Who wants to be a millionaire?
Rafael Gomez, that’s who. Yeah, baby.
Then he leaned in through the driver’s window and put the little box on the front seat. He got in and started the piece of crap Yugo. He looked at his watch glowing in the dark. He had an hour and forty-five minutes to relax and enjoy himself. Couple of drinks, calm down, and think.
Because there was still a part of the plan he hadn’t wanted to deal with, but now he had to face it head on.
The problem he had to figure out, now that he’d programmed the goddamn thing was, once he’d pushed the two buttons, what the fuck did he do then?
He got behind the wheel and started the car, thinking hard as he could about the one thing he’d been trying so hard not to think about.
Namely, how did he make sure his family got the hell out of Dodge before the fit hit the shan when all them damn roaches checked out? That was the one-million-dollar question, all right. Had to work on that one.
Good news was he had thirty whole hours to figure that beauty out. Give a man with his kind of brainpower that much time, he’d be more than likely to come up with the goddamn secret of life!
He put the car in reverse and backed out of the garage. He’d start to figure something out, once he sloshed a couple of cold vodkas down the pipe. Another family emergency in Miami? Would that work again so soon? Probably not.
He backed into the street and put the car in first, splashing through puddles, tearing up his street at a pretty good clip. He could afford to speed. Weren’t too many MPs cruising around in their Humvees this time of night. And after all, he was on a pretty tight deadline.
As he drove with his left hand, he unwrapped the bundle. The RC felt cool to his touch on the seat beside him. He looked down at the red window that was flashing ARMED and then 3000, back and forth. So, he was ready. Focused.
He pulled into the PX parking lot. Something was wrong. All the windows were black. Goddamn. Sunday night. He’d totally forgotten. PX was closed on Sunday night. He pounded on the steering wheel. Now what? Here’s what. Go around the back, break a window in the door, and let himself in! Hello? Duh!
Steal a Stoli for Jesus!
The hootch would be locked up behind the metal gate back of the bar. Nothing serious. He had a tool kit in the trunk. Wirecutters, everything. He could jimmy anything. Hell, probably jimmy the back door at the White House
no problema
if he had to. He’d always been good with tools. Good with anything. He saw the little box winking at him. Bad if somebody took his little friend RC while he was on a mission. Real bad. He decided to take it with him along with the tool kit. Swig of Bud, toss the empty in the backseat, and it’s party time, pretty mama!
“RC call home” popped into his mind and he giggled.
He climbed out of the car and turned his face up into the falling rain. He opened his mouth and let the sweet water fill it. So this was what life was like on top of the world.
Christ, it was great to be rich. Don’t let anybody kid you.
Sweet.
“Call the ball,
Kittyhawke,”
squawked the irritated voice of the air boss in his headphones.
Calling the ball.
That’s what the U.S. Navy carrier pilots called it.
If the ball showed green, you were coming in too high. Red, too low. A line of white lights was what you wanted to see.
He watched the lights at the after deck flash green, then red, then green as his little plane bucked the thirty-mile-an-hour headwind. On final approach, what you were mostly worried about was a stall, and Alex was definitely worried. His jumpsuit was wet with the sweat of his adrenaline boost.
He’d already had two unsuccessful attempted landings.
A stall now would be catastrophic.
His headphones squawked again.
“You’ve got to land here, son,” the air boss said. “This is where the hot chow is.”
The carrier had turned into the prevailing wind. It was traveling at flank speed to give maximum wind over the deck, helping pilots to reduce their landing speeds. From experience, Alex knew that wind, wave, air, and skill must be in total sync for him to get home.
Alex had lined up once more, approaching the fantail of the heaving 1,000-foot steel runway of the U.S. aircraft carrier
John F. Kennedy
from astern. The 82,000-ton
Kennedy,
or “Big John” as she was called in the service, had a four-and-a-half-acre deck. Because of the heavy rolling swells, the huge flight deck was lazily rolling ten degrees side to side, but it was rising and falling with the wave action, causing twenty-to thirty-foot surges of the deck.
A carrier landing like this in his old Royal Navy Tomcat was one thing. All those thousands of pounds of thrust gave you a lot of control. A lot of options. Too low? Pull up. Too high, nose her down. Miss the wire? Power out at full throttle. His little seaplane was a different matter entirely. He’d already been waved off twice. The landing signal officer he’d been arguing with on the radio had finally told him to please just go home.
He’d considered just landing alongside the carrier and letting them send a launch to pick him up. The giant swells took that idea out of his consideration set fairly quickly. There was no going home, either. The cold front had moved in solidly and the conditions had worsened to the point where flying back to the Exumas was not an option. He told the LSO he was coming back around. His earphones crackled again.
“Kittyhawke,
you’re three-quarters of a mile out. Call the ball.”
