Jake was more nervous than he had been in a long, long time. Before he left the mission planning spaces this evening, he looked again at the chart that depicted the threat envelope of the two surface-to-air missile sites on the Cuban mainland just a few miles from the stranded freighter, Nuestra Señora de Colón. The freighter was well inside those envelopes, and the Ospreys would be also.
Jake had had a long talk with the EA-6B electronic warfare crews and the four F/A-18 Hornets that would be over the Ospreys carrying HARMs. HARM stood for high-speed antiradiation missile. Enemy radars were the targets of HARMs, which rode the beams right into the dishes. HARMs even had memories, so if an enemy operator turned off his radar after a HARM was launched, the missile would still fly to the memorized location.
“If the Cubans turn on the SAM radars, open fire,” Jake told his guardian angels. “Don’t wait until their missiles are in the air.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jake had heard nothing from Washington waffling on the assertion that the Colón was in international waters, so as far as he was concerned, that fact was a given. The Cubans had no right to fire on ships or planes in international waters. If they did, Jake Grafton would shoot back. Of course, if the Cubans shot first, they would probably kill a planeload or two of Americans, Jake Grafton included. The crews of the EA-6B Prowlers and Hornets were well aware of that reality.
As he sat in the Osprey Jake Grafton wondered if the enlisted marines in the other two planes understood the risks involved in this mission. He suspected they didn’t know, and in truth probably didn’t want to. Their job was to obey their officers; if the officers led them into action, fretting about the odds wasn’t going to do any good at all.
That thought led straight to another: Did he understand the risks?
“You okay, Admiral?”
That was Toad.
Jake Grafton nodded, smiled. A friend like Tarkington was a rare thing indeed. He hadn’t asked Toad if he wanted to risk his life on this mission; the commander would have been insulted if he had.
The warm noisy darkness inside the plane seemed comforting, somehow, as if the plane were a loud, safe womb. After takeoff Jake sat for five minutes with his eyes closed, savoring the flying sensations, recharging his batteries. Then he made his way toward the cockpit and squatted behind the pilots, both of whom were wearing night-vision goggles. From this vantage point Jake could see the computer displays on the instrument panel. The flight engineer handed him a helmet, already plugged in, so that he could talk to the pilots and listen to the radio.
He heard the Prowler and Hornets checking in, the F-14s, the S-3 tankers.
He heard Rita call twenty miles to go to the mission coordinator in the E-2 Hawkeye. She had the Osprey flying at a thousand feet above the water, inbound at 250 knots.
“Visibility is five or six miles,” she told Jake over the intercom. “Some rain showers around. Wind out of the west northwest.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll do it like we planned,” she continued, making sure Jake, the copilot, and her crew chief all understood what was to happen. “I’ll hover into the wind, then back down toward the ship, put the ramp over the fantail.”
“Ten miles,” the copilot sang out.
Jake took off the aircraft helmet and donned a marine tactical helmet, which contained a small radio that broadcast on one of four tactical frequencies. Repeaters in the Ospreys picked up the low-powered helmet transmissions and rebroadcast them so that everyone on the tactical net could hear, including the mission coordinator in the E-2, the people aboard the carrier, and the pilots of the airborne planes.
Jake pulled on a set of night-vision goggles and looked forward, through the Osprey windscreen. The night was gone, banished. He could see the stranded freighter, still several miles away, see the surf breaking on the rocks, the containers stacked on deck, the empty sea in all directions. He looked toward the nearest land, an island just over three miles away; he could just make out the line of breaking surf.
The Osprey was slowing: Rita rotated the engine nacelles toward the vertical position as she transitioned from wing-borne cruising flight to pure helicopter operation. Computers monitored her control inputs and gradually increased the effectiveness of the rotor swashplates as flaperons, elevators and rudders lost their effectiveness due to the decreasing airspeed. The transition from wing-borne to rotor-borne flight was smooth, seamless, a technological miracle, and Jake Grafton appreciated it as such.
Jake Grafton kept his eyes on the ship. No people in sight. The bow of the ship was on the rocks. The ship had a small forecastle superstructure, with the main superstructure and bridge on the stern of the ship. The ship’s cargo was in holds amidships, with extra containers stacked between the bridge and forecastle. The ship had two large cranes, one forward, one aft. She had a single stack, and probably — given her size — only one screw.
Jake could see that the containers on the deck were jumbled about, several obviously open and empty. Others, a whole bunch, seemed to be missing.
Now Rita swung into the wind, away from the Colón.
The ramp at the back of the aircraft was open, with Toad and the crew chief waiting there. Jake Grafton walked aft to join them.
The crew chief gave Rita directions on the ICS, back fifty feet, down ten, as she watched her progress on a small television screen that had been rigged in the cockpit for this mission.
Lower, closer to the ship … and the ramp touched the deck.
“Go, go, go,” the crew chief shouted.
Jake spoke into his voice-activated boom mike: “Let’s go!”
The fixed deck of the stranded freighter felt strange after a half hour in the moving Osprey. The wash from the mighty, 38-foot rotors was a mini-hurricane here on the fantail, a mixture of charged air and sea spray, dirt, and trash from the deck and containers.
Jake and Toad crouched on the deck as the Osprey moved away. The ramp had been against the deck for no more than fifteen seconds.
Jake spoke into his lip mike, made sure the mission coordinator could hear him. Gripping an M-16 in the ready position, Toad led them forward along the main deck. Jake Grafton carried a video camera, which was running, and two 35-mm cameras. The video and one of the still cameras were loaded with infrared film, the other 35-mm contained regular film and was equipped with a flash attachment.
First stop was the main deck, where he inspected the containers there. Many had doors hanging open, some still had the doors closed, but all the containers were empty. Although he wasn’t sure how many containers were supposed to be there, the area around the main hatches was remarkably clear. The hatches themselves were not properly installed. One hatch was ajar.
No people about. None. The ship seemed totally deserted and firmly aground. Jake could feel no motion.
He used a flashlight to look into the hold. This section of the hold didn’t seem to be full. Many of the containers were open.
Filming with the video camera, pausing now and then to shoot still photos, the two men searched until they found a ladder that led down into the hold. Toad waited by the hatchway, his M-16 at the ready.
Jake went down the ladder into the dark bay.
He had his night-vision goggles off now; in total darkness they were useless. He snapped on the flashlight, looked around, fingered the pistol in the holster on his hip.
This hold was half-empty, with the packing material that had been wrapped around the warheads strewn everywhere. The place was knee-deep in trash. The containers that were there were obviously empty.