Cloudburst (45 page)

Hangar 3C, Jose Marti Airport

The 747’s right side was displayed perfectly to the center hangar which her lights had passed over only seconds before. Behind a line of metal-framed windows a group of men in black stood watching.

“Hell if she didn’t make it down,” Antonelli said, genuinely surprised after the show of sparks they had seen at the far end of the airport.

“Damn,” someone said. The team was realizing it now. They were going to go.

McAffee nodded to Graber.

“Okay, troops,” the captain began. “This is your only good look at the bird. Look at the rear—where the cargo door is.” He was standing behind the others, trying to prep them based on his own experience. “Remember what it looks like now, because you’re going to be up close and personal real soon.”

Less than ten minutes later their pistols were loaded and their faces blackened with anti-flash cream. Then, with two Cubans at the slightly parted hangar door, they boarded the Humvees, which nosed close to the exit.

Flight 422

Hadad refused to allow the aircraft to be towed to the refueling point nearer the service area, and also nearer the terminal. Four fuel trucks, ancient in comparison to those in the ‘real’ world, approached, along with a dispensing pumper. Their antiquity, in this instance, was an asset, allowing the four big tankers to feed fuel to the dispenser truck, basically a big piston-type pump on wheels. Hendrickson gave the tower—and whoever else was there—credit. With only a short radio refusal to come to the normal fueling station, he hadn’t been able to give them much. But someone had figured this solution out, and it would work. Within twenty minutes her not quite depleted tanks should be back up to just beyond two hundred thousand pounds, a little more than half full. It would be plenty to get them to New York, though all three men in the cockpit knew that there was no intention of going there.

“There’s nothing left of the brakes. Zip.”

Hendrickson knew his first officer was right. The pedals barely sprang up from fully depressed, and the metal-on- metal sound near the end of their roll could only have been the retaining pins of the brake pads digging into the discs. There would be several concentric circles of gouges in the hard metal surfaces, caused by the tens of thousands of foot pounds of pressure applied. When the brakes were released after the roll, they were frozen open. The captain thought there might have been some further damage caused by the heat generated during braking, possibly to the hydraulics on the struts. That was of little consequence now. Other problems and happenings would soon be in the forefront, namely that if they had to land again, an act their captor had no intention of allowing, they wouldn’t be able to stop.

“Wherever we go from here, I hope they have a net big enough to stop us,” Captain Hendrickson joked, knowing that the hot mike was still engaged, and hoping that those listening were appreciating the seriousness of their situation. If someone tried a rescue they might be dead, and if they had to take off—with no flaps and less one engine—they might be dead. And landing—though both pilots had figured that this guy had no intention of setting the
Maiden
down anywhere in one piece—was potentially the most dangerous of all the possible outcomes.

Things weren’t looking good, an understatement the captain was frightened to surpass.

Romeo Flight

Major Ralph Cooper felt the connection separate a few yards behind his head. The KC-10’s refueling boom rose above the F-106, the light on its nozzle end shining through the cockpit’s angular canopy onto Snoopy’s white helmet.

Several individual vapor streams, the remnants of the tricky nighttime refueling maneuver, trailed off of the rubbery connector fitting which was retracting farther into the flying boom of the dark green Air Force tanker. Her refueling and anti-collision lights both dazzled Cooper’s vision and lit up the underside of the flying behemoth against the star-flecked blackness.

“Romeo, you took about seven-zero-zero gallons,” the boom operator reported. That brought the Delta Dart up to her max internal load of 1,514 gallons, or 9,841 pounds in more correct aerial terms.

“Roger, Tiger Flight. Thanks for the drink.” Cooper watched the military version of the venerable DC-10 gain altitude and bank left, heading north to the States.

His heading was 120. In ten minutes he’d be in Cuban airspace. The controllers aboard the AWACS informed him that his escorts would pick him up two minutes out. From there they all would circle and wait almost directly north of Havana, just five miles off and fifteen thousand feet above the Cuban coast

It didn’t seem too strange, other than the geography of the matter, until one thought about the nuclear-tipped missile in the Delta Dart’s belly. Cooper tried not to think about it but the fact that he was sitting atop a thirty-year-old nuclear weapon had frequently slipped past his mental defenses since takeoff.

