“They will. There is no doubt.” Raul took a chair and pulled it next to his brother, sitting and leaning close to him. “But there are options other than the American capital.” He put on the glasses he hated so much and looked to his notes. “A very good target would be New York. The destruction of that city would disrupt the financial dealings of the yanquis for years. Their vaunted stock exchange would be leveled. The headquarters of many of their largest corporations are located there. It would be a crushing blow.”
Raul went to the next on his list of three. “There is also Los Angeles, on America’s West Coast. While not as financially important to the capitalists as New York, it is a heavily used transportation center vital to communications and distribution of manufactured goods. It is also the dominant port of trade with the East. And its population is highly vulnerable. Also, with the warhead being fused for a surface burst, the radioactive fallout will be carried by the prevailing winds eastward over the heartland of the country. There could potentially be millions more deaths over several decades from that effect alone.”
Fidel took in a slow, deep breath and continued to give his brother the time to plead his case. There was no reason not to. That which had to be done would come to pass.
“Finally, Miami. We have many enemies there, and some of the insurgents are likely from that population. It is also an important center for commerce in the southern United States.” Raul could see that his brother seemed disinterested in his propositions, especially the final one.
“Fidel, you must choose a target. General Asunción needs to program the guidance system.”
“Yes.” A smile came to his face. “They must be punished.”
“The target, Fidel.”
“I have chosen it.”
Raul suspected correctly that his presentation had been for naught. The president’s mind had been made up for some time, he realized, knowing that the seat of power of a mighty nation was going to be targeted.
His musing was only half-right.
Gonzales said nothing after hearing the NSA’s explanation of the situation to him. His family had fled Cuba when Castro seized power more than three decades before, and he had thought when the rebellion began how much his late father would have loved to set foot in the land of his birth just once more. And now that bastard in Havana was planning to kill potentially millions because he didn’t accept the handwriting on the wall.
“I’m glad I filled you in before Greg got here,” the NSA admitted. The DDI had been delayed waiting for imagery of the area where the missile had been found. There was also a possible complication, he had told Bud, but did not want to discuss it on the phone. Even a secure one. Drummond didn’t wave red flags for no reason, leaving Bud wondering what could possibly complicate the situation any more than it already was.
“Holy cow,” Gonzales commented mildly, though his eyes hinted at the language he truly wanted to use.
“You can see why we’ve got to keep this airtight. Jack doesn’t get this, okay? That way he’s not lying when he is sweetly noncommittal.”
Gonzales nodded. “Do you know what this is?”
“What? A repeat of ‘62?” Bud had seen the eerie parallel early on. “Let’s hope we’re better at keeping it under wraps than they were.”
A few heavy footsteps through the connecting office of the deputy NSA signaled the DDI’s arrival.
“Sorry it took so… Ellis.” Drummond laid the security case on the coffee table.
“He’s in, Greg,” Bud said, going on with his own complication. “We may have a press problem.”
The DDI sat down on the couch and began removing the pictures he’d brought over from the case. “We may have a bigger one than that. Look.”
Bud sat next to the DDI on the two-person couch, with Gonzales standing to the side.
“Good shots,” Bud commented. He could tell they were from Aurora’s SAR, but Gonzales wasn’t cleared for that knowledge. To him they would just be amazing overhead imagery.
“NPIC processed them F-A-S-T. This is straight from the analysts who did the workup.” He handed a synopsis of their findings to the NSA.
“What… A CSS-Four?”
“Or a CZ-Three space-launch booster,” Drummond said. “Though that’s a matter of semantics. They’re identical in all respects except for what goes on top.” He pointed to the best image that showed the weapon’s huge diameter. “Fidel is proving to be adept at these secret ‘arrangements.’ First Vishkov, and then this.”
“The Chinese supplied him with this!” Bud’s neck reddened by the second. “That space-facility thing was just a sham, then?”
“It’s looking that way. If it ever came out that this booster was there, he could try and explain it away as just part of the process to build the facility. A mockup or whatever. And to be truthful, without knowing that he had something to put on top, it would have looked like just part of his loony schemes.”
Gonzales saw that it was much bigger than the missile described by Bud a few minutes earlier. “How did we miss this?”
It was the question the Agency—“we” invariably was translatable to “you”—forever found itself answering when things didn’t go as those in higher places expected they should. “The Chinese were in Cuba working on the space facility in the first months of ‘91, which were pretty busy for us, you know. If it came in, it was probably then. And remember, this was one missile which we knew nothing about. The Navy lost a whole freighterful going from North Korea to Iran not long back, and they knew what they were looking for. The Agency is not the all-knowing, all-seeing power that a lot of folks think it is.”
“I’m not blaming, Greg,” Gonzales explained. “It’s just hard to fathom that Castro would go to such lengths.”
That struck Bud. Why would he? He read over the report again, picking out the details on the CSS-4’s performance, particularly the estimated-range data. “This thing has a seven-thousand-five-hundred-mile range.”
That was an academic statement to the DDI. “Yes. So?”
“Ellis has a point,” Bud said. “Why would Castro go to the lengths he has to give himself a delivery system that is overkill? There were other missile boosters out there that he could get a hold of that would be easier to hide and to base. The Chinese sold some CSS-Ones to Saudi Arabia awhile back. That would have had plenty of range to reach any target in the lower forty-eight, and it’s quite a bit smaller. Or those SS-Fours the Russians were ‘destroying’ after INF.” The Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty between the United States and the former USSR required the destruction of all surface missile systems with range envelopes of three hundred to three thousand miles. “We know that some of those made their way to Iran. Why not Cuba? Wouldn’t that have made for an easy match? Old warhead to newer booster of the same type.”
Drummond’s mental process put on the brakes. “Wait, what are we assuming? That the original booster never worked, or that it stopped being functional at some point?”
“Or that Castro decided it wasn’t what he wanted anymore,” Bud suggested ominously, more so in his own mind. The scenario was beginning to take shape.
“I don’t follow you,” Drummond said.
Bud walked to the globe that sat in the far corner of his office. It was no more than a showpiece — something he thought looked nice. He spun it almost half a world past the United States. “Oh, my God.”
The exclamation was spoken softly, as if a prayer.
“What is it, Bud?” Ellis asked.
The NSA still faced away from the men. “Greg, you’re versed in Castro’s ways from the missile crisis.”
“Yeah.”