"I gotta pull back!" Forsom called out. "He puts a few rounds into my engine and we'll be splattered all over that runway." The pilot yanked the stick and the Huey jerked up and away, gaining altitude quickly.

"Hold your fire!" French yelled. "We don't want to hit the wrong thing!"

Forsom put them in a series of sweeping S-turns, crisscrossing the path of the truck, as it swerved back and forth across the runway, the grass patch, then another runway.

To Mike French, the only possibility seemed too risky to chance, yet he knew he had little choice. They'd pulled away to a hundred feet altitude and Forsom was jinking and turning, trying to keep up with the unexpected maneuvers of the truck. The driver was switching back and forth, trying to throw the aerial pursuit off like a bucking bronco. They'd have to go lower. To French, the man in the back was the key. There was a massive object under the canvas--that much was clear. Torburg's detector had gone off the scale. It was the bomb. It had to be. And the man in the back was trying to arm and detonate it.

French studied the fellow for a few seconds. Wiry, lean, dark-haired it seemed from this distance. The driver's antics were making it hard for him to keep his balance. That was the key, French suddenly realized. Keep harassing them, keep forcing the driver to make sudden turns, quick stops and reversals, anything to keep the man in the truck bed off balance. All the while, they had to close, to get closer, close enough for...what?

To jump, French told himself. His mind rebelled at the thought even as he knew it was the only way.

By hand signal and quick words, he explained to Maximov and Forsom what he wanted to do. Forsom was incredulous. You gotta be kidding...even on Whirlybirds, they don't do that...but French was firm, insistent.

"It'll work," he told them, with more assurance than felt. It has to work. Forsom shrugged, and tightened his shoulder straps, then started to work them in a little closer, bit by bit, dodging bullets as they closed the distance.

Maximov ducked outside the cabin, half onto the starboard skid and took aim. As Forsom brought them along broadside, the Russian squeezed off several more rounds, pop-pop-pop-pop, and saw the Cuban jerk sideways. Got him! The Cuban clutched his left arm, and slumped down, rolling heavily as the truck swerved again. Now he seemed trapped, partially wedged into a small space between the bomb and the side of the truck bed. As he fell, a gust caught the edge of the canvas and tore it from the truck. The sheet flew backwards, flapping and settled finally to the ground and then the bomb lay open, exposed, its squat casing a dull gray, wires draped over the fins and structures at the base.

Maximov froze as Forsom closed in even tighter. The wires were connected! Even as the truck dipped and swerved like a drunken horse, the Russian counted wires and squinted trying to see where they led. His throat went dry.

The wires seemed to converge on an object, a panel of some type, still clutched by the Cuban, a panel at his feet, as he struggled to stanch the blood pouring out of the neck wound Maximov had just given him.

The Huey dropped lower, closer, now they were only twenty feet, still dodging a bullet or two fired backwards by the driver, still closing, still tracking the wild and sudden dips and swerves the truck was making. The truck rode over the edge of Runway 18 Left, bouncing hard onto the dry grass, crashed through the light stands and doubled back, nearly tipping over as it spun around. Forsom yanked back on the Huey's collective and swung the chopper around to close the gap. The truck made a hard left and began streaking south down the runway, toward a low berm at the very end. Six thousand feet away, the berm formed a ramp that supported the half-mile long quad rows of approach lighting. If the truck crashed there--

French followed Maximov out onto the skid. The Huey edged ever closer, lower, banking and rolling to keep the truck centered under its skids. If only the asshole would stay on the runway for a moment....

In the back, the wounded Cuban had righted himself. He was sitting crosslegged, one leg slung over the conical nosecap of the bomb to steady himself, untangling a few wires from his legs....

Twenty feet.

Fifteen feet.

Ten feet.

French patted Maximov on the shoulder. Carefully, the men exchanged positions, with French now squatting in the eighty-mile an hour windstream on the leading edge of the skid, the Russian at his back.

"One shot!" French yelled in Maximov's ear. He pointed to the Cuban's hands. "Get his hands off those wires!"

Maximov used French's shoulder for support. The muzzle was cool, not three inches from French's right cheek. This should be fun, the agent thought. They don't teach this at the academy...He closed his eyes, cringed as Maximov fired one shot.

The report deafened him and the muzzle flash was bright even through his closed eyelids. But Maximov's aim had been true. The bullet spanged off the back of the truck cab and tore through the Cuban's right hand, which exploded in a bloody mess.

Five feet.

The driver swerved left off the runway centerline.

French waited, held his breath, willing the driver to swerve back, like he always had, trying to time his leap....

The moment, when it came, seemed to last an eternity. The truck swerved right.

Mike French, for a brief moment sitting like a circus performer on the skid, eased himself off and fell freely.

It seemed to last forever.

He landed on his hands, spraining a wrist, right on top of the K-5 bomb, rolling off on the side opposite the Cuban. Over the hump of the bomb, he saw rage--pain--perhaps, both--contorting the Cuban's face. A hand came up--what was left of it, for the bloody stump had no fingers, then the other hand, clutching at the smooth casing of the bomb. As if drawn to each other magnetically, French and the Cuban scrambled over the top of the bomb, and grappled, seeking purchase, leverage, balance in the still-swerving truck. French pitched headfirst right into the Cuban's face.

They fought and clawed and choked and bit and grabbed for every advantage, sucking air, banging heads, feet, hands, each men seeking what little leverage could be gotten in the cramped space alongside the bomb. As the truck swerved again and again, French came face to face with the Cuban, his hands ripping at the man's mouth, tearing at his soft, almost sad eyes....

He had a drooping black moustache, flecked with foam and blood. His hands were red, the right one a mere stump still pumping blood. French caught a brief glimpse of the wires the Cuban had been working with, followed them back to the wooden block with three switches. The Cuban fought him off with his good hand, while groping spastically with his stump for the block, now rattling around the truck bed. His stump found the block, but couldn't manipulate it, couldn't find the switches.

French slammed his body forward as hard as he could, forcing breath from the Cuban in a burst of saliva and more blood. The impact knocked the Cuban against the edge of the truck bed, just as the driver swung them left off the runway altogether. The bump as they left the tarmac jarred French to his bones. The Cuban teetered on the edge of the bed, half-standing, then lost his balance, as French lunged once more.

The Cuban pitched backwards over the ledge and was thrown like a projectile behind the truck. His body twisted in the air and slammed into the ground, rolling over and over again, before coming to a stop at the base of a runway marker sign.

Mike French found himself momentarily pinned against the edge of the truck bed as the weight of the bomb shifted. Something hard gouged into his shoulders. He struggled up on his elbows and felt, groping, for the object. It was the panel, a wooden block, with wires running back to the base of the bomb. French tried hard to swallow but his mouth wouldn't work. He was face to face with the detonator.

Behind the truck, Forsom continued to harass the driver, while Maximov squeezed off more rounds at the driver. A trio of helicopters, two Navy Sea Kings and a Coast Guard HH-34 closed in from both sides. Snipers poured fire into the truck cab, forcing French to keep his head down. He felt the truck lurch--a tire had gone, then it lurched the other way. Instantly, he realized they had shot out the truck's tires from close range. The truck bounced crazily over the ground, gouging up geysers of dirt and grass. It careened sideways, topped a slight rise, and flipped in the air, crashing and torquing from front to back as the frame tore into the dirt.

French felt centrifugal force pulling him out. He clung to the truck frame as long as his arms could hold out but it was useless. Force yanked him from the truck bed and sent him spinning unconscious whirling through the air. The ground, when it came up all too fast, was hard and rough. The impact knocked the breath out of him. Something in his shoulders--or maybe a rib snapped and hot searing pain washed over him. He rolled--he never knew how far and then stopped, his momentum spent.

It seemed to Mike French that he lay buried face down in grass and dirt for hours, waves of pain coursing up and down the length of his body. Each twitch, each breath, was agonizing and for a long time, he found he could only stay conscious by humming a tune he'd grown up with, humming an old Elvis Presley ditty--Jailhouse Rock it was called, each time he had to take a breath. Somehow, someway, the rhythm of that tune, the sound of his own humming, kept the pain down, kept him conscious, until at last, strong hands began tugging at him and he had to mumble something, a warning about his ribs and his shoulders and everywhere else they were grabbing his battered body throbbing with pain.

Somehow, by some miracle of modern physics and the luck of the Irish (which he wasn't) and God's good grace and the turn of the heavenly spheres, he was alive. He was ALIVE! Inside his mind, the Little Man who'd been his conscience, his voice and his inner nemesis from childhood days was turning somersaults with happiness.

The bomb hadn't gone off!

Sitting up, he was vaguely aware of being surrounded by helicopters, seemingly dozens of them, squatting on the grass and runways of Andrews Air Force Base like big metal crows. Hands were pulling him up--brushing him off--faces materialized and after a time, he recognized Torburg and Maximov. The Russian's mouth was working and French tried to concentrate on what he was saying....

"--are hurt? You seem to be all right, Michael--is there....can do for you--?"

French shook himself off, tried moving arms and legs and found, surprisingly, that everything worked. His head felt like it was smothered in cotton. The impact of being thrown from the truck and the subsequent rolling and bouncing had scrambled his brain.

Mike French smiled sheepishly and shrugged. His shoulders ached. "I think I'll live. Am I missing any parts?"

Maximov brushed grit and dirt from his face with a handkerchief. "That was quite a fall you took. You should see the--"

"LOOK OUT--!!"

"Get down\--he's got a gun--"

Out of the corner of his eye, Alexei Maximov had seen a shape moving near the truck cab. It was the Cuban driver, slithering out, stunned, bleeding. Air Police officers and men from the helicopters had been converging on the truck when the Cuban finally managed to extricate himself. He staggered up to rest on one leg. A second later, the flash of gunfire caught Maximov's eye. The rounds whizzed by and spouted dirt a foot away, followed by more rounds, as the Cuban emptied the magazine of his weapon, firing blindly, spraying bullets in all directions. He ejected one magazine and rammed another one home.

Maximov tackled French and threw him backward to the dirt, landing full force on top of the agent. French felt the full weight of the Russian; the impact forcing all the air from his lungs and he was flailing, gasping for breath....

Torburg too had dived to the ground, head down, while an Air Police sergeant behind them squeezed off a few rounds from his service Colt, then pitched sideways and hit the ground, rolling. He rolled over several times to a prone firing position and came up firing,, finishing off the magazine clip in five seconds....pop...pop...pop...pop.... Rounds spanged off the truck. One struck the Cuban in the left leg, and he crumpled.

Maximov had scrambled up to one knee after knocking French down. Still straddling the agent, he extracted his State Security-issue Makarov PM and got off half a clip, dusting the Cuban's feet, before one round caught the man square in the left shoulder, spinning him backward almost to a sitting position.

Maximov then ejected the clip and slammed another one home. He launched himself forward, half-crouching, half-running, before the Cuban got off a lucky shot that clipped the Russian on the hip. In pain, Maximov pitched headfirst to the dirt, landing directly on top of the flesh wound. He screamed, grabbed his side, but held fast to the Makarov. He straightened himself out just as the Cuban had regained his stance. Steadying his firing hand, Maximov waited a second to let the Cuban straighten up completely. He closed one eye and squinted through the aiming notch, bringing the muzzle into alignment with the Cuban's bloodied face. Adeen...dva...tree\--Maximov held his breath, counting, and gently depressed the trigger with precisely ten pounds of force.

