Cuba Read Free Page B

almost anyone with a credit
    card and two thousand square feet of laboratory
    space, could construct a biological weapon hi a
    matter of weeks from inexpensive, off-the-shelf
    technology. Years ago Saddam Hussein got
    into the biological warfare business with anthrax
    cultures purchased from an American mail-order
    supply house and delivered via overnight mail.
    Ten grams of anthrax properly dispersed can kill
    as many people as a ton of the nerve gas Sarin. What was
    that estimate Jake saw recently”…one hundred
    kilograms of anthrax delivered by an efficient
    aerosol generator on a large urban target would
    kill from two to six times as many people as a
    one-megaton nuclear device.
    Of course, Jake Grafton reflected,
    anthrax was merely one of over one hundred and
    sixty known biological warfare agents. There were
    others far deadlier but equally cheap to manufacture
    and disperse. Still, obtaining a culture was merely a
    first step; the journey from culture dishes
    to
    a reliable weapon that could be safely stored and
    accurately employedanything other than a spray
    tankwas long, expensive, and fraught with engineering
    challenges.
    Jake Grafton had had a few classified
    briefings about CBW-WHICH stood for chemical and
    biological warfare but he knew little more than diswas
    available in the public press. These weren’t the
    kinds of secrets that rank-and-file naval
    officers had a need to know. Since the Kennedy
    administration insisted on developing other military
    response capabilities besides nuclear warfare,
    the United States had researched, developed, and
    manufactured large stores of nerve gas, mustard
    gas, incapacitants, and defoliants. Research
    on biological agents went forward in tandem at
    Fort Detrick, Maryland, and ultimately led to the
    manufacture of weapons at Pine Bluff
    Arsenal in Arkansas. These highly classified
    programs were undertaken with little debate and almost no
    publicity. Of course the Soviets had their own
    classified programs. Only when accidents
    occurredlike the accidental slaughter of 6,000
    sheep thirty miles from the Dugway
    Proving Ground in Utah during the late
    1960’s, or the deaths of sixty-six people at
    Sverdlovsk in 1979 did the public get a
    glimpse into this secret world.
    Nerve gases were loaded into missile and rocket
    warheads, bombs, land mines, and artillery shells.
    Biological agents were loaded into missile
    warheads, cluster bombs, and spray tanks and
    dispensers mounted on aircraft.
    Historically nations used chemical or
    biological weapons against an enemy only when the
    enemy lacked the means to retaliate in kind. The
    threat of massive American retaliation had
    deterred Saddam Hussein from the use of chemical
    and biological weapons in the 1991 Gulf War,
    yet these days deterrence was politically incorrect.
    In 1993 the United States signed the
    Chemical Weapons Convention, thereby agreeing
    to remove chemical and biological weapons from its
    stockpiles.
    The U.s. military had been in no hurry
    to comply with the treaty, of course, because without the threat of
    retalia-
    STEPHEN COONTS
    tion there was no way to prevent these weapons
    being used against American troops and civilians.
    The waiting was over, apparently. The politicians
    in Washington were getting their way: the United
    States would not retaliate against an enemy with
    chemical or biological weapons even if
    similar weapons were used to slaughter Americans.
    When Jake Grafton finished his push-ups and
    stood, the staff operations officer, Commander Toad
    Tarkington, was there with a towel. Toad was slightly
    above medium height, deeply tanned, and had a
    mouthful of perfect white teeth that were visible when he
    smiled or laughed, which he often did. The admiral
    wiped his face on the towel, then picked up the
    binoculars and once again focused them on the cargo
    ships.
    “Glad the decision to destroy those things wasn’t one
    I had to makeea”…Toad Tarkington said.
    “There are a lot of