October's Ghost (11 page)

“You saw this in Vietnam, Bud?” the President inquired.

The NSA nodded. “A very effective technique.”

“Proven by the winners, you might say,” Merriweather commented.

It was an effective jab, notching up Bud’s internal “Nam meter” to a place it hadn’t been in years. Veterans of the Indochina experience had dealt with crap of the sort the DCI had just dished out frequently in the years following the fall of the South, but not so much recently. Bud was fully aware that Merriweather, a fervent Yalie who had ironically held the History chair at Harvard in the late sixties, was no fan of the war. It was becoming more apparent now that, despite any effort to counter it, the DCI was never going to be a fan of Bud’s.

“Well, not everybody who wins deserves to,” the President observed. “Anthony, what about these other aircraft? They look like helicopters.”

“Mi-24 Hinds. Russian-built gunships. They’re wonderful against insurgents, like they proved in Afghanistan.”

Jesus Christ!
Bud was having trouble believing his ears. Merriweather was using positive examples of the Viet Cong and the Cold War era Russians to flavor his little performance.

“They lost in Afghanistan, Anthony.” Bud’s retort was sprinkled with the barest amount of sarcasm.

“And the mujahedeen were left fighting the crony government in Kabul for how long?” The DCI sniffed a quiet chuckle, with no smile attached to it. “Then again, we pulled out of South Vietnam also. But it didn’t take the North Vietnamese Army that long to take what they wanted after that.”

He couldn’t stand it anymore. “Anthony,” Bud began, his head shaking slowly from side to side as a smile that could only be one of disgust came to his lips, “some of us were there, you know, unlike—”

“Hold on. Hold on.” The President leaned farther forward, looking alternately at both of his advisers. Drummond had shifted back to an upright position on the couch. “We are here to discuss Cuba. Not Vietnam. Christ, I was barely out of high school when all that came to an end. But I am here now, and we may be able to do something to put one of those checks back in the ‘democracy’ column. All right?”

To be castigated by the President was not entirely unheard of, but it had not happened to Bud. Worse yet, he deserved it, and he had allowed Merriweather to advance his apparent agenda that much further by behaving as a reactionary. Bud looked to the DDI but did not engage in any eyeplay to test the situation. There was no need to draw Drummond into this if he was able to maintain a working relationship with his boss.
God dammit, Bud. Play smarter.

“Go on, Anthony.”

“Yes, sir. If you’ll watch the monitor.” The DCI lifted the remote from the coffee table and clicked on the video player, pausing it as soon as a picture appeared. The scene was in black and white, very high contrast, and was filmed from a very high angle. “This is a video record from the KH-12 on a pass over the same airfield as the stills, except this was timed to concur with the beginning of the attack. It was taken using the same type of IR imaging as the stills. Remember, this is in darkness, with low moonlight, so what you will see are the heat signatures of objects.”

The President nodded while keeping his eyes on the screen.

“Watch the left top corner of the screen.” The DCI started the video. From where he had indicated, several objects came into view, their forms growing in a white intensity as the camera slowly crossed the area. “Those are the Hinds. They’ve just fired up their engines—that’s the heat you’re seeing there as it bleeds off of the exhaust and radiates from the engine through the body of the helicopter. And there.” Merriweather noted several small white blobs crossing into the frame. “Those are people, probably soldiers, running to where the aircraft were blown.”

Bud was watching with interest. As a spectator in a game where he should have been on the field, it was all he could do.

“See how the heat signature is growing in intensity? They’re readying to take off.” Merriweather paused for just a moment, a look of anticipatory satisfaction obvious on his face. “Watch carefully.”

Two of the Hinds moved slightly, a perceptible jump upward, then each turned to the right and began moving low above the ground. Suddenly, from the tail of each helicopter, within a second of each other, a bright flash and shower of white erupted, and instantly each Hind changed attitude and spun violently to the right. The motion ceased abruptly a few seconds later, an obvious crash.

“It’s amazing to watch this without sound,” the President commented. “Can you imagine what that sounded like on the ground?”

“Impressive,” Bud had to admit. “How did they do it?”

