“You should be okay, sir,” they said. At a nod from the sound-powered telephone talker, Chance started up the ladder with Tommy Carmellini right behind him. They came out of the hatch on the submarine’s deck forward of the island. The deck wasn’t much, merely wet steel that curved away right and left into the black ocean.
Hovering in the darkness overhead was a helicopter — the downwash from the rotor blades made it hard to breathe. Amid the flashing lights and spotlights, his eyes had a hard time adjusting — Chance felt almost blind. One of the sailors on the deck put a horse collar over his head and he went up into the chopper first. Then Carmellini.
A strong set of hands pulled him into the chopper. After a wave at the officers in the sail cockpit, Carmellini used hands and feet to get over to the canvas bench opposite the open door where Chance had found a seat.
Forty-five minutes later the helicopter landed on the flight deck of USS United States. As the rotors wound down, an officer in khakis came to the chopper’s door, and shouted, “Mr. Chance? Mr. Carmellini?”
“Right here.”
“My name is Toad Tarkington. Will you gentlemen come with me, please? The admiral is waiting.”
Tommy Carmellini felt completely out of place, completely lost. After the submarine and the helicopter, the strange sounds, smells, and sensations of the huge ship underway in a night sea seemed to max out his ability to adjust.
The compartment where Toad took the two agents was packed with people, all talking among themselves. Still, compared to the flight deck and the sensations of the helicopter, it was an oasis of calm. Toad led them to a corner of the room and introduced them to Rear Admiral Jake Grafton.
Grafton was a trim officer about six feet tall. The admiral’s gray eyes captured Tommy’s attention. The eyes seemed to measure you from head to toe, see all there was to see, then move on. Only when the eyes looked elsewhere did you see that Grafton’s nose was a trifle too large, and one side of his forehead bore an old scar that was slightly less tan than the skin surrounding it.
Toad Tarkington was several inches shorter than the admiral and heavier through the shoulders. He was a tireless whirlwind who dazzled a person meeting him for the first time with quick wit and boundless energy, which seemed to radiate from him like the aura of the sun. He smiled easily and often, revealing a set of perfect white teeth that would have made any dentist proud.
Jake Grafton and William Henry Chance stood behind Toad watching him work Alejo Vargas’s computer. Toad stared at the screen intently while his fingers flew over the keys.
Soon they were plotting positions on a chart. “Those missiles have to be at these locations, Admiral,” Toad said, pointing at the places he had marked on the chart, “or the data in the computer is worthless.” He looked over his shoulder at Chance. “Could this computer be a plant?”
Chance glanced at Carmellini, who was sitting in a chair against the wall studying the layout and furnishings of the planning space and the knots of people engaged in a variety of tasks. The roar of conversation made the place seem greatly disorganized, which Tommy realized was an illusion. Charts on the wall decorated with classified information, planning tables, file cabinets sporting serious padlocks, battle lanterns on the overhead, copy machines, burn bags — the place reminded him of the inner sanctums of the CIA’s headquarters at Langley.
“Very doubtful,” Chance answered, and bent over to study the chart Toad was marking.
“I make it six sites,” Toad said.
“Could there be more missiles?” Jake Grafton asked. He too glanced at Carmellini, then turned to Chance. “You see the pitfalls if there are missiles we don’t know about?”
“Yes, sir. I can only say we have seen evidence for at least six.”
“Six silos,” Toad mused, studying the locations.
“There is a warhead manufacturing facility someplace on that island,” Chance said. “The viruses would have to be dried out, put in whatever medium the Cubans believe will keep them alive and virulent and dormant until the warhead explodes, then the medium sealed inside the warheads. The facility will not be large, but it will have clean rooms, air scrubbers, remote handling equipment, and I would think a fairly well equipped lab on site.”
“Any ideas?” Jake Grafton asked.
“I was hoping that the satellite reconnaissance people might be able to find the site if we tell them what to look for.”
“We’ll have them look, certainly, but you have no independent information about where this facility might be?”
“No.”
Jake motioned to Carmellini, who leaned in so that he could hear better. “Here is the situation,” the admiral said. “The White House has ordered us to go get those missile silos as soon as possible. Bombing the silos is out — we are to remove the warheads and destroy the missiles. What my staff and these other folks here tonight are trying to decide is how best to go about doing what the president wants us to do. Obviously, if we had enough time we could bring in forces from the States and assault the silo locations with forces tailored for the job. If we had enough time we could even do a dress rehearsal, make sure everyone is on the same sheet of music. Unfortunately, the White House wants the silos taken out as soon as possible.”
“How soon is possible?” Chance asked.
Jake Grafton took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “That’s the sixty-four dollar question. We must find out what’s there before we go charging in.”
He stood, walked over to a chart of Cuba that was posted on the bulkhead. He was looking at a penciled line on the chart that went through the Windward Passage and along the northern coast of Cuba, all the way to the narrowest portion of the Florida Straits. The cruisers should be in position by six o’clock this evening.
Jake turned from the chart and gestured at the people at the planning tables. “These folks are just looking at possibilities. We must assemble sufficient forces to do the job, yet we run huge risks if we take the time to assemble overwhelming force. There is a balance there. When we see the latest satellite stuff we’ll have a better idea.”
“I would be amazed if there are any troops around these silos,” William Henry Chance said. “Their existence has been overlooked by two generations of photo interpretation specialists. The Cubans know that the whole island is painstakingly photographed on a regular basis — we’ve been looking at those damned silos for forty years and didn’t know what they were. They must be underground and well camouflaged.”
“I’m not sending anybody after those things until I know what the opposition is,” Jake said bluntly. “I don’t launch suicide missions.”
“Are the silos your only target?” Chance asked.
Jake Grafton examined the tall agent with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean?”
“The Cubans grew the viruses for their warheads in a lab in the science building of the University of Havana. If we walk off with the warheads in the missiles, there is nothing to prevent the Cubans from cooking up another batch and putting it in planes to spray all over Florida and Georgia and wherever.”
“You are suggesting that we target their lab?”
“I highly recommended it. Chances to step on cockroaches are few and far between: we better put Alejo Vargas out of business while we have the chance.”
“All I can do is make a recommendation to Washington,” the admiral said.
“And the processing facility. If we are going to take Cuba out of the biological warfare business, we should do it right.”
“Can we bomb any of these places?” Toad Tarkington asked.
“Oh, no,” Chance said. “A bomb exploding in a lab full of poliomyelitis virus would be the equivalent of a biological warhead detonating. The virus would be explosively liberated. Everyone downwind for a couple hundred miles, maybe even farther, would probably die. No, the only way to destroy the virus is with fire.”