The first round missed completely. The second round of 7.62-mm case-hardened caught the Cuban flush in the center of the forehead, less than two inches above his nose and moustache. His face exploded in a spray of red, and the Cuban's lifeless body danced like a ballet master as a fusillade erupted across the open ground. By the time the body had crumpled twitching to the ground, over forty-five rounds from Air Police, Army, and Coast Guard airmen gathered alongside Runway 18 Right had impacted the Cuban.

Maximov let out a long-needed breath and struggled to his feet, limping forward to see for himself.

The Cuban driver was a youngster, perhaps mid-twenties, trim black moustache flecked with dirt and sweat. The top of his head was missing and the smoking red-black lump inside was the remnant of a brain that had been splattered for twenty feet by the volley of gunfire. He wore light khaki pants, dark green shirt and a flannel jacket. Only the black combat boots betrayed his military origins. That and the handful of service ribbons and single metallic shield that had spilled from the jacket. Maximov squinted to read the embossed inscription on the shield: Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias.

He recognized the medal as a Cuban Order of Revolutionary Merit. The driver had once been decorated for "valor and dedication to building the Revolution."

Maximov was still examining the medal and ribbons when Mike French came hobbling up. He and the Russian exchanged a long look. French placed a hand on Maximov's shoulder and squeezed.

"Thanks, pal. I didn't know this one was still alive. That was a fine piece of shooting. Even if it was right over my battered body."

Maximov showed him the decorations. "Instinctive reaction, Michael. Spetsnaz training. Your weapon becomes like a sixth sense. Like an extension of your heart and soul."

French fingered the decorations. "A soldier, I see."

Maximov shrugged. "A decorated soldier. He earned this medal for contributing to the building of world socialism. We have a similar decoration."

"You figure he was the commando leader?"

Maximov replied, "That's impossible to know at the moment." The Russian knelt to finger the Cuban's Makarov gently away from the body's stiff fingers. "Perhaps he was only a comrade in arms."

French shook his head. The last thing he needed now was to get teary-eyed over a couple of Red comrades bleeding Marxism all over the ground. He looked around, spied Jeff Torburg carefully approaching the overturned truck, and realized there was unfinished business at hand.

"Alexei, save building world socialism for later, will you? We better see about the bomb." He went to join Torburg.

The physicist stood five feet from the K-5 bomb and bent forward slightly, touching nothing, to inspect the casing visually. French arrived, followed a few moments later by the Russian.

"Don't touch a thing," Torburg breathed quietly. "See that seam, down by the base?"

French followed the physicist's finger to a minute structural crack in the aluminum outer shell, where the casing adjoined the bomb afterbody.

"You mean right there in front of the fins?"

Torburg nodded solemnly. "It's leaking. The core's cracked."

"Bad news?"

"Good and bad. The good news is that the crack means explosive compression is less likely, even if the HE layer goes off. The geometry's all messed up. Might not even achieve criticality, what with neutrons leaking out and all."

"And the bad?"

"Russian cores are a layer-cake mix of uranium 238 and plutonium. They're not real stable under the best of circumstances. In short, they leak like a dog in a flower patch."

"Exactly what do you mean 'leak'?"

"The usual nasty stuff...neutrons, beta particles, lower energy alpha, a regular zoo of radioactive contaminants. We'll have to work quick. Get in and out fast. Spend a few minutes rendering the thing safe, then back away. At least fifty feet. Radiation falls off like an inverse square. Double the distance, it drops by a fourth. And so on."

French watched the gathering of Air Police and other figures, poring over the dead Cuban driver. Others were examining the Cuban French had fought, whose body had been thrown sixty five feet away, clear on the other side of the runway. Still others were inspecting the truck itself, looking for evidence. The Air Police had already set up the rudiments of a crime scene barrier, using several vans.

"We better get everybody back, then," French said. "How far?"

Torburg thought. "Several hundred feet. I need your hands. Probably Maximov too."

French paled at the thought. "I'm not exactly qualified at explosive ordnance disposal, you know. Especially atomic bombs."

Torburg had already dropped to his hands and knees, and was following a loose wire snaking across the grass. "Nothing to it, Mike. You'll pick it up in no time. Just do exactly what I tell you. And don't touch anything metal unless you ground yourself."

French swallowed hard and attended to expanding the crime scene barrier for a few minutes, talking with Sergeant Ramey of Andrews Air Police. Five minutes later, the barriers had been moved back and secured more tightly. The blue vans and trucks formed a tight circle, outside of which seven helicopters squatted. More vehicles had already started arriving from Base Security and the Navy hangars to the east of the crash site. DC Air National Guard had mustered additional men for perimeter defense and access control.

Torburg found the end of the wire. It was attached to the switch block, which had been thrown thirty feet away from the truck. The wire had become separated from the bomb wiring. The other two wires were still attached. Torburg sat up after crawling on his hands and feet for a short distance, examining the wire.

"Solder joint," he announced. "I'm not sure what the Cubans have done. Alexei, is this standard equipment?" He displayed the switch block to Maximov, who turned the thing over and shook his head.

"Field modification," he said. "See these two connected wires? The Cubans, or the Russian officer they kidnapped, somehow had to bypass normal circuit functions to get into the detonation sequence. The K-5 is a missile warhead. It takes signals from barometric pressure sensors, accelerometers, and other devices, and sums them, through a timing circuit, to arrive at a certain value. When that value is reached, another series of switches closes to shunt power from capacitors, charged by field batteries, to the explosive shell layer. That starts the detonation sequence."

Torburg nodded, understanding. "Just like we saw in New York. The bomb thinks it's on a missile. It's designed to go off at a pre-set altitude and speed. So, it's looking for altitude and speed indications...things like air pressure, acceleration sequences, orientation in space, that sort of thing. The Cubans had to get around that, literally trick the bomb's relay logic into thinking it's at that preset altitude and speed. That must be what this block and this wiring is for." Torburg got to his feet, and carefully followed the connected wiring back, zigzagging across the grass, to the bomb itself.

The K-5 had rolled fifty-five feet south of the overturned truck and lay otherwise undisturbed in a slight depression off the western side of the runway, equidistant between two short radio towers. Torburg asked what the towers were for. From Sergeant Ramey came word that the south tower was an instrument landing system transmitter, giving position information to approaching aircraft. The north tower was a comm transmitter, for ground communications with taxiing aircraft.

"Better secure them both," Torburg advised. "Stray radio frequency signals around the bomb, in its present condition, are not a good idea. We'll wait. Tell them to hurry."

Shutdown of the towers took about ten minutes. When Torburg was satisfied, he approached the bomb itself, feeling along the wires all the way to their terminal point at a dented wireway at the base. He spent several minutes, with Maximov alongside, examining the terminal points, the wireway itself, the location of access panels and the general layout of the device. Maximov pointed out several features, unique to Soviet bombs. Torburg listened, nodding gravely.

"The basic problem, as I see it," Torburg announced, "is do I trust that all the altitude sensors and circuits have been bypassed? From what Alexei tells me, there's no way of knowing for sure until we get into the wiring harness itself, under this riveted panel. If a key circuit has not been bypassed and the timing circuits are still active, or receiving power from the batteries, then we have a very serious problem. Then we have a deadline."

"A deadline? What the hell do you mean?" French asked, uneasy at the Texan's words.

Maximov explained. "When the missile is launched, a master timing signal is generated from an internal clock. The timing signal is one value that the relay logic compares, along with other signals, in deciding whether to close the circuit to the capacitors. The bomb is sitting here on the ground. We are approximately a hundred, maybe two hundred feet above sea level at this location. Normal airburst height for our weapons is pre-set for two thousand feet. So as far as the bomb knows, it has already reached and passed the pre-set height for detonation. That is if the altitude sensing circuits have not been completely bypassed. Remember, Michael, that the K-12 we safed in New York had been intentionally miswired. Or so we believe, from the evidence."

French didn't like the sound of what he was hearing. "So what are you saying?"

Torburg summed it up. "He's saying we may be working against a clock. The bomb may think it's at or below detonation altitude. If the timing signal's still active, then we could be sitting here working on the bomb when the last circuit to the capacitors is closed."

French stood completely still. "And the bomb would then--"

"Go boom," Torburg completed the thought.

"How long do we have?"

"Unknown," Torburg said. "We don't even know if any of this is true. But in ordnance disposal, you always assume the worst. Remember Miami?"

French remembered the force of that device, a few dozen pounds of TNT. "Do I ever. What's your plan?"

Torburg looked at Maximov. "I say we open up the wiring harness, carefully grounding ourselves as best we can, and locate the wiring for the capacitors and the batteries."

Maximov concurred. "We secure that circuit and any signals to the capacitors won't matter then. We'll have to find a way to safely discharge the capacitors--perhaps into the earth here--but even if altitude, air pressure or timing signals close other circuits, without current from the capacitors, the explosive layer can't fire."

"Right," agreed Torburg, "and the next step is to safe the core. I assume you have an insertable plug of fissionable material inserted as a final arming step?"

Maximov nodded, indicating that was standard Soviet practice. "Insertion is part of the launch preparation sequence. Our Rocket Troops have special soldiers trained for the task."

"Mike, get back to whoever's in charge of the scene here. We need Atomic Energy Commission here or somebody else qualified to handle fissionable materials. Somebody's got to remove the insertable plug. That step ensures we're fully rendered safe. Then the bomb won't have sufficient core material to achieve criticality."

French trotted off to confer with Sergeant Ramey. The base commander, Colonel Reinhardt, had also arrived. As he explained Torburg's request, the Texas physicist and the Russian State Security officer bent to the task of opening up the bomb's wiring harness and safing the device electrically.

Torburg and Maximov knew perfectly well they might have only a certain amount of time before the timing circuits closed and the detonation sequence began. They also knew that there was no way, at the moment, of being sure just how much time was left. Or even if the circuits functioned at all. Much would depend on what damage, if any, the bomb wiring had sustained in the high-speed chase and crash of the truck. Already, Maximov was having trouble removing one end of the access panel. And several wireways welded into the base had been dented. Inside the wireways, the wires themselves appeared sound.

Their job was clear: disconnect the capacitor from the batteries, safely ground and discharge the capacitors and functionally separate any electrical connection from the capacitors to the explosive layer detonation blocks. And do all that before any timing or pressure or position circuit sent a signal into the central relay panel.

Minutes passed, long and tense. First Torburg, then Maximov made false assumptions, following the wiring, and had to backtrack, undoing steps they had already completed. The men argued for a moment, then were silent. Upon examination, the central relay panel appeared intact, though some wire connections were loose.

There was no time to troubleshoot, no time to explore and see what wire went where.

There were no prints or schematics either. Maximov went on memory, familiarity with the continuity and integrity checks he helped supervise at Glavatom, at the Chelyabinsk-16 plant. Sweat stung his eyes, dripped from his nose, despite a freshening fall breeze as the morning sun warmed the air. Torburg, for his part, was conscious of tense muscles in his neck and back, and a growing headache. He wondered, if they were receiving too much beta, too many neutrons at a time.

Both men had forgotten the need to back off for a few minutes, forgotten the pattern of five minutes at the bomb, five minutes away, that Torburg had insisted had to be followed.

Too much beta, too much alpha, he muttered to himself. They'd exceeded the maximum allowable dose twenty minutes ago, he was sure. But they went on, heedless, knowing time could be working against them.

Mike French hovered, feeling helpless, a courier for parts and messages, with nowhere else to go. On a trot back to the outer barrier of the crime scene to get some wire cutters, he learned from Reinhardt that Air Force One had just reported bingo on low fuel.