Drummond sensed that it was his turn to join in his boss’s presentation. “It looks like some sort of tail-rotor failure. Not an explosive of any kind; otherwise, that bloom you saw when it failed would have been a hell of a lot brighter. Somehow they tampered with the rotor housing or something, because when it came up to speed, the thing just came apart. If you look real closely, you can actually see blades flying off as it disintegrates.”

“And the other two Hinds suffered the same fate a few minutes later,” the DCI added. “The Cubans must have thought the first two were shot down. You can imagine the confusion there. Unfortunately the satellite was not able to keep its sensors on that area of observation.”

Bud perked up at that comment. “Why not?”

“There’s a problem with the stabilization system for the real-time sensors,” the DCI explained. The “real-time sensors” were the video camera systems, which were often used to transmit images as they happened, hence the name.

Fantastic!
The only platform to observe and provide the intelligence the rebels wanted wasn’t fully functioning. There were three KH-12s in orbit, two of which were tasked with monitoring the removal of the former Soviet ICBMs from the Ukraine. The more capable KH-12 ENCAP (Enhanced Capability) was almost out of fuel. It was presently, as it had been for the previous year, running a straight orbital path at five hundred miles altitude. Budget cuts and the lack of any real threats had resulted in the refueling flight by the Space Shuttle being postponed indefinitely. Bud knew there were other means to maintain the country’s “eye in the sky” capability, but this situation damned sure didn’t warrant the risk of exposure or the expense.

“Would the information we can get from the satellite still serve the purpose?” the President asked.

“Absolutely,” Merriweather answered without hesitation. “The still imagery is what we need in order to provide information to the rebels.”

The President sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the frozen image at the end of the video. “What about other facilities in Cuba?”

“We have stills from seven major airfields taken on the same pass as these,” the DCI responded, pointing to the second set of photos on the table. “Sir, the Cuban government effectively has no air force remaining.”

It was really happening, the President thought. The second-to-last bastion of communism was finally crumbling, and it was on his watch.

And now it was time to commit. “Anthony, get things moving. Our investment in this may be small, but the return could be tremendous. I don’t want to miss this opportunity.”

“Gladly, sir.” Merriweather looked to the NSA with a look that begged of a challenge, but there was none.

“Then let’s do this,” the President said. He stood, as did the others in his presence, and wished them well before going to the adjoining study to complete work reviewing several policy papers.

Merriweather headed out, leaving his deputy and the NSA alone in the Oval Office. The younger man avoided the NSA’s stare for a moment. “Sorry, Bud.”

“Just what does he think he’s doing?”

Drummond looked to the door that had closed behind the President. “Not here.”

“Come on.” They were in Bud’s office a minute later, Old Executive partially visible through the windows facing west. “Your boss is now officially on my shit list. What in the hell does he think he’s doing advising the President to do this!”

The DDI knew it wasn’t a question, despite the wording. It was a release. “Anthony is out to prove history wrong, Bud.”

“What does that mean?”

Drummond took a seat on the liberally cushioned couch. “You remember old Professor Merriweather’s book,
Victory in Vietnam: Winning the War We Lost
. He crucified Kennedy and Johnson for failing to seize the initiative in the early stages of involvement. For some reason he left Ike out of the equation, which is kinda funny, considering his politics. Attacking two Democrats must have seemed more salient, I guess.” Drummond, the conservative Republican, let his personal politics slip into an official conversation. It was a rare enough happening that Bud’s expression changed from one of anger to one of wonder. “He thought we should have been more aggressive in trying to destabilize the North by insurrection, rather than let them do the same thing to the South. Remember the final four chapters.” A nod signaled him to proceed. “My esteemed director explained in detail how such a plan to defeat the North could have worked. First, commit minimum resources. Second, find disgruntled officers in the military. Third, use the carrot on the stick to get those officers to take out their own government. Kind of like ‘We’ll give you this, but you have to do this first.’”  He looked to the dark carpeting at his feet. “When the Cubans practically walked in ready to fulfill his twenty-year-old prophecy, well...”

