Cuba Read Free Page A

his day so that he
    could spend at least a half hour running on the
    flight deck. Today he was dressed in gym shorts,
    T-shirt, and tennis shoes, but he had yet
    to make it to the flight deck.
    Gra bar ton was a trim, fit fifty-three
    years old, a trifle over six feet tall, with
    short hair turning gray, gray eyes, and a nose
    slightly too large for his face. On one temple
    was a scar, an old, faded white slash where a
    bullet had gouged him years ago.
    People who knew him regarded him as the
    epitome of a competent naval officer. Grafton
    always put his brain in gear before he opened his mouth,
    never lost his cool, and he never lost sight of the
    goals he wanted to accomplish. In short, he was
    one fine naval officer and his superiors knew it,
    which was why he was in charge of this carrier group lying in
    Guantanamo Bay.
    The carrier and her escorts had been running
    exercises in the Caribbean for the last week. Today the
    carrier was anchored in the mouth of the bay, with two of
    her larger consorts anchored nearby. To seaward
    three- destroyers
    steamed back and forth, their radars probing the skies.
    A set of top-secret orders had brought the
    carrier group here.
    Jake Grafton thought about those orders as he
    studied the two cargo ships lying against the pier through a
    set of navy binoculars. The ships were small,
    less than eight thousand tons each; larger ships
    drew too much water to get against the pier in this
    harbor. They were
    Nuestra Sefiora de Colon
    and
    Astarte.
    The order bringing those ships here had not come from
    some windowless Pentagon cubbyhole; it was no memo
    drafted by an anonymous civil servant or
    faceless staff weenie. Oh, no. The order that had
    brought those ships to this pier on the southern coast of
    Cuba had come from the White House, the top of the
    food chain.
    Jake Grafton looked past the cargo ships at
    the warehouses and barracks and administration buildings
    baking in the warm Cuban sun.
    A paradise, that was the word that described Cuba.
    A paradise inhabited by communists. And
    Guantanamo Bay was a lonely little American
    outpost adhering to the underside of this communist island, the
    asshole of Cuba some called it.
    Rear Admiral Grafton could see the cranes
    moving, the white containers being swung down to the pier
    from
    Astarte,
    which had arrived several hours ago. Forklifts took
    the steel boxes to a hurricane-proof warehouse,
    where no doubt the harbormaster was stacking them three
    or four deep in neat, tidy military rows.
    The containers were packages designed to hold
    chemical and biological weapons, artillery
    shells and bombs. A trained crew was here
    to load the weapons stored inside the
    hurricane-proof warehouse into the containers, which would
    then be loaded aboard the ship at the pier and
    transported to the United States, where the warheads
    would be destroyed.
    Loading the weapons into the containers and getting the
    containers stowed aboard the second ship was going
    to take at least a week, probably longer. The
    first ship,
    Nuestra Sefiora de Colon,
    Our Lady of Col less-than 5n, had been a
    week loading, and would be ready to sail this evening.
    Jake Grafton’s job was to provide military
    cover for the loading operation with this carrier battle
    group.
    His orders raised more questions than they answered. The
    weapons had been stored in that warehouse for years why
    remove them now? Why did the removal operation
    require military cover? What was the threat?
    Admiral Grafton put down his binoculars and
    did fifty push-ups on the steel deck while he
    thought about chemical and biological weapons.
    Cheaper and even more lethal than atomic weapons,
    they were the weapons of choice for Third World nations
    seeking to acquire a credible military
    presence. Chemical weapons were easier to control
    than biological weapons, yet more expensive
    to deliver. Hands down, the cheapest and deadliest
    weapon known to man was the biological one.
    Almost any nation, indeed,