Sergeant Chiuaigel Montes did just that. A salvo of rockets leaped out of the pods on each side of the attack helicopter as it approached the ambush from the west. Before the first salvo impacted, Montes rippled off another. This he continued as the Havoc flew fast over the length of the burning convoy. Fired from three hundred feet, the rockets spread out to a hundred feet on either side of the highway and created a zone of almost certain death the entire length of the destruction below.
After the first pass, the Havoc turned and approached from the east. Its rocket pods empty, Montes switched to the 30mm cannon that hung like a robotic appendage below the insect-like Havoc’s nose.
“Two o’clock,” Guevarra reported, this time in a more controlled voice, over the helicopter’s intercom. “Right. Right.”
The lone figure, represented by a ghostlike white image on the FLIR, was running up the hill, dodging between the trees that provided a lush canopy most of the year. Early autumn, however, was a time of growing sparseness. He had no chance.
“Take this!” Montes said loudly, depressing the Fire button on his directional fire stick at the cockpit’s side.
A hundred 30mm rounds burped out of the cannon in less than a second, creating a trail of dust and flying vegetation on the hillside below that ended at the running man’s back. Twenty of the high-density rounds connected, literally disintegrating the unfortunate rebel above the waist.
They circled the area for five minutes more, firing on anything they suspected of being alive. A few minutes later it became overkill. Nothing was left. The Havoc turned southeast, heading for its base with no weapons of consequence or ammunition remaining. Just the two AA-7 air-to-air missiles hung beneath its wings, no targets having presented themselves for their use. The major was ever hopeful, though.
The President looked squarely at Bud, letting the possibilities of what he had just been told sink in. His next look was for the DCI. “Anthony, you obviously disagree.”
“Vigorously, Mr. President.” Merriweather scooted forward in his chair, his chin almost even with the edge of the President’s desk. To his left was the NSA. To his right were the secretaries of state and defense. To his front was the man he had to convince. “Sir, this is so farfetched that it really is ridiculous. I am supposed to be on a plane to the Cape right now. My meeting with the CFS representatives is in six hours. Would I really be thinking of this if these crazy assertions were credible?”
Things had gone well so far, the chief executive knew. The DCI hadn’t steered him wrong yet. “Bud, you say there’s a way to confirm this to a greater degree?”
“Yes, sir. What we have to do is compare those names our officer in Cuba found with the supposedly murdered missile crew. If they match, then we cannot dispute this. We can’t afford to.”
It made sense, the President thought. But it was a hell of a big pill to swallow. “All right, how?”
“We have several people working on the archives project with the Russian Ministry of Defense in Moscow.”
“Right,” the President said, “trying to verify the existence of any POWs.”
“And to confirm deaths,” Bud said, expanding on the President’s observation. “Well, sir, one of the archivists is an Agency employee.”
“Hold it.” The President’s expression went immediately to the far side of serious. “We have a spy among the group of archivists? Do you know what the Russians will do if they find that out? Bud, you, of all people, should realize that right now. This is supposed to be the age of trust!”
“Not blind trust,” Bud objected, his disagreement careful in its tone. “The Russians, as much as we would like to think not, are still running heavy intelligence-gathering activities on us. The modernization program for their BMEWS does not negate that. What we have in their archives is benign by comparison. Benign and, thankfully, in the right place to help us here.”
This wasn’t what the President had bargained for when SNAPSHOT was envisioned. It was not supposed to involve outside parties, particularly the Russians. “So what do we do with this man in Moscow? How does he get what we need?”
“We already know from his reports that the death records of the Red Army are stored, by year, in the same area as records concerning POWs and other foreign nationals in prison camps. They’re not considered sensitive. We can notify our agent through the Moscow station chief immediately.” Bud glanced at his watch. “It’s almost seven-thirty in the morning over there, so we can get word to him before he leaves the embassy for the workday.”
“Mr. President, I have to object,” the DCI said before the Man could make a final decision. “To use our agent in Moscow risks not only endangering the modernization program if he should be discovered, but also alienating the Russians in a larger sense. It does not matter if his work is minor, if valuable; they will still see it as a breach of trust. You are correct to be leery of that. Plus, the story purportedly told on that recording — which none of us has heard, I remind you — is factually deficient in several respects.”
“How so?” the President inquired, hoping that the DCI could lay a good case. He didn’t like opposing his NSA on things with as much potential for trouble as this, but what was taking place in Cuba was historic. He wanted nothing to interfere with its successful completion if it could be helped.
“First, there is the last line on the tape, at least as it was reported to us. It instructed the interpreter to lock it away.” The DCI sat back and straight, his expression signaling puzzlement. “How did this supposed assistant get hold of the tape and keep it?”
Bud wanted to smile, but to do so would make it seem as though he were gloating at anticipating Merriweather’s questions. He didn’t even have to look at the secretary of state.
“Sir,” Coventry began, “I thought much the same thing when I heard of this, so I had our Records Section at State check on Cortez’s status. We did the same thing earlier for the Bureau concerning Francisco Portero. It would seem that Cortez was not seen after the last week of October in 1962. No word of a death, or retirement, though the latter would not be likely when we consider he was but forty-one years old.”
“It’s very convenient, Mr. President,” Bud said. “Too convenient. Cortez disappears, and Portero steps in. Maybe Cortez filled him in before he disappeared.”
“That proves nothing,” Merriweather commented. “Just because State can’t locate some old Cuban government worker, we can’t say ‘Hey, this means this.’ It could mean a good number of things.”
“Such as?” Bud asked heatedly.
“Not my job to prove the negative of your theories, DiContino.”
“All right, enough,” the President said. “Anthony, you said there were several reasons to doubt the validity of the story. What else?”
The DCI nodded emphatically. “Yes. More important than the question about the tape is the reality that a missile left in ‘62 would most definitely be out of repair by this date. Long before, actually.”
What? Bud thought. How would he…?
“Drew, is that a credible observation?” the President asked.
The secretary of defense wanted to choose his words carefully. “A weapon such as the SS-4, which is what the Russians had in Cuba at the time, would have required maintenance over the years.”
“Which does not rule out that the Cubans were able to do such,” Bud pointed out. “We know that Castro had Chinese and North Korean technicians in his country over the years after he got that crackpot idea to build a space launch facility like the French have in Guyana.”