“Roger. Got the ball,” Hawke said.
He felt the little plane shudder as he lined up on his target. Wheels down, full flaps, tailhook down, prop pitch into full low, adjusting his trim tabs to get
Kittyhawke
into proper trim. His fuel was at total rich mix for maximum power recovery. He knew he’d have to dump the plane down hard to have any chance of his tailhook catching the wire. There were four arrester wires on the deck. Catching one of them would be his only chance of stopping short of the water at the other end of the carrier.
“Kittyhawke,
you’re way below glide path. Pull up!”
“Roger,” Hawke said. “No problem.”
In fact, it was a problem. He didn’t think there was any power left in the old Packard-Merlin engine. He was pitching and yawing and the headwind was killing him. Somehow, he had to get his nose up. This was his last shot. He hauled back on the stick. What the hell. He was going in one way or the other.
He’d gotten his nose up a little but the deck was still rising, lifted by the enormous swells. Christ. Fall, damn it, fall! Sweat stung his eyes. It was going to be very, very close.
At the last second, he saw the deck pause majestically and finally begin its long slow fall. He’d timed the swell perfectly. That’s the only thing that saved him. The deck began to drop at precisely the right instant. He cleared by maybe a couple of feet and he banged the little plane down hard. It bounced and jarred him and he said a little prayer, instantly realizing he had another problem. He might just bounce right over all of the four arrester wires.
In his old Tomcat jet fighter, he’d had sufficient power for a bolter. Go to full throttle in a touch-and-go and power out if you miss the last wire.
He didn’t have that option in
Kittyhawke
.
Then he felt the wheels hit the deck again. In a second, he was thrown forward against the restraints of the seat harness as
Kittyhawke
wrenched to a violent and welcome stop. Second-best feeling in the world, he thought, smiling at the old carrier pilot’s expression. He’d hooked the fourth and last of the arrester wires.
“Throttle back, son, you’re not going to make this boat go any faster,” the air boss said in his headphones. Embarrassed, Alex realized he was still at maximum power. He eased his throttle down to idle.
“Bingo,” the air boss said, from his control station just above the navigation bridge up on deck 010. “Welcome to the
Kennedy, Kittyhawke
. We were beginning to wonder.”
“Third time’s the charm,” Hawke said, a lot more coolly than he felt. He taxied over to the nesting place that a green-jacketed crew-man was now waving him into.
“Yeah,” the air boss said. “Just a walk in the park,
Kittyhawke.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Hawke reached over and shut down his engine. There were a couple of wheezing gulps from the old Merlin and then it died quietly.
Climbing out of the plane, he saw the red-jacketed “crash salvage” personnel sitting on their white fire-control tractors. They were all staring at him, shaking their heads and smiling, a few actually applauding. The purple-coated “deckies” and green-coated “maintainers” were all smiling and looking his way, too.
He could hardly blame them. Clearly, the entire landing ops crew were happy to have this particular landing experience behind them. So was he.
He kissed the forehead of the little bathing beauty he’d had painted on his fuselage and jumped from the pontoon down to the deck. He looked up at the carrier’s massive superstructure. From the keel to the masthead at the top, it was as tall as a twenty-three-story building. He then cast his eyes along the row of F-14A Tomcats lining the deck. He saw the legendary logo on their tails. The Black Aces squadron seemed to be in final prep for a night exercise.
Downtown Havana, Hawke thought. And if not tonight, probably sooner rather than later.
Walking across the broad flight deck, he realized that it had been a long time since he’d been aboard a carrier. Since those balmy days in the Persian Gulf in fact. He sucked a draught of the sharp sea air down deep into his lungs. It felt good. Finally, after a remorseful day of endless crisscrossing miles of empty sea, something finally felt good.
Twenty minutes later, he’d tossed his duffel bag into a small cabin in the visiting officers’ quarters, changed from his flight suit to khakis, and was now in the wake of a bustling admiral’s aide escorting him down a long corridor through “officers’ country” to the commanding officer’s wardroom.
The first face he saw when he entered the room was Tate’s, the unpleasant CIA chap he’d encountered at the State Department. Tate’s thin, bloodless lips curled into something slightly resembling a smile and Hawke nodded in his general direction.
But he was relieved to see the face of Jeffrey Weinberg, the deputy secretary of defense, among the eager military and civilians ranged around the big square mahogany table. Alex imagined Cuba on a silver platter in the center of the table. Ranged round the platter, the long knives of the Pentagon. The bomb baby-sitter certainly had his work cut out for him.
Hawke had never seen so many ribbons, decorations, or so much brass on so many puffed-up navy blue and khaki chests in his life. And he was a man who’d seen a lot of both.
There were two empty chairs. One had a small blue flag in front of it. Hawke took the other one and collapsed into it.
