All three raised their binoculars and aimed them in the direction Carlos had pointed.
“There!” he said. “See it?”
“Where? Oh … Mother of Christ!”
Out of the sea came the head of the monster, black and knife-edged, its V-shaped snout spewing not fire but boiling white water as it rose ever higher into the rain-whipped skies. It was a dull deadly black, looking like some evil engineer’s nightmare machine. There was in fact no more efficient killing device on earth.
“I told you you were going to see something, my brothers!” Juanito shouted. “Oh, my God, look at this thing! Have you ever seen anything so huge?”
The deadly thing was still rising, a froth of white water pouring off the sleek, sharp-angled sides of its twin swept-back hulls and diving planes. Then that amazing snout came crashing down into the sea and the submarine surged toward the jetties. It was immense.
Water broke over her V-bow. They heard an alarm and saw something rising slowly from the forward-most part of the hull, another sharply angled shape with faint lights glowing from within. Then the structure was looming above the decks, and they understood at once that this was the retractable conning tower. After a moment, they could see the small black silhouettes of men begin to appear at the very top.
A powerful searchlight on the sub’s tower was illuminated and swept back and forth across the river’s entrance.
Manso couldn’t make out any faces, of course, the men were just black figures at this distance, but he knew the identity of one of them. Then he caught a face in his powerful night-vision glasses.
“Commander Nikita Zukov,” Manso said under his breath. “Welcome to Cuba. We’ve been expecting you.”
The three brothers embraced, rain splashing on their faces. It was a moment they seemed to have been imagining forever. But their imaginations had been capable of nothing so grand as the events of the day and this sight and this historic night.
The mammoth black-winged creature from the deep was now entering the mouth of the river. It was the most stunning thing Manso had ever seen. He waved at the men atop the conning tower and they returned his salute.
“Well, my brave brothers, I have a question for you,” he said, gathering them together. “Walk with me.”
Arm in arm, they started walking back along the jetty, toward the sub pen. They wanted to be inside the newly constructed pen with the construction crews and all the on-shore support teams when the sub made its dramatic appearance.
“Just one little question,” Manso said, looking back at the sub sliding majestically toward them.
“Sн, Manso?” they replied in unison.
“I want to know, my brothers, exactly how does it feel to be a super-power?”
Laughing, the three men raced ahead of the submarine back towards the pen. The huge doors were sliding open, revealing the cavernous interior. Light poured out and so did many of the workers, charged with excitement at the sight of the approaching sub.
It was hard to say who was more excited, the Cubans or the Russians. There were over a hundred Russian electronic engineers, machinists, plumbers, electricians, and various nuclear technicians. They’d been working side by side with the Cubans for months, building the necessary machine and tool shops it would take to support such a sophisticated nuclear submarine.
As the giant sub finally eased into the wide mouth of her slip, there was a deafening roar as the men surged down the floating docks running along each hull, cheering wildly.
Commander Nikita Zukov stood atop the towering sail of his submarine, surveying the sea of activity taking place all around him. He had his hands over his ears to block out the terrible sound. It wasn’t the sound of the arc welders or the steelworkers still putting the finishing touches on the sub pen that bothered him. It was a small orchestra struggling through yet another rehearsal of the Cuban national anthem.
The band was practicing for the dedication ceremony. They stood at the end of a long concrete pier, only twenty feet from where the sub was moored. Commander Zukov thought that if he had to listen to one more stanza, he might well go insane.
“Not bad, not bad,” Admiral Carlos de Herreras said in Spanish. “I think by the time of the May Day ceremony, they’ll be perfect.” Zukov, who spoke fluent Spanish, looked at the man to see if he could possibly be serious. He was.
Zukov’s father had been a Soviet navy “adviser” to Cuba and had married a Cuban woman. So he’d grown up in a house where everyone spoke both Spanish and Russian. Born in Havana thirty-five years ago, he had not been in Cuba in many years. He was ten years old when his father had taken the family back to Moscow. He was accepted at the Naval Academy at eighteen, and became a submarine officer, gaining command of his own boat by age thirty.
Zukov’s Cuban background accounted for the fact that he happened to be standing here instead of any of a dozen former Soviet sub commanders vying for the job. He knew the language and the culture. He knew and loved the people. He had served his country with great distinction. And he’d never forgiven the politburo for their betrayal of his homeland. And his navy.
“The band, they sound pretty good to you, Commander?” the Cuban admiral asked him.
“Symphonic,” Zukov replied, straining to be heard over the orchestra, the arc welders, and the steelworkers.
A crew was already painting the sub’s new name on both the starboard and portside flanks of the gleaming black hull.
Zukov recognized the new name instantly.
Josй Martн.
Named in honor of the great patriot who had liberated Cuba from Spain after a long bloody war, the Josй Martн was a splendid symbol of the new Cuba. The excitement inside the submarine pen verged on hysteria. Flags and bunting hung from every corner of the building in preparation for the celebration of May Day, the great Communist holiday, just three days hence. The mood inside was frantic, but festive.
One man had started whistling the “Mango” melody and soon the whole construction and support battalion was singing the ironic lyrics at the top of their lungs.
The mango, the mango, even though it is green, it is ripe and ready to fall …
Mercifully, the swelling voices drowned out the band.
Admiral Carlos de Herreras, CNO of the Cuban navy, and his two brothers had boarded the sub soon after Zukov guided it expertly up the narrow shoaled river and into its slip. After the sub was properly moored and her propulsion systems shut down, Zukov had welcomed them aboard. He had offered them some chilled vodka in the wardroom, then given them the official guided tour, stem to stern.
Although their questions were outrageously naive, it was obvious the Cuban officers were more than delighted with their new toy. They were giddy with excitement, and hurried from one end of the boat to the other, laughing with glee.
The Cubans were especially excited, he noticed, when they entered the starboard hull compartment where, in their silos, twenty gleaming warheads sat atop twenty ballistic missiles. Over on the port hull, a matching set of twenty more. With forty warheads, you could blow up the world. No one had yet told Zukov what his first mission would be, and he had only a rough idea of the primary targets. But the very thought of going to war in such a magnificent machine sent an electric charge racing through him. A feeling he hadn’t experienced since the glory days of the Cold War.
The commander’s Russian crew of one hundred thirty men, all former submariners under his Cold War command, were also in a jolly mood. All of them were now, like Zukov himself, mercenaries. And all of them, after a frozen winter in Vladivostok, were equally ecstatic at the very idea of a shore leave on the beautiful tropical island of Cuba.