"They're diverting to Philadelphia now," the Colonel explained. "Fitzpatrick's the pilot. He knows what he's doing. They'll get a vector straight in."

"They know what we're doing here? Does the President know?"

Reinhardt nodded "He knows."

French wet his lips, gazed upward at a distant contrail marking the bright blue sky. It was a beautiful clear fall morning. A passenger jet, he wondered? Heading for places unknown. If Torburg and the Russian didn't hurry up, the passengers might be witness to a spectacular light show, the Devil's own fist hammering the earth at ground zero a hundred and fifty feet away. He wondered what a mushroom cloud would look like from forty thousand feet.

"I only hope to God Philly's far enough away."

Reinhardt's eyes met his. "Me too."

Four minutes and fifteen seconds later, a shout of triumph erupted from inside the K-5 bomb and Jeff Torburg shook a fist in the air. Mike French went running.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Torburg stood up, flexed cramped muscles and yawned. Stress melted off his face and he smiled for the first time in days. Spontaneously, he hugged Maximov, then French too.

"We did it! Damn it, we did it! This sucker's rendered safe. She won't be going off today. She can't. No way, Jose. Capacitor and power circuits are isolated. The batteries were practically drained anyway. But we dumped the capacitors, just in case. Alex here got the rest of the timing circuits, including the master clock connection and killed them. I finally figured out the bypasses. Clever, these Cubans. Real sneaky."

French hugged them both. His eyes were moist. "Yeah, sneaky and dead."

"Look at this block, will you?" Torburg showed the FBI agent the simple wooden block that Ramirez had been trying to manipulate with his bloody stump of a hand. "Simple but ingenious. Three switches, mounted to a piece of four-by-four pine. Left to right: first switch bypasses the barosensors, two sequential timers, and the arm/safe circuit for ground handling. Second switch opens a small relay to the capacitor deck and bypasses an inertial switch, for measuring acceleration. Third switch connects the capacitor deck to the high explosive detonators. Easy as one-two-three."

Even Maximov smiled broadly, his mouth gleaming with several gold fillings. "A clever field modification, indeed. And it might well have worked."

Torburg tried to be careful wiping his hands. "No more hugging, Mike. Alex and I are hot as Hades. We need decontamination pronto. Plus there's still the pit that needs to be removed."

French said, "AEC was radioed fifteen minutes ago. A couple of techs from Los Alamos and Livermore happened to be at the Commission downtown, gathering up reactor plans and layouts, getting ready to evacuate. Army's choppering them over here right now."

"Los Alamos, huh?" Torburg was thoughtful, his hands hanging limp, not knowing what to do with them. "I probably know them. J-Division sends guys to DC all the time, dealing with atomic tests in the Pacific. There's still the pit to be pulled. Once that's done, the bomb can be declared officially 'rendered safe.'"

Mike French was already motioning an Air Police van over to the bomb site. The van trundled across the dry grass and parked ten feet away.

"These fellows are contaminated, sergeant."

Torburg explained. "We're going to need spray baths for sure. And a place to dispose of our clothing. Plus some new clothing."

"What else will you be needing, sir?" the Air Police sergeant asked.

Torburg ticked off the items. "Lots of water and disposable rags. Half percent chlorine solution for any plutonium or uranium dust we've picked up. We'll both have to do a light wipe with that. Even bleach from your base laundry would probably do. That's sodium hypochlorate. Got any Chlorox? Two quarts bleach to five gallons water will work. Oh, and a couple of radiac meters would be nice, too."

The sergeant looked doubtful but scribbled it all down anyway. "I'll call this in to the infirmary right away." He ran off.

Reinhardt drove up and hopped out of his blue Air Force sedan. "Just got word from Philly, men. Air Force One landed safely at the airport. The President's fine. He's been advised of the situation here. Right now, the plane's being gassed up. Colonel Fitzpatrick expects to be on approach to Andrews in about an hour. Are we clear for aircraft operations now?"

French deferred to Torburg. The physicist nodded. "Yes, sir, all clear. Better use the other runway over there for now, though. We'll need some time to secure the bomb core and get this thing out of here."

"Plus, this is still very much a crime scene," French added. "The Bureau has jurisdiction over the investigation."

"Understood," Reinhardt said. "I'll pass that along to the Colonel. Incidentally, the President is very much interested in meeting all of you. He wants to inspect the situation here, just like it is."

French winced at that but he knew he couldn't do a thing about it. "If that's what the Boss wants, we'll oblige."

The hour passed quickly. It was nearly 11 a.m. when an Army Huey pilot first spotted the huge blue and white 707 gleaming in the November sunshine, a growing speck on the northeastern horizon. At the same time, Mike French noticed a large green helicopter, a Marine Sea King, had materialized into view off the north end of Runway 18 Left, now shut down for the investigation. The Sea King passed by once over the assembled investigators, banked and settled to a three-point landing on its bogies several hundred yards away.

"Marine One," said Colonel Reinhardt. "Marine Executive Flight Detachment VH-3. Has a dedicated hangar over by the west gate. Plus he gets a special vector into Andrews anytime day or night. He'll be taking the President over to the White House."

The gathering of agents, officers, airmen and sailors from the FBI, the Air Force, the Army, the Navy and the Coast Guard, plus a single agent of the KGB, watched respectfully as the huge 707 floated in for a landing on Runway 18 Right. Its tires kissed the tarmac in a puff of smoke and the aircraft rolled southward for nearly eight thousand feet before turning off onto a parallel taxiway. The flight from Alaska had taken nearly fifteen hours, counting the short diversion to Philadelphia.

Air Force One trundled across the ramp and stopped a few hundred yards from the gathering. The pilot, Colonel Fitzpatrick, killed the engines and the turbine whine died off. After a swarm of servicing vehicles had encircled the aircraft, a ladder truck was brought forward. Moments later, the forward passenger door swung open.

Accompanied by a retinue of Secret Service agents, President John F. Kennedy stepped out and squinted in the sunshine, then descended the stairs. A brisk wind had started and the President was clad in a gray overcoat, a dark hat covering his head.

He walked to the assembled men.

The base commander, Colonel Reinhardt, stepped forth to greet the Commander-in-Chief. Reinhardt saluted briskly and shook the President's hand, attempting to take charge of the situation. There was a brief exchange of pleasantries but the President seemed uninterested in attending to politics. He brushed Reinhardt off, saying:

"I just want to meet the people who saved the Nation's Capital from obliteration." Reinhardt was momentarily flustered, but recovered enough to take the President by the elbow and steer him toward Mike French and the others.

French had never met the President before. He appeared older and grayer than he looked on television. Who wouldn't be after the last few weeks? the agent thought. He shook the President's hand warmly, after introductions.

"So you're the one," Kennedy smiled. His eyes, though tired, twinkled. A flash of grin lit up his face as he pumped French's hand. "I suppose Hoover will be jealous now, Agent French. You know he doesn't like his employees upstaging him."

French smiled ruefully. "Yes, sir. I've heard that. I guess I'll have to be on my toes."

"You've done your country an incredible service, French. A pity I can't get the Medal of Honor for you. We'll have to think of a special decoration for what you and your team have done."

Mike French detested big emotional ceremonies. "A little time off would be the best reward, Mr. President. I could do with some leave now, maybe spend a few weeks at the beach."

"I'm sure I can persuade the Director to grant you some comp time," the President said.

French introduced the President to Jeff Torburg. He explained how the physicist had contributed to the effort, briefly outlining how the bomb search had been organized. Torburg hung back, adding that he had been contaminated by exposure to the leaking core of the Soviet bomb. He made sure the President didn't approach too closely.

"Torburg, your country owes you a debt we can never fully repay. Your detection device was indispensable in catching the Cuban commandos. I intend to see that any research funds needed to perfect it are made available right away. Frankly, we need it to keep abreast of atomic tests by our opponents. And your devotion to the Bomb Task Force is an example to every American. A year and a half ago, I told Americans to ask what they could do for their country. This is what I had in mind."

"Mr. President," Torburg said, holding his hands out, not knowing what to do with them, "I've spent a lot of time at Eniwetok in the Pacific the last five years, watching atom bombs go off. I know what they can do, the kind of effects they have. At Los Alamos, we design and build the things. We know why they're needed. But just between you and me, I'd be just as happy if we could get rid of every last one of 'em. Buggers are nasty and messy, if you ask me."

"Amen to that," Kennedy replied. "Someday soon, perhaps, we will." He turned to Alexei Maximov, nodding gravely at Mike French's introduction. French spent a few minutes, detailing all the things Maximov had done for the Task Force, all the risks he had taken. Kennedy grasped the Russian's hand warmly, with feeling. "You, especially, I wanted to meet."

"Mr. President," Maximov said, "in my country, you are often treated like a devil, to use an outmoded term. Now that we've met, I can return to my homeland and report that you really don't have any horns."

Kennedy laughed. The solemnity of the moment lifted. The President grasped the Russian's shoulder.

"Your country and mine will not long forget the events of the past two weeks, Mr. Maximov. I've just come from a meeting with Chairman Khrushchev, as you know. My country owes you a great debt, all of you, for the service you've rendered. As soon as I can, I'm going to recommend to the Chairman that you be rewarded appropriately for your courageous actions here today."

"Thank you, Mr. President."

To the gathering at large, the President added, "Perhaps, this kind of cooperation can be a model for future joint endeavors between our two countries. I know your efforts and your work together haven't been without friction and disagreements. That's normal. But you made the effort to work together and you made it succeed. That's what counts. Perhaps, using what you've accomplished, we can pull back from the brink of nuclear conflict and end this Cold War between East and West."

Maximov replied, "My personal wishes are for the same, Mr. President. However, there are many steps to be taken before our countries can truly trust each other."

Kennedy acknowledged the difficulties. "Then let today be the first step." With that, and some final handshakes all around, the President headed off to Marine One. Moments later, the huge Sikorsky lifted into the sky, bearing the President away from Andrews, toward the south lawn of the White House.

11-8-62, Thursday

Moscow

3:00 p.m.

The St. Peter's Ballroom was glittering with glass and crystal, decked with roses and poinsettias and chrysanthemums, as the First Secretary Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev lifted a toast to the German premier.

"Slava narodny," he said. "To our people, arm in arm, building world socialism together. Bulwarks against the imperialists and capitalists." A chorus of ayes and clinking glasses echoed around the banquet table. The assembled dignitaries of the Soviet Presidium and the East German Communist Party solemnly tossed back their vodkas, the seventh such toast in the past half hour. Khrushchev smiled crookedly at Walter Ulbricht, the German party leader, and then, a bit unsteady, still jetlagged from the trip to Alaska, sat down heavily in his seat.

You sniveling little puppy, Khrushchev muttered to himself, though he smiled a fixed smile as the photographer's flashbulbs popped for the hundredth time, recording socialist solidarity for all to see. Suckling at the tits of Mother Russia. The sooner we grab Berlin and kick the imperialists in the nose, the sooner we can be done with spineless trash like you. Until then--

His fantasies were momentarily interrupted by a messenger, who passed a telegram note to the First Secretary. Khrushchev extracted his reading glasses and scanned the page, frowning more and more deeply as he read.