“Sorry I’m late, gentlemen,” he mumbled, opening the big black three-ring binder in front of him. As he did, the door to the wardroom opened and an aide stood back as the commander in chief, Atlantic Fleet, ramrod straight, marched into the room.
He was a tall man, at least six-five, with keen gray eyes set wide in a deeply lined face, and snow white hair cut very short in the classic Navy “whitewalls” fashion. He was leathery, tough, and weathered from a lifetime at sea. He gazed around the table, sizing up his team.
Alex knew him and liked him. Born in Hyco, Texas, the CINCATFLT had been first in his class at Annapolis, a Rhodes scholar, a fine athlete, and still a young man for his exalted rank. He was in his prime and clearly at the top of his game.
“I’m Admiral George Blaine Howell. I’d like to welcome each and every one of you aboard my flagship. We’re a little proud of the
Kennedy,
and we hope your stay aboard her will be both comfortable and productive.” His eyes stopped when they reached Hawke, and he was clearly surprised to see him. Alex saw something you generally didn’t expect in the eyes of the military. Sympathy.
“Commander Hawke. Good to see you again. We regret the tragic events of yesterday and especially appreciate your taking this sad time to be with us.”
There were murmurs and head nods around the table.
“Glad to be aboard, sir,” Hawke said. “Sorry to keep everyone waiting.”
“A few of us were up on the bridge,” Tate said. “You gave us all quite a thrilling air show.”
Hawke looked up at the man across the table and glared at him, waiting for him to look away. He finally did.
“You’re welcome to try your hand at a carrier landing anytime, Mr. Tate,” Admiral Howell said. “I’m sure you’d find it quite exciting. Now, let’s cut the bullshit and get down to business.”
Howell opened the silver cigarette case in front of him, popped an unfiltered Camel in his mouth, and lit it. A steady stream of smoke escaped his lips as he started to speak.
“Everyone knows why we’re here. These sons of bitches in Havana. A military coup in Cuba. Goddamn hoodlums, from what I hear. Drug dealers. Murderers. We don’t know if Castro is dead or alive. Doesn’t really matter much to me. One way or another we’re going in there. “
The admiral had reduced one cigarette to ash in less than a minute, and lit another.
“Thanks to Commander Hawke’s efforts, we now know that we are confronting a rogue state quite possibly in possession of the most sophisticated and deadly nuclear submarine ever to roam the oceans. Somebody needs a clear and direct threat to American national security, this is it. The president has instructed this task force to negate that threat with a preemptive strike.”
He paused, letting his eyes roam the table. “Since I’m in charge of this task force, that, gentlemen, with your help, is exactly what I intend to do. The U.S. Navy is going to find that submarine. We’re going take it away from the Cuban rebels. Or we’re going to sink it.”
He looked around the table and said, “Last time we went into Cuba, it was a total ratfuck, dicked up in spades. We actually learn from history. Sometimes. So. Anybody got any bright ideas?”
“If I may, Admiral?” Weinberg said, getting to his feet.
“Of course,” Howell replied as Weinberg walked over to a huge map of Cuba on the wall opposite Hawke. He picked up a laser pointer and flicked it on, aiming at Havana.
Alex settled back in his chair and tried to assume an air of composed, if not rapt, attention. It was now officially a “meeting.” There were few things on earth Alex detested more than meetings. Within his own companies, meetings were strictly limited to ten minutes. Anyone who could not say a definitive yes or no to any question was forbidden to attend.
“Number one,” Weinberg said, “we have to keep talking to these people, no matter how threatening, how belligerent they become. We keep them talking long enough to form and implement our strategy.”
“Who does the talking on our side?” Admiral Howell asked.
“The president has suggested the secretary of state. Her Cuban heritage makes her ideal. Anyone disagree?” Weinberg asked. Howell nodded his approval. There was no dissent.
“Good,” Weinberg said, “then she will be the gatekeeper for all information and intelligence we generate. She will lead our negotiations with the new regime. The secretary has asked me to apologize for her late arrival. She’s coming from an emergency meeting with the president on Key West.”
“That’s one, what’s number two?” the admiral asked, a wreath of smoke now encircling his head.
“Well. If you’ll open your briefing books,” Weinberg said, “you’ll see that tab one contains a series of photographs taken by our U-2s and Predators over the last week or so. The photos are of an island here, off the coast of Manzanillo, on the southeast coast of Cuba. Please take a minute to study them.”
“Never anything brief about a briefing book,” Admiral Howell muttered, turning the pages, skipping ahead.
As the men leafed through their books, Hawke opened his case and withdrew a small package containing an audio cassette. The radioman aboard
Blackhawke
had handed it to him as he boarded his seaplane. He assured Hawke it would be interesting.