Heads bobbed in the swells — just how many Ocho couldn’t tell.
He ceased swimming. There was no place to go, no reason to expend the energy.
He was so tired, so exhausted. He closed his eyes, felt the sun burning on his eyelids.
He opened them when salt water choked him. He couldn’t sleep in the sea.
So that was how it would be. He would struggle to stay afloat until exhaustion and dehydration overcame him and he went to sleep, then he would drown.
The screaming woman would not be quiet. She paused only to fill her lungs, then screamed on.
A line in the sky caught his attention. A contrail. A jet conning against the blue. Oh, to be there, and not here.
He was listening to the screaming woman, trying not to go to sleep, when he felt something bump against his foot. Something solid.
He lowered his face into the water, opened his eyes.
Sharks!
The president of the United States sat listening to the national security adviser with a scowl on his face. The president usually scowled when he didn’t like what he was hearing, the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Tater Totten, thought sourly.
The adviser was laying it out, card by card: The Cubans had at least six intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which the staff thought were probably sited in hidden silos, away from the cameras of reconnaissance planes and satellites. According to the documents obtained from the safe of Alejo Vargas, the missiles now carried biological warheads, apparently a super-virulent strain of polio. Some of the warheads stolen from Nuestra Señora de Colón were now stacked in a warehouse on the waterfront in a Cuban provincial town, Antilla.
Complicating everything were the riots and demonstrations going on in the large cities of Cuba. No one was moving aggressively to quell the unrest; the army was not patrolling the cities; in fact, people in Cuba were openly speculating that Fidel Castro was dead.
CIA believed that Castro was indeed dead; the director said so at the start of the meeting.
“If Castro has bit the big one, who is running the show down there? Who is the successor?” The secretary of state asked that question.
“Hector Sedano, we hope,” the adviser said, glancing at the president, who was examining his fingernails. “Operation Flashlight was designed to whittle Alejo Vargas down to size.”
“Stealing a safeful of blackmail files will hurt Vargas, but it won’t do much to help Hector Sedano,” General Totten muttered. “I seem to recall a CIA summary that says Hector might be in prison just now.”
“That’s right,” the director agreed, nodding. “We think the rioting is directly due to the fact Sedano is in prison. The lid is coming off down there.”
“We’ve had our finger in a lot of Cuban pies,” the president said disgustedly, folding his hands on the table in front of him. “Probably too many. I seem to recall that the CIA did some fast work with a computer, emptied Fidel’s Swiss bank accounts.”
“The money is still in those banks,” the director said quickly. “We just created a few new accounts and moved the money to them. Don’t want anyone to think we are into bank robbery these days.”
“Why not? This administration has been accused of everything else,” the president said lightly. Poking fun at himself was his talent, the reason he had made it to the very top of the heap in American politics. He laced his fingers together, leaned back in his chair. “If we had any sense we would let the Cubans sort out their own problems. Lord knows we have enough of our own.”
A murmur of assent went around the table.
Tater Totten sighed, took his letter of resignation from an inside jacket pocket and unfolded it, placed it on the table in front of him. Then he took out another letter, a request for immediate retirement, and placed it beside the first. He smoothed out both documents, put on his glasses, looked them over.
The secretary of state was sitting beside him. She looked over to see what Totten was reading. When she realized she was looking at a letter of resignation, she leaned closer.
“What is today?” Tater whispered. “The date?”
“The seventh.”
General Totten got out his ink pen, wrote the date in ink on the top of the letter of resignation and the letter requesting retirement. Then he signed both letters and put his pen back in his pocket.
“ … our willingness to work with the new government. In fact, I think this would be an excellent time to end the American embargo of Cuba ….” The national security adviser was talking, apparently reciting a speech he had rehearsed with the president earlier today. As the adviser talked, the president had been looking around the room, watching faces for reactions. Just now he was looking at Tater Totten with narrowed eyes.
He knows, the general thought.
When the adviser wound down, the president spoke before anyone else could. “General Totten, you look like a man with something to say.”
“We can’t ignore six ICBMs armed with biological warheads. We can’t ignore a lab for manufacturing toxins. We can’t ignore a warehouse full of stolen CBW warheads.” He leaned forward in his chair, looked straight at the president, whose brow was furrowing into a scowl. “Fifty million Americans are within range of those missiles. We must move right now to disarm those missiles, put the Cubans out of the biological warfare business, and recover those stolen warheads. We have absolutely no choice. When they find out what the threat is, the American people are not going to be in the mood to listen to excuses.”
Tater Totten looked around the table at the pale, drawn faces. Every eye in the room was on him. “If one of those missiles gets launched at America, everyone in this room will be responsible. That is the hard, cold reality. All this happy talk about lifting embargoes and a new era of peace in the Caribbean is beside the point. We can’t ignore weapons of mass destruction aimed at innocent Americans.”
The silence that followed lasted for several seconds, until the president broke it. “General, no one is suggesting we ignore those missiles. The question is how we can best deal with the reality of their presence. My initial reaction is to wait until a new government takes over in Cuba, then to talk with them about disarmament and return of the stolen warheads in return for lifting the embargo. Reasonable people will see the advantages for each side.”
“Your mistake,” General Totten replied, “is thinking that reasonable people will be involved in the negotiations. Reasonable people don’t build CBW weapons of mass destruction — unreasonable people do. Unreasonable people use them to commit murder for ends they could achieve in no other way, ends they think are worth other people’s blood to attain. Now, that, by God, is reality.”
The secretary of state had snaked the chairman’s letter of resignation over in front of her while he was speaking. Now she showed it to the director of the CIA, who was on her left.
“What is that document?” the president asked.
“My letter of resignation,” Tater Totten said blandly. “I haven’t decided whether to submit it now or later.”
As the president’s upper lip curled in a sneer, the secretary of state put the letter back on the table in front of the general.
“Totten, you son of a bitch! I’m the man responsible.”
“I have to sleep nights,” Tater shot back.
“You reveal classified information to the press, I’ll have you prosecuted.” The president knew damn well that Totten would hold a press conference and tell all. “You’ll spend your goddamn retirement in a federal pen,” the president snarled.
“Bullshit! When the public finds out about polio warheads on ICBMs aimed at Florida, the tidal wave is going to wash you away.” General Totten pointed a finger at the president. “Don’t fuck this up, cowboy: there are too many American lives at stake. Now isn’t the time for a friendly game of Russian roulette.”