Twenty

CLOSER TO PARADISE

The White House

Meyerson was there, as were Bud, Landau, and the president. The secretary of defense sat away from the others, talking via phone to General Granger in the NMCC. He hung up a moment later.

“Granger says the B-52 flights are meeting up with their tankers west of Gibraltar right now.”

“And the rest of the forces?” the president-asked.

“All in position. From your word, they can execute the first strikes in just twenty minutes.”

Bud listened, passively on the exterior, but…

“What about the bombers? How long can they hold before we have to send them in or recall?” The president was a detail man on the military specifics. After hearing his NSA’s recommendations, he had read the entire brief from the CJCOS himself.

“The F-111’s are orbiting as we speak. They can tank once, but after that we’ll have to do something.” Meyerson saw the need for a more definitive answer on the president’s face. “About three hours, sir. The stateside bombers are a bit more tricky. It’s such a large flight that we just can’t manage another tanking of the whole force and still have enough to get them back across the Atlantic.” The European allies didn’t mind a few F-111’s staging from NATO bases—unlike the eighty-six raid—but a hundred and fifty big U.S. bombers would be political dynamite in most of the nations. Everyone, it seemed, was full speed ahead on the demilitarization policies, an economic necessity for them, and most of the world as well. “It’s a little over three hours for them, also. The 52s will have to head for home first.

“It’s all timing, sir. We have to match our resources—especially the in-flight-refueling ones—to our needs really carefully here. To pull something off this soon after the initial go is a tremendous undertaking.”

“I know, Drew. The military deserves a major attaboy on this one. Bud, how long until Delta will need the final word?” He already knew what it would be. What other choice was there? It was the hostages’ only chance.

“Within thirty minutes,” the NSA replied after checking the clock. The time was approaching fast for action, and the time was already here for a very different kind of the same. Bud knew it was time.

“Mr. President, I’d like to toss something out here.”

Landau smiled with one comer of his crotchety mouth. He could tell what was coming.
The man’s got balls.

“Go ahead.” The president lowered himself into the single seat at the coffee table’s end.

“There’s no doubt that this is the time for decisions. I think we already know what the one concerning Delta and the hostages will be, barring any unforeseen happenings. What I’m talking about is an entirely different decision. A big one.”

The secretary of defense joined the three others, taking a seat on the couch and filling his empty mug from the tureen of coffee.

“Remember how General Granger described that missile the aircraft is carrying down in the Gulf right now? He said shooting that at a plane was like killing a flea with a sledgehammer. Well, I think we might be doing something very similar in Libya, except that we might be missing the flea—so to speak—all together.”

“You think?”

Shit or get off the pot
, Bud thought. He remembered. The president wanted commitment, not conjecture. “I believe this, sir. We should not go ahead with the full-scale strike.’

“For Christ’s sake, why not?” Meyerson challenged.

Bud leaned in. “Look. Think back to the eighty-six raid. Did it work? Obviously not. It’s a damn cycle of act and react. Someone blows up a plane, or hijacks a ship, and what do we do—react to their action. Our policy has been no negotiation with terrorists, and swift retribution when someone is killed. Unfortunately, neither has been practiced faithfully or regularly by past administrations. And the latter, not at all.”

“Explain.” The president was interested.

“Take the Achille Lauro. We were able to apprehend all of the terrorists who carried it out, and the man who planned it—Abu Abbas. Then what happened? Because we vacillated, the Italians let Abbas off scot-free. And the Germans are so damn afraid of retaliation that we can’t get the trigger man they hold, Hamadi, out of their hands for trial. We’re castrated in our effort to deal with these barbarians.”

“So what do you suggest, Bud? That we bomb Rome and Berlin to punish our allies for impeding the judicial process? C’mon. Your logic is going nowhere.” Meyerson exhaled an exasperated breath and finally undid his tie. “We’ve got the force off Qaddafi’s coast to shut down his military and his economy. Two very viable, and very reachable, targets.”