The message was printed on the red-bordered paper reserved for Defense and Security matters of the highest priority. This one was from Semichastny, still holed up at Moscow Center a kilometer away from the Kremlin. The head of State Security had just received an urgent telegram from the rezidentura at the Embassy in Washington. The news was flooding out of the American capital, on all the wires and radio and TV broadcasts:

The last remaining warhead, the K-5 device, had been located at Andrews Air Force Base and disarmed. President Kennedy had arrived safely an hour ago and congratulated all involved in the case, especially one Alexei Nikolaevich Maximov.

Khrushchev squinted up at another round of photographers' flashbulbs going off. His head was spinning. The ornate chandeliers of St Peter's Ballroom seemed to sway and spin about the room. Faces swirled about him--Ulbricht, Gromyko, Brezhnev, Ulbricht again. His face felt hot and flushed.

"Comrade, First Secretary, are you all right?"

He felt strong hands helping him back up. Presently, his eyes focused on a familiar face--it was Brezhnev. Brezhnev the traitor.

"What happened?"

Brezhnev's face was the picture of concern. "You almost fell off the chair, Nikita Sergeyevich. Perhaps, the long flight--"

Khrushchev straightened up abruptly. To show weakness, especially now in front of Ulbricht and the Germans, and be helped by Brezhnev\--that could never be allowed. Brezhnev would use it against him...more ammunition for the coming showdown.

"I'm fine," the First Secretary said. "But I've received an urgent message. I have some business I must attend to. Only a short while. Leonid Illych--" he waved generously at Brezhnev--"why don't you take over the ceremonial duties here? Show our colleagues from Berlin what Russian hospitality really means. I'll be back in an hour."

Dubious, suspicious, Brezhnev could do little but agree. Khrushchev excused himself, patting Ulbricht on the shoulder like he would his own terrier Belka, and let Fyodor gently guide him across the parquet floor of the ballroom to the exit. Once outside, Khrushchev shook his head.

Both stolen warheads had been recovered. That was good news. And both warheads were now in the hands of the Americans. That was bad news. Khrushchev was realistic, despite the pounding headache that too much food and vodka and an eight-hour flight across Siberia had given him. The extra security he had assigned to the investigation, the strict orders he had issued that, under no circumstances were the Americans to have any length of time to examine Soviet bombs at close range, had been violated. He was angry, worried, and afraid. Brezhnev and the plotters that hadn't been rounded up yet could use this error against him. He could hear them now: first you let the Cubans steal our bombs, then the Americans get them. Why should we trust you with the security of our beloved Rodina?

It was an accusation for which he had no defense.

He knew he would have to move fast, to repair the damage, to get the upper hand, both with the Cubans and the Americans again, to show them that Russia wouldn't tolerate any threats. He had an understanding with Kennedy, about the missiles, about standing down forces, about getting the stolen bombs back, about not invading Cuba. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with that. The very fact that Kennedy had agreed not to invade Cuba, agreed in person on that American ship less than a day ago, was a great victory, wasn't it? Such a promise would never have been made before Operation Anadyr brought the missiles to Cuba.

The Americans would have to be reminded of their promises.

When the Presidium saw the promises Kennedy had made, they wouldn't listen to Brezhnev any longer. Then maybe the spineless toad from the Ukraine could be flushed from the Party once and for all.

Castro, however, was another matter altogether. Just thinking of the man raised the First Secretary's blood pressure and heartbeat. Khrushchev knew he still had one final duty to perform.

He ordered his ZIL limousine to be brought around to the front entrance of the Grand Kremlin Palace. Inside the car, as the First Secretary's convoy wheeled out of the Kremlin through the Sandunovsky Gate, Khrushchev rang up Semichastny on the private radiotelephone and ordered the KGB chief to get their "guest" ready for a visit. The drive over to Dzerzhinsky Square took only ten minutes. Khrushchev's ZIL entered the central courtyard of the mustard-yellow building and parked by a bare stone and brick entrance, marked overhead with a neon red star gleaming dully in the late afternoon gloom.

The First Secretary met the Chairmen of State Security at the private first floor elevator cage. Semichastny's office was a corner suite on the building's fifth floor. Instead, the elevator went down, three levels, creaking on ancient rails as it descended. At the bottom, bright cream-colored linoleum smelled strongly of disinfectant and floor wax.

Semichastny, accompanied by three armed officers of the Second Chief Directorate, responsible for internal security about the country, led Khrushchev through a maze of tiled corridors, through two barred doors to a special complex of prison cells along one wing. The wing housed a single prisoner.

Raul Castro was reading a small volume when Khrushchev appeared in the doorway to the cell. The barred door was unlocked and swung aside. The First Secretary and the Chairman of State Security entered the cell. Castro remained propped up on the bare mattress, his back to the wall, book in hand.

"Your little operation in America has failed," Khrushchev told the Cuban. "The bombs you stole at Bejucal have been recovered. All your commandos have been killed. One agent is in custody in Miami."

Castro put the small volume down on the mattress. He looked up through reading spectacles. "Comrade, you didn't come down here to tell me that."

"True enough, "Khrushchev admitted. "I came to tell you that you're to be released today. You're going to be flown back to Cuba, courtesy of Aeroflot and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A twelve hour flight. We've regained landing privileges from the Africans. You have one stopover in Conakry, Guinea."

"Ah," said Castro, "first-class treatment from fraternal allies. That's why you've provided such luxurious accommodations for me, eh?"

Khrushchev said, "I understand how you feel. But it was necessary. I had to get Fidel's attention. I had to persuade him how serious the situation was."

Castro snorted and sat up on the edge of the mattress. "Cuba has lived for centuries in the shadow of the Yanqui oppressor. We know, we feel in our bones, things you can only imagine. You Russians have no idea what it's like to be treated as second-class citizens in your own country. To see nightclubs and casinos and stores and not be allowed to shop there. To be denied entrance to certain streets and neighborhoods, because the Norteamericanos live there--" Castro spat on the cell floor. "You know nothing of these things."

"And you know nothing of nuclear bombs and missiles. It was essential that we remind Fidel of that."

"Fidel wants what we all want...freedom for Cuba. Independence from the nortes. A place at the table of nations, and respect for our views. For what we have suffered."

Khrushchev said, "Comrade, you're a free man. Shall we go?"

Castro didn't move. "No Cuban is truly free, even today. How can you speak of freedom when the revolution is threatened? That's what Operation Moncada was all about, what Fidel is all about... freedom from the threats of the imperialists. Maybe we didn't plan Moncada well...perhaps, a smaller organization. Better knowledge of the enemy. We have agents in Florida...the DGI has a strong network of influence there. But not in other cities. That's where we failed."

Khrushchev was sympathetic, though still annoyed with the Cubans. They were like children. "To steal atomic bombs is a serious matter, a very serious matter. To threaten the Americans, without considering the consequences, is suicidal. What do you gain, blowing up Washington or New York, if Cuba is destroyed? Or the world is plunged into atomic war?"

Castro was grim. "Revenge. Some small amount of justice."

Khrushchev shook his head. "In the hereafter, perhaps. Not on this earth. No--" he folded his arms behind him, pacing like a professor lecturing a student, --"we've all made mistakes. Moncada was a mistake. Cuba is not ready for atomic weapons. Let the Soviet people provide this protection. It's our socialist duty. We want to nurture any revolution of the people. We too have learned lessons from recent events."

Castro smiled. "The teacher learns from the student?"

"From hard and bitter experience, comrade. The best teacher of all. No, Anadyr was the right solution, I'm convinced of it. Of course it was a risk...putting missiles in Cuba, under the noses of the Americans. I knew there was a risk. I never denied that. But the strategic possibilities, for our army, the need to defend a newborn revolution, the way a mother defends her young--that we couldn't ignore. We too made mistakes. We should have moved faster. We should have had better security. The damned American U-2s caught us with our pants down--we didn't expect that. We should have. Next time, we won't make the same mistakes. We Russians are good students."

Raul Castro stretched, started to gathering his things. He puttered about the cell for a few moments, collecting a jacket, a few books and pamphlets, some shoes. He bundled the items in a cloth sling, made from bed linen. Then he sized up Khrushchev, Semichastny, and the Lubyanka guards, adjusting his glasses.

"I doubt Fidel will ever really trust Soviet intentions or offers again, after this."

Khrushchev seemed pained by the prospect. "We've given you billions of rubles in aid. Material we badly need here. Soviet peoples sacrifice a lot for their socialist brothers. How can you, of all people, doubt our intentions?"

"Fidel once told me he agreed to host your missiles and your atomic bombs for one reason: to give Cuba the big stick she's always needed. You see, we live in a neighborhood with a bully. Valenton, we say. A big, swaggering bully. In such a neighborhood, it pays to have a big stick. Fidel wanted the biggest stick he could get. A stick that would make the bully take notice. You Soviets gave us that stick. Then you took it away."

"Atomic bombs can't be used like a stick."

"No?" said Raul. "Do you not threaten the Yanquis with your atomic bombs? Was that not the precise purpose of your Operation Anadyr? No, the real answer is that you don't trust us. Russians trust only Russians. That's why the revolution in Cuba, the revolution throughout Latin America, will proceed on its own terms, without help from Moscow."

Khrushchev said, "All revolutions have their own dynamic. They're living, breathing organisms. I'm certain that the time will come when Cuba and the Soviet Union will stand together in the vanguard of socialist peoples everywhere, leading the struggle against the imperialist enemy."

"Yet you have taken away the very means of conducting that struggle, Comrade Khrushchev. Operation Moncada could have dealt the imperialists a mortal blow."

Khrushchev offered to carry Castro's bundle, but he kept his belongings to himself. They went down the tiled corridor, through the barred doors, to the elevator cage.

"Listen to me, comrade," Khrushchev said, as they waited for the elevator. "Lenin taught us a thing about timing. The Russian Revolution originally failed. Did you know that? In March 1916. The Bolsheviks were almost destroyed because they acted too soon, hastily, without preparation. It took the Great War and the German humiliation of the Tsar's armies to provide fertile ground for our revolution." The elevator came at last and they boarded. Khrushchev added:

"Your time will come. And, despite the present difficulties, please tell Comrade Fidel that we Soviets will be there beside you when it does come. He can count on us. Our Leninist revolution is a firm foundation for the glorious future to come. Cuba is invited."

They talked a few more minutes, at the ground floor entrance to the Lubyanka's cold stone courtyard. A light snow was falling outside. Castro mentioned his list of weapons needs and Khrushchev promised to review it carefully.

"You'll find us most generous, as we already have been. Come--" he placed a black fur shapka on the Cuban's bare head, then put an arm around Castro's shoulder, guiding him to the open doors of the ZIL waiting, exhaust swirling from its tailpipe, in the brisk wind. --"it's time for you to catch a plane. I have a message I want you to deliver to Fidel."

11-8-62, Thursday

Havana

6:30 p.m.

Fidel Castro stood rigidly at attention, in freshly pressed fatigues, black holster newly shined, as the procession of caskets passed by. Che Guevara stood with the Lider at the edge of the parade grounds behind the Marti Barracks at Camp Columbia. Castro saluted smartly as each casket, wrapped in the blue and white flag of the revolution, drawn slowly by horses on a flower-draped caisson, clopped across the pavement. Guevara and the rest of the General Staff: del Valle, de le Madrigo, Hernandez, stood with the Lider, solemn, still as death, while the fallen heroes passed by. At the end of the parade ground, where the path turned back toward the arch and statue of the Libertador himself, the blue-beret clad guerreros of the Brigada Rivera stood in parade formation, all in salute to their comrades in arms. From overhead, a rolling peal of thunder boomed, reverberating off the pavement.