Bud leaned against his file-strewn desk. “Jesus, Greg. Does he have any idea what...” He stopped in mid-sentence. “Stupid question.”

“Anthony knows exactly what this could mean, but he chooses to ignore anything that might get in the way of his theory of ‘baited revolution’ being proven. He chooses to ignore a lot of things.”

“I can’t believe this. I really can’t.” Bud walked around his desk and fell into the high back chair. “Do you know what the Russians would do if they found out about this? Christ, Greg, Cuba may not be their little brother anymore, but that doesn’t mean they think there’s an implied
carte blanche
to kick Castro out. Dammit!” He spun the chair to face the window. “Any hint that we’re involved in Cuba would make trust a moot point. The modernization program would be down the tubes.” Bud turned back to the sullen DDI. “And Konovalenko, and his reforms, well, he doesn’t need any other pressures right now.”

“I argued for a timing change,” Drummond explained. “But Anthony wouldn’t go for it.”

“You should have gone to the President.”

The DDI raised an unsure eyebrow at the suggestion. “Right. I bypass my boss and go to the Man. Aside from the fact that I like to be able to feed my family, you know as well as I that he wouldn’t have bought it. You saw him. He’s as much into this as Anthony. Mainly because of Anthony.”

Bud knew his friend was right. It was a suggestion, really a wish, born of frustration. “Dammit, Greg. Why now? Even if it is going to work, why now?”

“Because he’s an idiot,” Drummond said. The characterization might have been harsh, but he could have said worse at the moment. “All he sees is success, and he’s got the President believing that, too. And they want it now.”

It wasn’t hard to see why the President was going along with this so willingly. Merriweather had carefully orchestrated it so that only he would advise the President on SNAPSHOT until it was actually under way. Then it would be too late to do anything about it.

So that was the reason for the show
. The realization of what had really happened a few minutes before in the Oval Office came to Bud very suddenly. “Your boss is no idiot, Greg. He’s smart.”

“How do you figure?”

Bud laughed openly. “He keeps the President isolated from any negative analysis of SNAPSHOT by restricting knowledge only to those who won’t or can’t challenge the plan. Namely he was worried about me. You know as well as I that he’s never been a fan of mine, and he knew I’d have serious reservations about his operation. He also knew that the President would listen to me. So what does he do? When it’s time to let me in, he uses me to give credibility to the results we saw in there by asking for my analysis. I couldn’t lie; it looked impressive. The rebels were obviously well prepared for this, and that imagery didn’t just give Anthony the validation the President wanted—he used it to solicit my tacit approval for the President. Like you said, all they see is success, and now he’s negated the person who would have squawked the loudest.”

“I’m used to the abuse part from him,” Drummond said. “How does it feel being used?”

“It’s not so bad when you don’t know it for ninety-nine percent of the time it’s going on,” Bud joked.

Drummond couldn’t see where his friend was finding humor in this. “I wish I could laugh it off like you.”

“ ‘Once the derby starts, the horses don’t run backward,’ ” Bud said, the familiar quote bringing a smile to his face and a slight lump to his throat.

“Herb Landau sticks with you, doesn’t he?” the DDI said. He had heard the same words from his former boss in some of the darker times when events seemed to be overtaking those who were supposed to be in control. “So what now?”

“We try and keep any major fuckups from happening,” Bud said confidently. “If I know you, you’ve kept Anthony as much on the straight and narrow as is possible.”

“Except for his choice of who’s to take the reins down there.”

“Some things will have to straighten themselves out once this is done.” Maybe like in Panama, Bud thought to himself. That was still to be resolved.

“I hope so,” the DDI said. “Now would be a good time to fill you in on what we need from the military.”

“Shoot.”

It took only a few seconds to explain. “Sort of a bodyguard and escort service.”

“I think they have a less flattering term for this kind of mission,” Bud commented. The boys in black were again being tasked for a mission that was a waste of their talent. But being special, he reminded himself, didn’t always guarantee the glory. “Drew is going to love being kept out of the loop on this.” Secretary of Defense Andrew Meyerson, though not always of the same mind as the NSA, was likely to have the same reaction at having been kept in the dark on SNAPSHOT.