“Sure. And they’re easy. Don’t you see? That’s what I’m getting at. We had this Abbas guy nailed for what he was a hell of a long time before he pulled the Achille Lauro thing, but we just waited. It was easier to react, and to take swipes at a pushover of a country.”

“A major supporter of international terrorism!” Meyerson bellowed.

Bud paused before continuing. “And, nonetheless, a pushover, as I said.”

“What he’s saying, Mr. President, is that we should save the bombs and use just a few bullets.” Landau’s analysis, in its cryptic simplicity, was sufficient to drive the point home.

Bud looked to each of his counterparts, but they were looking at the chief executive.

“Might I remind you, Bud, that what you’re proposing is similar, if not identical, to the events that started this whole mess.” The president’s analysis was not completely right.

“Not correct, sir.” Contradicting any president, even one as young as this, was risky. Bud realized this entirely, and also that he was in the right. “The events that precipitated this situation were planned and executed by men in high places operating outside the bounds of our own law. We can’t say that they abrogated any international agreements since there never has been a comprehensive treaty or convention that dealt with real, hard issues on terrorism. Not one. Only half measures and resolutions of so-called solidarity have been enacted—no, correction: adopted. Enacted implies at least some sort of action, of which there’s been none.

“Our laws, however, do specifically address the matter. Laws were broken, and—Director Landau will back me up on this—their choice of targets and methodology was wrong. Not because it wouldn’t work, or because Qaddafi doesn’t shoulder some of the blame for the state of terrorist activities, but because its impact and results are going to be fruitless. Even detrimental.”

“Herb?” the president asked, seeking an explanation.

“It’s obvious, Mr. President. We knew from the start that Qaddafi’s motivation to undertake this act is vengeance. My predecessors failed to realize that their brilliant plan, however deniable it might have been, had a lag time for full effect. Qaddafi had time to figure it out, and time to set this all up. A more immediate resolution of his activities would have been more appropriate.”

“Assassination in the classical sense.” The president rubbed the furrows on his brow.

Meyerson’s head shook. “There’s a hell of a difference between a flat-out assassination, by gun, knife, poison, or whatever, and a retaliatory strike to punish. We can’t just kill every head of state that supports terrorism. Hell, there would be few Middle East governments left if we’d done that.”

“You missed the full point, Drew,” Bud pointed out. “The method was wrong because it allowed a response. The target was also wrong.”

“I thought you agreed that Qaddafi was culpable?”

“Yes, Mr. President—culpable. But not fully responsible. The reality of any war on terrorism, because it’s an undeclared conflict, is that we can’t take the easy way out and go after the backers. There will always be more where they came from. We’re learning that in spades with the drug cartels now that our policies and interdictions have some meat and are hurting them. The same applies here. We have to go after the idea men and the foot soldiers. We have to send a message that just because you call yourself a freedom fighter, that doesn’t mean you’re immune from retribution. And I emphasize the word
retribution
. It’s a scary word, one that I’d hope every would-be terrorist would think about.”

“So you’re suggesting that we hit only those terrorists who’ve pulled a trigger?” Meyerson still couldn’t grasp the whole picture. “How the hell are we supposed to identify them if they haven’t done anything? There are a hell of a lot of first timers in this game. Kids, women, old folks—the whole gamut of society. How do you expect our people—whichever ones you’d charge with the responsibility to carry out this policy—how would you expect them to predict who was going to be a terrorist before they actually were?”

Bud had the answer ready. “Guilt by affiliation and profession.”

The president looked perplexed, and the secretary of defense was obviously incredulous.

“Bud. Are you hearing yourself? I mean, listen to what you just said. It goes against our own legal definitions of guilt supposition. Guilt by association is not—”

“Again”—Bud held up his hand—“you didn’t hear me. Not guilt by association—guilt by affiliation. There’s a big difference. If you go around saying that you are affiliated with a known group of murderers, and that you are going to follow their lead and kill Americans because they’re Americans, then by God you better believe that they deserve the label of guilty, long before they get behind the trigger.