The early evening military funeral was a time of heavy pain and anguish for Fidel Castro. These were his men, his brothers in the struggle. They had made the supreme sacrifice in the battle with the imperialists, one of many battles still to come, he was sure. He had decreed, in a radio address to the nation that very morning, that all Cubans who died in the latest invasion by the hated Yanqui Marines were soldiers in the war. All would be honored as soldiers, whatever their rank or status.

"We can do no less," Castro assured them. "Today, we will take the time to honor all those who took the fight to the heart of the enemy and bloodied the Yanqui nose."

It was the least that could be done, he told himself. Inwardly, Castro was by turns saddened by the deaths of so many, yet seething with anger. Operation Moncada, his precious, no--that wasn't quite true, was it? Not his...rather Rafael Ramirez's plan to bring the fight into America itself, had failed. Failed utterly. All agents killed. The atomic bombs liberated from the Russians captured. A single operative remained behind, to the chagrin of the General Staff and the Direcion General de Inteligencia. Miguel Munoz remained alive but that wouldn't last long.

Castro had approved the DGI's plan to send an assassin to kill Munoz before he could talk anymore. The traitor had betrayed all of them, spilling information that helped the Yanquis smother Moncada in the field. Such treachery wouldn't go unpunished.

The Presidente knew perfectly well that the Soviets had released his brother Raul. For that he was grateful, though not for personal reasons. Raul was needed. The FAR needed his guidance, his firm hand. They had performed well enough against the Marines, with luck, but the next time, they might not be so fortunate. And Castro, despite his soothing assurances to the nation, was sure there would be a next time. As long as Kennedy was President, the Yanquis would come again.

Fidel Castro was solemn as the last of the gun carriages rolled slowly by. Instinctively, he snapped a smart salute, making sure, out of the corner of his eyes, that the officers of the General Staff, did the same. It was a warm, humid, drizzly day and the Presidente was filled with emotion. Tears tickled at the corners of his eyes but he stood firm. He did not shed tears at the loss of life. Revolutions were like that, messy things. Rather, he was saddened at the lost opportunities.

We could have delivered a mortal blow to the imperialistas. We had the means. We had a plan. But luck wasn't with us. There has to be another time\--

After the final casket had passed beneath the stern gaze of Jose Marti's statue, Fidel Castro stepped to a bank of microphones. His words were short, firm, and broadcast to the nation over Radio CMQ. Beyond the microphones, assembled officers and guerreros numbered in the hundreds, in perfect parade ground formation. As he spoke, Castro looked around and saw familiar faces: Somoza, leading the 20th Infantry against the first Marine incursion at Esperanza; Lucano, head of the DGI, Comandante de Cuerpo Petrolinas, head of the DAFAAR, the Revolutionary Air Force, whose ancient planes had sunk a bandit freighter at the Bay of Pigs. All of them frozen like statues themselves, grief-stricken, waiting for his assurances about the future.

Castro spoke of securing the revolution. He spoke of honor and courage on all the battlefields to come. He spoke, angrily jabbing at unseen foes, of never yielding to the Yanqui aggressor.

"We have won our independence from Batista and the American criminals at great cost, companeros! We must be ever vigilant! We must be prepared to pay any price to protect the revolution! Viva la libre!!"

His speech lasted a brief hour, an emotional hour. When he was done, he left the podium and the microphones and ducked into the Barracks. There, in a corner of the common room, its paneled walls lined with plaques and pictures of great battles, Castro saw Jorge Lucano. Lucano was head of the DGI. He was a small, furtive man, balding at the top, black moustache twitching like a rodent's.

"A word with the Presidente?" Lucano asked. "There is a matter of vital importance..."

Castro beckoned the DGI chief to come, waving off the others, and they went up to the base commander's office on the second floor. Castro sank into the leather chair, which squeaked, and extracted a Panatella, which he sniffed, while Lucano fidgeted in the doorway.

"Come, come, sit down, companero. You have something for me?"

Lucano clutched a small briefcase tightly. He laid it down on the desk, and opened it, withdrawing a sheaf of papers. He wet his fingers with his lips as he turned several pages.

"Si, Presidente, reports from Florida."

"Ah," said Castro, "our little talking bird Munoz. What can you report? He's dead?"

"Soon, Presidente, soon. Our agents are moving into position now. The Americans have him well guarded."

"Where is he now?"

Lucano consulted some pages. "At the moment, he is being held in the Miami City Jail. Third floor, in special isolation, with a twenty-four hour watch. We have informants among the jail staff who know this."

"And your plan?"

Lucano was keenly aware of the Presidente's sharp eye, following every movement of his hand. He willed his fingers to be still, finally folding them together in something like a prayer grasp.

"Munoz is scheduled to be moved to a federal prison in Virginia within a few days. During this move, our agent will do his job. Before Munoz reaches the prison, he will be dead. Shot, at long-range, along the highway. We already know most of the route he will take."

"Good, good, excellent," Castro rubbed his hands together. "I will have to let Hector know about this unfortunate incident. He'll be upset that his cousin was murdered while in custody of the Yanqui police. He was proud of Miguel, the cousin who'd done so well in America." Castro's face darkened. "But we can't leave anything behind. Moncada was betrayed and Munoz had to be the source. The Revolution is merciless with traitors."

"Of course," Lucano said. "It's the only way." He unfolded his hands, then pulled out another piece of paper.

"Something else, Jorge?"

"Yes, Presidente, another matter worthy of your attention. If I may--"

Castro finally lit the cigar and puffed for a few moments. He leaned back in the creaky chair, folded his arms, and regarded the portrait of himself on the wall. "Please, go on."

"Well, Presidente, I have learned from other sources in America, of a small organization, it has no name, no apparent leader as yet, but it's something you should know about."

"What about it?"

"This group of men are capable of bringing the same threat to President Kennedy that we have lived under the last three years. Smaller than Moncada, not as well organized, it's composed of only Americans at the moment. My source has made contact with several of the members."

"And--?

"And they are asking for our help."

Castro sat up abruptly, curious. He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. "Go on, Jorge."

Lucano licked his lips. "My source has met several, shall we say, acquaintances of his original contact. He met them in Texas and New Orleans. Apparently, they're smugglers--guns, drugs, prostitutes, the usual stuff--but the acquaintanceship goes back a long way. They have told our source of certain...shall we say...other individuals in Texas. Individuals who are quite upset with John F. Kennedy. I am told that these individuals harbor great animosity against the President. They would like to remove him from office, by violence if necessary. I am told they have some ideas they would like to discuss. How should I respond, Senor Presidente?"

Castro mulled over the idea, the possibilities. He stroked his beard for a moment, chewing on the cigar. He took a deep breath.

"Tell your acquaintances that we would be interested in further talks."
CHAPTER 24

11-8-62, Thursday

Washington, D.C.

9:00 p.m.

President John F. Kennedy adjusted the pages on the desk while Evelyn Lincoln fussed interminably with his hair, the coloring rouge on his cheeks, and the blue and white tie Jackie had picked for the televised address. Kennedy gritted his teeth, spying his grimacing face in a small monitor in the corner of the Oval Office.

"Evelyn, you're making me look like a statue. I'm stiff enough as it is."

Mrs. Lincoln backed off. "Sorry, Mr. President, I was only trying to fix a shiny spot on your chin. And your tie was crooked--"

"I know, I know. And my hair's not straight. When is my hair ever straight?"

"Thirty seconds, Mr. President," called Robert Fleming, of CBS. He was the pool media advisor for the week again, as he had been on the night of October 22, when the President had made his last speech to the nation. "You'll see the text on the prompter."

"I'm letting Mrs, Lincoln address the nation tonight," Kennedy retorted. There were laughs around the room. The President's secretary got the message, and finished tidying up the desk. She bent down to whisper in his ear:

"Smile, Mr. President. And don't blink so fast." She disappeared through a side door and was gone.

Don't blink so fast? John Kennedy wondered how he was supposed to achieve that?

"Ten seconds, Mr. President. Watch my hand."

Kennedy sat up as straight as his sore back would allow and grasped the papers. He didn't need them. He'd done the speech himself, on the flight back from Alaska, and polished it up after meeting the Bomb Task Force investigators at Andrews. He knew the words by heart.

Fleming's arm came down and his finger pointed at the President. At the same instant, a screen over the monitor lit up: ON THE AIR.

The prompter stared scrolling. Kennedy ignored it.

"Good evening, my fellow Americans. A few weeks ago, when I last talked to you, a grave crisis was developing in the Caribbean. As you know, the Soviet Union attempted to introduce offensive, long-range ballistic missiles into Cuba. They did this despite repeated public assurances that the weapons entering Cuba were for defensive purposes only. This was a situation which the United States could not tolerate, a situation which seriously threatened our security and position in the Western Hemisphere.

"We were firm and resolute in our response, along with our allies. On Sunday, October 28, Chairman Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would dismantle and remove all its offensive missiles and return them to the Soviet Union. This was neither a victory for the United States nor a defeat for the Soviets or for Cuba. Rather, this response was a victory for the peace of the world. I commend Chairman Khrushchev for the statesmanlike manner in which he decided to remove the cause of this threat to mankind.

"Unfortunately, additional threats were developing, even as the United States and the Soviet Union were negotiating the details of the missile withdrawal and how it would be monitored. Sometime during that last weekend, a Cuban commando unit forcibly entered the storage base where Soviet atomic warheads were being housed. Two Soviet nuclear warheads were taken. I must add, by way of explanation, that the Soviets were guarding this compound with armed force and the garrison suffered numerous casualties in the incident. The Cuban commandos, who were clearly trained and supervised by the highest levels of the Cuban government, seized the two warheads and subsequently managed to smuggle the warheads into the United States.

"As you know by now, a large and extensive law enforcement investigation, involving many agencies of the U.S. Government as well as our armed forces, was initiated to locate and neutralize the commandos and the grave threat they posed. Tonight, I can report to you that the last of the warheads has been located and seized by our law enforcement officials before it could be used. The Cuban commandos who brought such terror and confusion to our country these last few weeks have been killed. Most importantly, I emphasize that the aggressive threat launched by Fidel Castro against the United States and the American people has been nullified. After many days and nights of panic and suffering, the crisis is finally over. This Second Cuban Missile Crisis, like the first, was a deliberate attempt to threaten and intimidate the United States and its allies into a course of action at odds with our stated policy. It failed.

"Let no one misunderstand our resolve here. The United States stands for liberty and freedom. As I've said before, we shall bear any burden to secure the blessings of liberty and freedom, for ourselves and our children, and for our allies around the world. God willing, the fight for freedom will go forth now and our adversaries should never doubt either our courage or our willingness to defend our freedoms."

The President then detailed a brief chronology of events following the announcement by Khrushchev over Radio Moscow that the missiles would be withdrawn. He described how the Cuban commandos moved two Soviet atomic bombs into the United States, how they eventually wound up in New York and Washington and how Castro's ultimatum two days ago made the search for the bombs critical and urgent, necessitating the partial evacuation of key Government officials to protected shelters outside the Nation's Capital. He expressed regrets for the problems caused by the presence of Army and National Guard troops in both cities, but insisted that maintaining public order in the face of such a grave threat was a leader's paramount responsibility.

Kennedy continued his address, warming to the subject. He laid out the role of the Soviets in assisting the investigation. He described the secret Lisbon meeting, the cooperative arrangements, and the vital intelligence the Soviets furnished, both about the warheads themselves and the Cuban operation.

