“Maybe the person at the con was lost,” the senior AI speculated.
“Or didn’t know the waters,” the marine suggested.
“Maybe the Cubans wanted it there,” Gil said.
Jake Grafton used a magnifying glass to study photos of the island closest to the stranded freighter.
“Here’s a crew setting up an artillery piece,” he said, and straightened so everyone could see. “If they planned to strand the ship on those rocks, one would think they would have set up guns and a few SAM batteries in advance.”
“Maybe that’s what they want us to think.”
“How far is the ship from the nearest dry land?”
“Three point two nautical miles, sir.” That was one of the photo interpretation specialists, a first class petty officer. “If you look at this satellite photo of the main island, Admiral, you will see that there are two SAM batteries near this small port ten miles south of where the Colón went on the rocks.”
“That’s probably where the ship was going when it hit the rocks,” Jake said. “Or where it had been. So how many artillery and missile sites are in the area?”
“Four.”
“We’ll have EA-6B Prowlers and F/A-18 Hornets overhead, HARM missiles on the rails, F-14s as cover. The instant one of those fire-control radars comes on the air, I want it taken out.”
“When do you want to land aboard the ship?” Eckhardt asked.
Jake Grafton looked at his watch. “One in the morning.”
“Five hours from now?”
“Can we do it?”
“If we push.”
“Let’s push. I talked to General Totten in the Pentagon. He agrees — we should inspect that ship as soon as possible. For me, that’s five hours from now. We will go in three Ospreys. The lead Osprey will put Commander Tarkington and me on the ship; Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt will be in the second bird leading a rescue team to pull us out if anything goes wrong. The third Osprey will contain another ten-man team, led by your executive officer.”
Captain Pascal zeroed in immediately. “Do the people in Washington know that you intend to board that ship, Admiral?”
“No, and I’m not going to ask.”
“Sir, if you get caught — a two-star admiral on a ship stranded in Cuban waters?”
“The ship is in international waters. We must find out what happened aboard the Colón after it left Guantánamo. The stakes are very high. I am going to take a personal look. While I’m gone, Gil, you have the con.”
“Admiral, with all due respect, sir, I think you should take more than just one person with you. Why not a half dozen well-armed marines?”
“I don’t know what’s on that ship,” Jake explained. “There may be people aboard, there may be a biological hazard, it may be booby-trapped. It just makes sense to have a point man explore the unknown before we risk very many lives. I am going to be the point man because I want to personally see what is there, and I make the rules. Understand?”
The news about the loss of a ship loaded with biological weapons arrived in Washington with the impact of a high-explosive warhead on a cruise missile.
When the National Security Council met to be briefed about the ship the president was there, and he was in an ugly mood.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, interrupting the national security adviser, who was briefing the group. “We decided to remove our stockpile of biological and chemical warheads from Guantanamo Bay when we heard Castro might be developing biological weapons of his own. Is that correct?”
“The timing was incidental, sir. They were scheduled to be moved.”
“Scheduled to be moved next year,” the president said acidly. “We hurried things along when the CIA got wind that El Gato might be shipping lab equipment to Cuba. Will you grant me that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just for the record, why in hell were those damned things in Gitmo in the first place?”
“A computer error, sir, back when the Pentagon was prepositioning war supplies at Guantánamo. Somehow the CBW material got on the list, and by the time the error was discovered, the stuff was on its way.”
The president’s lip curled in a sneer. “Did this circle jerk happen under my administration?”
“No, sir. The previous one.”
The president glanced at the ceiling. “Thank you, God.”
He took a deep breath, exhaled, then said, “So we decided to clean up old mistakes. We didn’t want to take the chance Castro knew of our CBW stockpiles at Gitmo when we started fulminating about his.” The president was addressing the national security adviser. “But to cover our asses, you wanted a carrier battle group that just happened to be in the Caribbean to keep an eye on things while you got the weapons out. Just having the navy hanging around would keep the Cubans honest, you said.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now a ship full of weapons from the Gitmo warehouse is on the rocks off the Cuban coast.”
“The ship is on the rocks, but we don’t know if any weapons are still aboard.”
“Are you going to court-martial the admiral in charge of the battle group?” the president asked the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Howard D. “Tater” Totten, a small, gray-haired man who looked like he was hiding inside the green, badged, bemedaled uniform of a four-star army general.
“No, sir. He was told to quote ‘monitor’ unquote the situation in Guantánamo, not escort cargo ships. He actually had the cargo ship that was hijacked escorted out of Cuban waters, but he didn’t direct that it be escorted all the way to Norfolk. No one did, because apparently no one thought an escort necessary.”
“Was the ship hijacked?”
“We don’t know, sir. We’ve been unable to contact it by radio.”
“How are we going to find out if the weapons are still aboard?”
“Send marines aboard tonight to look.”
“I don’t think that ship is stranded in international waters,” the secretary of state said.
“Your department told us it was,” Totten shot back.
“That was a first impression by junior staffers. Our senior people demanded a closer look. We are just not sure. The determination depends on where one draws the line that defines the mouth of the bay. Reasonable people can disagree.”
Totten took a deep breath. “Mr. President, we don’t know what happened aboard that ship. We don’t know if the weapons are aboard. If they have been removed, we need to learn where they went. Now is not the time to split hairs over the nuances of international law. Let’s board the ship and get some answers, then the lawyers can argue to their hearts’ content.”
“That’s the problem with you uniformed testosterone types,” the secretary of state snarled. “You think you can violate the law any time it suits your purposes.”
The president of the United States was a cautious man by nature, a blow-dried politician who had maneuvered with the wind at his back all his life. His national security adviser knew him well, General Totten thought, when he said, “Preliminary indications are that the stranded ship is in international waters, Mr. President The naval commander on the scene has the authority to examine a wreck in international waters if he feels it prudent to do so. Let him make the decision and report back what he finds.”
“That’s right,” the president said. “I think that is the proper way for us to approach this.”
“Will you pass that on to the battle group commander?” the national security adviser asked General Totten.
The general reached for an encrypted telephone.
Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington went aboard the V-22 parked at the head of the line on the flight deck of USS United States. Marines filed aboard the second and third airplane. Tonight the carrier was thirty miles northeast of Cape Maisi — the distance to the stranded freighter was a bit over a hundred miles.