"Without the assistance of Soviet law enforcement and intelligence agencies," the President added, "our search for and seizure of these devices would have gone much slower. There is a possibility that we would not have been successful."

The President described the treason of General Haley and Admiral Stone, without naming either officer, citing certain unnamed elements in America's armed forces who wished to take matters into their own hands, disobey duly constituted authority and whose treachery cost lives and nearly led to a nuclear catastrophe. "Under these men," Kennedy explained, " unauthorized combat operations were launched against Cuba, exacerbating an already tense situation. American and Cuban and possibly even Soviet forces engaged in combat for a brief time before the necessary orders could be issued to pull back. This exchange led to a nuclear barrage of low-yield atomic artillery on the beaches of northwest Cuba two days ago, a barrage in which there were many needless casualties on both sides. The situation was extremely delicate for many hours, but calm has been restored and American forces have disengaged. Rest assured, the full weight of American justice will be brought to bear on the men who planned and authorized this action."

"In our country," Kennedy warned, thinking momentarily of the difficulties he had had with his own service Chiefs, "military operations are subordinate to civilian authority. It must be this way. Otherwise, we stand in danger of losing the very freedoms our soldiers and sailors have fought and died for."

"At this time," the President went on, "the United States and Cuba are in negotiation through intermediaries in Mexico City, on measures to ensure that these types of actions can never again escalate to such a crisis level again. Miscalculations caused by such intimidating tactics, such saber-rattling as it is sometimes called, can have the most serious consequences. Both sides have learned this hard lesson the last few weeks. In truth, both the United States and the Soviet Union were compelled, as a result of numerous misunderstandings and unauthorized activities, to move once again to the very brink of war, less than two weeks after the Soviets had agreed to remove their missiles. Such misunderstandings and miscommunications led directly to accidents, potentially catastrophic exchanges between our two forces, in Berlin and in the Atlantic. We must use these examples to work tirelessly on better methods of preventing such calamities.

"Chairman Khrushchev and I have just concluded a quick summit meeting near Alaska, in an effort to defuse the growing tensions between our countries. We have agreed to support mutual initiatives, between our two countries and in the United Nations, to ensure that legitimate self-defense activities are not misinterpreted, and to ensure that both sides can exert better control over far-flung military forces and military activities. I am reminded of several historical examples in which complex systems created by men have somehow escaped the control of men. The First World War is a classic example, in which systems for mobilizing troops and equipping them for war were so rigid that, once set in motion, they could not be stopped.

"We must never let ourselves become victims of such complex systems."

"I have called the events of the last two weeks a 'Second Missile Crisis.' I would like to end this address by focusing on the lessons that need to be learned, by the United States, the Soviets and the Cubans, to avoid further crises in the future. Among these lessons, one paramount need is evident: there is a need to provide for a faster, more direct line of communication between the highest levels of Government in the United States and the Soviet Union. Accordingly, and as a result of the summit meeting with Chairman Khrushchev yesterday, the U.S. and the Soviet Union will enter into immediate discussion on the characteristics of an effective direct communication link between Washington and Moscow, a sort of 'hot line,' if you will. This is a critical need, borne out by the many hours of delays encountered in sending and receiving messages back and forth.

"Additionally, there is an important lesson to be learned about what it takes to have better control over our strategic forces and about how effective and timely our alert and response strategy and procedures are, especially to crises that develop quickly and suddenly. The Nation has a well-funded civil defense effort underway now, but more needs to be done. Civil defense is more than air-raid drills and fallout shelters, though these are important. All Americans can contribute. You can contribute to this effort by making every effort to respond to national crisis with reason and concern for your fellow Americans, by not hoarding essential supplies, by obeying the requirements of local authorities trying to cope with any emergency. Too many of our citizens have been injured or even killed in the panic-buying at grocery stores, or the mass evacuations in our largest cities. We must have procedures that are easy to understand, make sense, and that have your support and cooperation. Most importantly, I ask all Americans to be willing to sacrifice for our common good. The struggle we face will be a long one. I'm confident that Americans, as we always have, will be willing to bear whatever the cost needed to ensure the eventual victory of freedom and liberty.

"Most of all," the President concluded, "this second crisis, along with the first, reminds us just how important trust and cooperation are even in a world of men flying in space and devastating thermonuclear weapons. It is the human element which failed, not the technical. And it is the human element of the equation which must regain the upper hand. For, if the human element does not re-assert control over our vast and destructive forces, we have no future.

"Death and ruin will be our children and none of us will live to see the next century. It is to this end, the end of ensuring that we humans have a future after all, a future of freedom and prosperity, that I dedicate the remainder of my Presidency.

"Good night, my fellow Americans, and God bless America."

11-9-62, Friday

Aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima (LPH-2)

9:30 p.m.

Corporal Larry Kleiner picked dejectedly at the last crumbs of his chocolate cake and finally dropped the fork on the plate with a clatter. He sat morosely in his seat, wishing to God he was anywhere but where he was. The crew's mess on the 04 level of the Iwo was crowded as usual this Friday night, and a buzz of excitement stirred through the men as they finished a tasty meal of "sliders and fries", washed down with plenty of coffee and soda and approximately seventy-five pounds of the best chocolate cake this side of Mexico.

A good bit of ribbing and kidding had attended the late evening mess, as the troops of the 1st Marines, Bravo Company, 5th Regiment, late of Camp Pendleton, California, chowed down the burgers like men starved for weeks. Kleiner had found himself wedged in with several corporals from his original training platoon, among them Steve Bernard, now XO to the best damned mortar squad in the whole Bravo 1-5 outfit.

Bernard, unwilling to let any of the chocolate cake go uneaten, had elbowed Kleiner in the ribs the moment he'd dropped his fork

"Hey, Nazi, you gonna leave that for the rats or what?"

Kleiner chewed over a greasy french fry left over from the meal and finally answered, twirling the fry around in his mouth like a limp cigarette.

"I might. What's it to you, Barnyard?"

Bernard shrugged. "Just asking, that's all. Wouldn't want all Cookie's labors to go to waste tonight. He'd be crushed, you know, if he saw you hadn't finished your meal."

Kleiner ignored him. "I'm just depressed, that's all. Leave me alone, will you?"

"Well, shit, take a fuckin' APC, then," Bernard prescribed. The APC was Marine slang for 'all-purpose cure,' basically an aspirin. "Why are you so depressed anyway? We're getting out of dodge, leaving the tamales behind and heading for the Canal. Few days drill and we're outta there too. Scuttlebut says we're heading back to Pendleton."

Kleiner slurped up the last french fry and finished off his soda. He belched and turned sideways, leaned his cheek on an arm, and squinted at Bernard, studying the corporal like he was an exotic plant.

"Barnyard, what'd you think of that film we just saw?"

Bernard shrugged. The close-circuit television system in the mess hall had just finished its third run of President Kennedy's address to the nation the previous night.

"I don't know. What the hell am I supposed to think? The usual bullshit, I guess."

"Exactly," Kleiner said, punctuating his words with an elbow on the plate. The plate scooted halfway across the table, nearly landing in the lap of a BAR man from Second Platoon. Scowls and grumbles were exchanged. "That's my point. I don't know about you, but I got some real heartburn with that guy."

"Like what?"

"Well," Kleiner said, "like the way he left the Marines high and dry on that beach at Tarata. Just like the fucking Bay of Pigs, man. Our buddies were nuked and we didn't do squat to help 'em. Just turned tail and ran."

Bernard gave it some thought. "I don't like it either, but hell, orders are orders. You don't join the Marines to be in a debating society."

"True enough and I sure as hell didn't join to be hung out to dry by spineless politicians when the going gets tough. That ain't the Marine way. Somebody's got to do something. This shit's gotta stop."

Bernard snorted. "Like you're going to order the Commander-in-Chief around--what the hell's eating you, anyway, Nazi? We got good food, pleasant surroundings, sterling conversation, Lieutenant's got permission to screen The Longest Day tonight...what more could you want?"

Kleiner sat back in his seat and folded his arms. "To get even, that's what I want. Show Kennedy and the other scumbags that real Americans don't fold the tent when it starts raining."

A buddy of Bernard had overheard the conversation. Sergeant Kubek, Bravo 3-5 "top" leaned over and poked Kleiner in the side.

"You think the politicians are assholes, that right, Corporal?"

Kleiner closed his eyes and nodded, dreaming 'John Wayne' dreams. "That's right, Sarge. They're all shit for brains, especially Kennedy. Fucker's a worthless beanbag from Boston, if you ask me. I'd like to fix his lips for good."

Kubek said, "You're not the only one, Kleiner. Pipe down, will you? Lieutenant'll overhear you." Kubek slid his chair a little closer, talking in a low voice right to the back of Kleiner's head. "Don't turn around. Just watch the movie and shut up."

Kleiner was quiet, while Kubek explained a plan.

"Okay, Nazi, here's the scoop. I feel the same way you do. A lot of us do. I got me some buddies, ex-Gyrenes, who want to get Kennedy for leaving Marines to die like that in Cuba. Hell, he chickened out at the Bay of Pigs. He chickened out at Tarata. Let's face it: the man's just a chicken."

Kleiner's eyes popped open. "What do you mean 'get Kennedy'?"

Kubek was evasive. "Just what I said. Make him pay. Personally. What he did was treason, dumping our buddies like that. A man's gotta suffer the consequences when he makes a bad decision. And he's made a bunch of 'em."

Kleiner liked the sound of it. "So how do you get in touch with your buddies? Where are they?"

Kubek's voice lowered to a whisper. "Are you in? For real?"

Kleiner snorted. "Shit, yeah, man, I'm in."

Kubek said. "They're in Texas, Dallas area. I'll give 'em a call when we hit the beach at Pendleton."

11-9-62, Friday

Washington, D.C.

9:45 p.m.

The restaurant was located on Maine Avenue, a few blocks east of 9th Street, not far from the Capitol Yacht Club where the Cubans had seized the Big Easy and made their initial escape from the Federal Triangle. Hobart's was the kind of place that was hard to find and harder to leave, once you got there. Built on columns overlooking the marinas of the Washington Channel, it featured hard-shell crab and lobsters, dozens of beers from all over the world, and the best damn rum-cake bread this side of Mount Vernon.

It was one of Mike French's personal shrines to good living.

The FBI agent was determined that Alexei Maximov's final night in the States would be a memorable one, a better one than any of them had seen in recent days. He picked the Russian up in front of the Soviet Embassy on 16th Street, glaring back at the armed sentry who signed Maximov out and scowled at the both of them like it was prom night or something. French drove them to Hobart's in his wife Julie's green '59 Rambler, nicks and dents and all and parked in the back garage underneath the restaurant. Ten minutes later, they had a booth right by the huge picture window. Out on the Channel, several yachts were drifting by toward their slips, their masts and rigging lit up like Christmas decorations. Beyond the trees of East Potomac Park, forming a small peninsula off the Potomac, powerful floodlights swept the dark skies, the cones occasionally catching circling helicopters maneuvering for a landing at one of the Pentagon's many helipads.

French ordered them both beers and shrimp.

They talked amicably enough for awhile, picking their way around sensitive areas like Bureau procedures and State Security regulations, discussing the particulars of what everyone was now calling the atomic bomb case, the Second Cuban Missile Crisis. When the shrimp was gone, Mike French munched on loaf after loaf of Hobart's rum-cake bread, waiting for their entrees. He'd decided on a plate full of hard-shell Chesapeake crabs. Maximov, for his part, had opted for the Atlantic cod and herring.

Dinner was easy, full of laughs, a few sad moments, and the growing realization, for both men, that this would be the last time they ever worked together.

"We are opponents, Michael," Maximov said. "Adversaries. The day may come when we meet again. If it does, we'll be on opposite sides of some operation. We worked well together but the struggle will go on. It has to."

"It's sad," said French. "I've learned a lot about working with 'the other side.' And as the President said, about trust too."

"We both have much to learn in that area."

"You know," French added, "when we first met at that meeting in Lisbon, I thought all Russians were the same: cruel, arrogant sons of bitches just itching to hurt people."

Maximov chuckled. "We Russians are certain that Americans are all cowboys, shooting up the town. Or maybe like your gangsters."

"Alex, I'll be honest. I've had my doubts about working with Russians on this case. From the very beginning. In New York, when Kudinov made that assault on the ambulance, at that point, I was ready to kick every last one of you off the case, agreement or not. I wasn't sure who's side you were on."

"There are no sides in this struggle," Maximov said. "Only the living or dead. Today, we live. Let us work to make that as true for tomorrow."

"You really think we'll never cross paths again?"

Maximov shrugged, downing the rest of his Schlitz. French poured his glass full again from the pitcher, their third pitcher of the evening.

"That is hard to say. But we should be realistic. We are enemies, Michael, you and me. Temporarily allied together in this case but enemies still. I'm a dedicated Communist. I believe my side will be victorious in the end. I work for that end. I'm sworn, by my oath, to do everything in my power to bring that end closer."

"Too bad," French said. ""cause you're wrong, Alex. Your system is wrong. It'll never last. Someday, some way, your people will throw it off. People are basically the same everywhere. Look at me. I'm a typical American. I got a car, a wife, two daughters I love. I got a house in the suburbs. A barbecue in the backyard. Once a year, we go to the beach. Everybody wants those things. Even Russians. Maybe not quite the same things, but everybody has the same desires."

Maximov shook his head. "You know nothing of Russia, my friend. No, you are quite mistaken. Capitalism will fall, of that I'm very sure. It will fall of its own rot and decay and corruption. Capitalism is full of internal contradictions and no system that oppresses most of the people for the pleasure of a few can ever last. History will show I'm right."

"We should make a date, shouldn't we? Come back here in twenty or thirty years. See who's right and who's wrong."

"Ah, by then, all will be changed. You and I will be gone. We'll be swept away like ancient cobwebs, remnants of the past."

"Jesus, Alex, are you Russians always so morose when you get drunk?"

Maximov smiled faintly. "Not morose, as you say. But we know history."

French decided to change the subject. "I guess you'll be taking plenty of notes back to Russia. Bureau stuff. How we investigate cases. Our methods of operations, that sort of stuff."

Maximov tapped the side of his head. "It's all here, my friend. It's odd, though how American police follow procedure so much. You have procedures for everything: securing a crime scene, conducting surveillance, developing leads as you call them, interviewing suspects, disarming bombs. You cannot cook without a menu. Yet the results often differ."

"We like rules, I guess. Bureaucracy makes the bosses happy. Russians have rules too."

"Oh, we have many rules. Far too many. But police work, intelligence work and investigations are not so encumbered. In America, your laws are rules you don't wish to change. You follow them, worship them, like slaves. In Russia, we are more creative. In my country, the laws are not like some menu that must be followed to the letter. When we cook, we improvise, we try different methods and techniques, we throw in different ingredients and mix them differently. Sometimes, the results are bad, very bad. But sometimes they are very good."

"My wife cooks like that," French admitted. "A pinch of this, a dash of that. I guess in my country, we think of laws as kind of like a compass. You steer by them."

Maximov said, "In Russia, the Party and the Leadership steers. Men make the decisions. Laws serve men, not the other way around."

French picked through the last of the crabs, dropping bits of shell into a bucket. He licked his fingers. "Alex, if we ever run into each other again on some case, remind me not to discuss politics with you. It's too depressing."

Maximov stared down at the half-eaten fillet of cod. "I suppose it is, Michael. Russians love to be depressed. In any case, this Cold War, as you call it, will go on. You will spy on us, try to steal out secrets, as you've done with the atomic bombs the Cubans provided. You will try to gain advantage. And we will do the same."

French nodded, somewhat sobered at the prospect. "Cold War....it was nice to have a little thaw for awhile, wasn't it. Alex?"

"Yes?"

"You've never told me how you became a spy. What drove you into this line of work anyway?"

Maximov smiled ruefully. "I was a counterrevolutionary, Michael. I saw too much one day."

"What?"

The Russian laughed. "It's true. As a child, we lived in Abramtsevo. It's a suburb of Moscow. My best friend then was my brother Slava. One day--it was in the summer, 1932, I think, Slava and I had taken a bus into the center of the town. It was a Saturday. We were going to a cinema when we saw something that would change our lives forever. A few blocks from the movie house, we had gotten off the bus and were tossing pebbles and crackers at some pigeons in the park near there. We both witnessed the Cheka--that's the secret police--make an arrest, right in front of the bus station. Several cars pulled up across from the park and some men in dark suits got out. They milled around the bus station for about ten minutes. The leader was a man with a long, black moustache, and a black fedora. Then, as we looked on, the men grabbed a departing bus passenger and flung him to the pavement. The old man was arrested and bundled into one of the cars. Not a single passerby said or did a thing. They all ignored the arrest as if it never happened. I thought this was rather odd. What if they weren't really police? What if the men were gangsters, Cossacks, even? Curious, I ran across the park to see better and to get a good description of the car. I was going to call the police."

"How old were you?"

Maximov thought. "Maybe ten years. Before I knew what was happening, I had been pushed into one of the cars myself. One of the men held me down by my neck on the floorboard of the car. It was a short drive. After awhile, I was put in an unmarked building a few blocks from the bus station. I was locked in a small room for several hours and had to pee in the worst way. Eventually I was allowed to relieve myself and placed back in the room. Several hours passed. It seemed like days. Before long, another man came in. I hadn't seen him before. He introduced himself as Major Poskribnikov.

"He was a major in the Cheka, as I said, the secret police. He questioned me about my background and what I was doing at the bus station. Truthfully, I had only run over to see what was happening. I was a boy. I was curious. Poskribnikov warned me to stay out of matters that didn't concern me. He added that the man they had arrested was a spy and a counterrevolutionary.

"The next hour was a most interesting time for me, Michael. I was still curious and I continued to ask questions. The Major answered some, didn't answer others. I guess he somehow became fond of me, in spite of himself, because he began to describe what it was like to work for the Cheka. The cases, the hours, the travel. It was all fascinating, even exotic for a small boy from Abramtsevo. Eventually, he released me and I left the building. The Major warned me that the life of a Cheka man was tough and at times dangerous. He added, though, that it was a good route to advancement in our country. After that day, I resolved to become a Cheka agent. Some boys wanted to become soldiers, like my brother Slava. He adored the Red Army, he couldn't sleep half the time thinking about it. Some wanted to become pilots or doctors or even gangsters. I wanted to be a Cheka agent. When I told my mother, she was appalled. She forbade me ever to speak of that again. Of course, that made me want to join the Cheka even more."

Mike French admitted there were more similarities than he cared to admit with his own life. "We bleed police blue, my wife tells me. I guess this driving fast, staking out the bad guys, spying and so forth is like a game. Like football. One side wins, one side loses. You're on a team. It's exciting and all. Deadly serious, in fact, but still a game. The game has rules. We both know what they are, even if they're not written down."

The Russian agreed. Maximov added, "I suppose it was Castro and the Cubans who didn't know the rules, didn't play by these rules you speak of."

"Amateurs," French snorted. "Damned dangerous but amateurs all the same. It's better working with professionals. Even if they are on the wrong team. Sometimes, I think maybe Khrushchev tried to bend the rules a bit, change the game."

Maximov acknowledged the observation. "You could be right. Nikita Sergeyevich was looking for advantage in the contest between our systems. Perhaps, he was looking in the wrong way. With atomic weapons, there is no lasting advantage."

"Amen to that."

The men finished their dinner off with dessert. French scooped up a mound of chocolate ice cream, Maximov a flan and custard concoction. French paid the bill.

"I suppose we'd better get you over to National. I wouldn't want you to miss your flight, and wind up being stuck in this bastion of capitalism."

French drove them over to National Airport. Inside the terminal, Maximov checked several pieces of luggage at the Eastern counter, then the men walked to the A Concourse, rode down an escalator and five minutes later, stood before the doors to the gate. Passengers on the shuttle up to New York were already queued for departure down the stairs and out onto the ramp. Through the windows, a Convair 880 gleamed in bright floodlights, its blue and white Eastern Airlines logo freshly washed. A steady stream of passengers were already climbing the stairs to the side door.

The FBI agent and the KGB officer shook hands, then embraced, Russian-style.

"The flight to Idlewild won't take an hour," French told him.

"The flight to London takes about seven hours," Maximov said. "After that, Lufthansa to Frankfurt. I board a train to Berlin, then to Warsaw. Another train takes me to Moscow."

"You'll be glad to be home, I'm sure."

Maximov smiled apologetically. "I like our Russian black bread better." Both men laughed.

"Then take care, Alex. Safe flight and all that. If I see you on the streets of Washington some day, I'm going to have to arrest you."

Maximov smiled. "If you can catch me, Michael. I say goodbye, comrade. Dos vedaniya." Maximov hustled down the stairs and soon joined the end of the line of emplaning passengers. He didn't look back.

Mike French watched until the Russian had climbed the stairs and disappeared through the aircraft door.

What the hell will I remember about these last few weeks, twenty years from now? he wondered. He puzzled over that for a few minutes, as he stared out at the plane, just beginning to back away from the gate.

After chewing over the strange thought, he decided it was the professional camaraderie with Maximov and a glimpse, however brief, of the other side. That's what he would remember most. He turned and walked briskly back toward the terminal, exiting at the luggage carousel. He found the Rambler and paused momentarily, waiting to catch a final glimpse of the plane.

Seconds later, the roar of its four engines reverberated across the parking lot. The Convair jet lifted into the night sky over the Potomac, banking left at two hundred feet altitude to slip past the restricted airspace over the White House. It climbed out over the 14th Street Bridge, then the Key Bridge, and was soon lost in the glare of floodlights surrounding the Pentagon.

"Alex, old boy," French muttered to himself, as he cranked up the car and negotiated the labyrinth of the parking lot, "it sure was hard to think of you as some kind of enemy." Cold War or not, Alexei Nikolaevich Maximov was a colleague, and at times, a friend.

Perhaps, Agent Mike French thought, everyone should have an experience like this. We might not be so quick to condemn the Russians if we had to work with them on life-and-death cases.

"Hell," he said out loud, as he paid the parking lot attendant several dollars. "In a way, we do have to work with them. If we're ever going to make it through these times, we'd better learn how."

French was surprised to find an unfinished bag of M & M's below the ashtray. He dug out a few and popped them into his mouth. Then he accelerated out of the lot and turned south onto the George Washington Parkway, toward Alexandria and Adams Street, toward Julie and the kids, toward home.
Statement of

Mr. Robert M. Blitzer, Chief

Domestic Terrorism/Counterterrorism Planning Section

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Before the

United States House of Representatives

Committee on National Security

Washington, D.C.

November 4, 1997

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to address the committee on the FBI's role in the federal response to the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against the United States, and the preparedness initiatives we have undertaken in the interagency setting. I have submitted a written statement for the record which further details my testimony here today.

It is essential to understand that any threat or use of WMD against the U.S., its population, interests, or critical infrastructure will be considered an act of terrorism. Consistent with mandates set out in Presidential Decision Directive (PDD)-39, existing and newly created statutory requirements, the Antiterrorism and Intelligence Authorization Acts and the Defense against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996, we have improved our ability to deal with those who may be planning to commit these heinous crimes.

Established doctrine, including PDD-39, identifies the FBI's critical domestic role in the operational response to WMD terrorism. But it is important to remember that the potential impact of WMD terrorism transcends any one agency's ability to fully manage the necessary response to such an incident. The effects of a WMD terrorist attack may be catastrophic and will require a unified approach among all federal resources in cooperation with federal, state, and local governments for definitive success.

As such, the FBI has undertaken several initiatives with its partners in the federal interagency community, including the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Energy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Public Health Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency. These organizations make up the nucleus of the government's WMD response. The FBI is extensively engaged with these departments and agencies in policy, coordination, planning, exercise and training programs to enhance the federal government's overall ability to effectively respond to WMD terrorism. The FBI also interacts with the intelligence community on WMD and matters regarding counter-proliferation.

Among the interagency initiatives that have been undertaken to ensure an effective federal response are the following:

We have developed "Guidelines for the Mobilization, Deployment and Employment of U.S. Government Agencies in Response to a Domestic Terrorist Threat or Incident," also known as the "Domestic Guidelines." These guidelines, upon the signature of the Attorney General and approval of the President, will serve to facilitate coordination among federal agencies for response within the framework of U.S. policy on counterterrorism.

Pursuant to PDD-39, we have formulated a specialized interagency team known as "Domestic Emergency Support Team" or "DEST," which has been signed to expeditiously provide expert advice and guidance to the FBI on-scene commander and to coordinate needed follow-on response assets. The DEST would be deployed upon request of the FBI in response to a significant threat or act of terrorism. The exact composition of the DEST will be determined by the specific nature of the incident and will include, when appropriate, advisory modules for WMD conditions. Many of the procedures now incorporated in DEST-type operations were initially developed during the several years of review following the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequent WMD threats in New York and Washington in the Fall of 1962. The DEST has been deployed and tested in support of the last presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. and the Denver Summit of the Eight in 1997.

We have also engaged in a major interagency planning effort to develop a WMD concept plan, or "CONPLAN," for an actual integrated U.S. government response to a domestic WMD threat or situation. The CONPLAN is intended to integrate the plans and procedures of individual agencies and departments. It specifies which U.S. government resources would be deployed, the conditions for their deployment, the priority of their movements and the method for their operational engagements within the FBI's crisis management structure.

The FBI is finalizing new incident contingency plans for internal response to WMD events which detail the sequence of actions required to appropriately guide, oversee, and support the successful execution of the U.S. government response to a WMD threat or incident. These plans will be shared with federal, state and local emergency responder counterparts to ensure a unified approach to the on-scene management of the crisis.

To date, we have participated in over 30 interagency exercises involving WMD to test and improve operational readiness plans and procedures, clarify individual agency roles and responsibilities and to improve coordination among federal resources.

The DOD and the FBI have been supported by the interagency community in developing and implementing a Counter Proliferation Program for the newly independent states of the Former Soviet Union (FSU). This program provides training to law enforcement personnel and other officials in combating illicit trafficking in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons materials or related technologies. This effort is intended to increase their ability to detect, prevent, and investigate criminal enterprises, corrupt officials, and individuals involved in illegal acquisition and transport of WMD materials and technologies. To date, 78 government officials from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have been provided the training. Additional FSU countries will be trained in 1997, 1998 and the out years.

The FBI also plays a major role in the development and delivery of the domestic preparedness "First Responder" Training Program, which is intended to enhance WMD response capabilities of federal. State, and local authorities across the country. The FBI has contributed to the curriculum by providing an assessment of the WMD domestic threat and a discussion on the integration of the federal response with that of local incident command. In addition, the FBI has partnered with FEMA in the development of the Senior Officials' Workshop designed to instruct community leaders and departments heads on the details of an actual response. These contributions are important because the FBI is located in most metropolitan areas and in many small towns across the country. As such, we will be among the first federal responders to the scene of a WMD terrorist event.

The FBI looks forward to the development of an even greater partnership within the federal, state, and local community as we move forward in this important endeavor. This concludes my remarks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
EPILOGUE

Mike French returned to duty at the Washington Field Office of the FBI. In May 1965, French replaced John Horton as Special Agent in Charge of the office. French's duties continued to concentrate in the areas of counterintelligence and espionage cases. As SAIC, French spent a great deal of time reporting to FBI Headquarters on pending investigations into Soviet, Eastern Bloc and Chinese efforts to conduct operations in the eastern United States. By the end of 1966, he had been promoted out of the Washington Field Office altogether, moving out of the Old Post Office a few blocks into the Justice Department building itself. In January 1966, French became the Bureau's youngest Branch Chief, heading up Counter-Intelligence Branch Section CI-1, the Russian Espionage desk (Office 65). He was principal investigator for the Bureau in the notorious spy case of Adam Berkowitz, heading up both the surveillance teams and the evidence teams for many months. French testified in Berkowitz's trial in 1967. For his efforts, he received the Director's Distinguished Service Award in February 1968.

In March 1968, the Frenchs became happy parents of a third daughter, Suzanne. Julie French, Mike's wife, attained residency at George Washington University Hospital as a registered nurse and by 1970, had become section supervisor in the cardiac care unit.

Alexei Maximov returned to the Soviet Union, as a deputy chief in the Tenth Directorate, Committee on State Security (KGB), Moscow Center headquarters at Dom Dva. Maximov continued his responsibilities for nuclear weapons safety, storage and security for awhile, but before the end of 1964, was removed from this office and re-assigned to Second Chief Directorate. A complete re-organization essentially eliminated the nuclear security duties of the original Tenth Directorate, and many officers and supervisors were arrested and imprisoned, following the debacle at Bejucal. Maximov was given responsibility in the Second Chief Directorate for surveillance of Soviet citizens in the Moscow region who have contact with American, Canadian or British nationals. Politically suspect for his close contacts with Americans during the Cuban Crises and his "failures" at the Bejucal compound, he was closely monitored in this position.

During a general tightening of political control in June 1967, Maximov's Party card was revoked, and he was banished from Moscow. He was assigned to the railroad security force and spent many years thereafter riding the railways of eastern and southern Russia, including the Trans-Siberian line. In 1971, Maximov and his wife Irina separated and she returned to Moscow. Alexei was seriously injured in a train accident near Smolensk in November 1973. A year later, he retired on a service pension and lived out the remaining years of his life in Magnitogorsk, working part-time as a security guard at the Tolmaz Tractor Factory.

Jeff Torburg returned to Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory after the Cuban Crises and resumed work as a section leader in nuclear and materials physics in J-Division. He made several more trips to the Pacific Proving Grounds, overseeing nuclear tests conducted in early 1963, and also spent two months at the Nevada Test Site, installing and calibrating instrumentation for future nuclear tests. In June 1963, the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty ended all atmospheric nuclear testing by the United States and the Soviet Union. J-Division was disbanded and Torburg resigned from Los Alamos in December. He and his wife returned to the Bay Area in 1964 with daughters Maggie and Francie, a long-time dream of theirs. In the fall of 1965, Torburg became an assistant professor in physics at the University of California at Berkeley. His wife Carlene joined a small instrument manufacturer named Hewlett-Packard.

In 1969, Torburg gained tenure as a full professor in Berkeley's Physics Department. He continued his off-hours artistic pursuits and was soon showing his work at a number of small galleries around Berkeley and San Francisco. Torburg occasionally received commissions to do scientific illustration work for various publications, among them Scientific American. In 1976, he resigned his professorship to concentrate on his artistic work full time, opening his own gallery on Market Street in San Francisco. An art critic of the Berkeley Free Press labeled his work "apocalyptic musings from a twilight palette."

Olin Haley was court-martialed in 1963 and convicted on thirty-four counts of treason, conspiracy, and felonious insubordination, according to Articles 81, 118, and 134, Title 10, U.S. Code, Subtitle A, the Punitive Articles, Uniform Code of Military Justice. At sentencing, the presiding officer, General LeRoy Rupert (U. S. Army, 101st Air Assault Division) cited the General Article, Article 134, as most damning.

"General Haley," said Rupert, "has brought extreme disorder and neglect to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces of the United States. His conduct was of such a nature as to bring discredit upon the armed forces for many years to come. His offenses are legion and well documented. Because of his acts, brave soldiers, sailors and marines died without cause. His punishment shall be as severe as this court-martial warrants applicable, to the limits prescribed by law."

Olin Haley was sentenced to thirty-five years imprisonment at hard labor at the Military Correctional Facility, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He began serving his sentence in April 1963.

In February 1996, Olin Haley was granted mercy parole by the Provost Marshal of the U.S. Army, due to his declining health. He died in November 1996, of bone cancer.

Miguel Munoz was transferred from his third-floor isolation cell at the Miami-Dade County Jail Center on November 16, 1962. He was to be transported to the U.S. Federal Penitentiary at Lynchburg, Virginia, pending charges in federal court. Munoz had been formally arraigned on November 12, in U.S. District Court in Miami and charged with seven counts of treason, espionage, unlawful flight to avoid arrest, and aggravated assault on federal officers. He pleaded not guilty to all charges and was assigned a public defender.

On Friday, November 16, 1962, during ground transport to the Lynchburg penitentiary and while in the custody of U.S. Marshals, Munoz was shot to death by an unknown sniper along Interstate 85, near Durham, North Carolina. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the face, and neck, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The assailant was never caught.

Barbara Shirley returned to college at George Washington University, studying to become a social worker. In 1964, she received a degree in Social Work and subsequently left her job as staff assistant for national security affairs in the office of Congressman Jenkins. In November 1964, Ed Jenkins was defeated in his re-election bid for another term as U.S. Representative from Florida.

Barbara married Mark Preston in January 1965. Mark had been employed by Litton Industries in the Washington area but by mid-year was transferred to Colorado Springs, as a contractor engineer at the Air Force's new NORAD complex at Cheyenne Mountain. They lived for five years in the Colorado Springs area. By 1970, Mark had accepted a new position as an industrial engineer with Lockheed Aircraft, in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta and the couple moved into a large home in September of that year. Barbara was hired by the State of Georgia, as a counselor for mentally retarded adults not long after moving to Atlanta.

Barbara moved up rapidly in the mental health field and found great satisfaction in her work. She continued, in her off-hours, doing extensive volunteer and charity work for local churches and community organizations. By 1982, she had become director of a local mental health clinic and had received professional recognition for outstanding service to the community.

In 1988, she and Mark Preston were divorced. Barbara subsequently re-married a technical writer named Peter Bannon and the couple had two children, Jesse and Baxter.

She lives today in Atlanta.

Within a year after the Cuban Missile Crises, John F. Kennedy was dead of an assassin's bullets in Dallas, Texas. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on November 25, 1962.

Less than a year after Kennedy's tragic death, Nikita Khrushchev would be forcibly removed from power in the Soviet Union and retired as a pensioner. He died of a heart attack in 1971.
About the Author

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He's been happily married for over 20 years. He's also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.

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