admiral said good naturedly. “I’ll take care of him. We always take
care of our own in the Navy. You remember that.”
As the two senior officers walked away, the lieutenant commander drew a
shaky breath. He looked back down at his screen, and stopped in
mid-exhalation. “Admiral I think you might want to see this.” Damn
it, it was the right thing to do, call the admiral back, as much as
he’d been relieved to see the two men step away from him. “That
Tomcat it’s inbound on the Cuban command center.”
From some yards behind him, the admiral’s voice said, “I know that,
son. The senator and I are going to watch the last part of this from
my console. When it’s over we’ll tell you what actually happened. You
got that?”
“Aye, aye. Admiral.” The lieutenant commander hunched back up to his
controls and settled in to wait.
0710 Local (+5 GMT) Tomcat 202
The prior air strike had silenced most of the anti-air batteries on the
ground. A few sites spat up tracers, but the Tomcat avoided them
easily. Antiaircraft fire was no big deal when there were no
overlapping fields of fire and when the Tomcat owned the air.
“Time to rejoin the world.” Tombstone reached out and flicked on the
communication circuitry. His earphones immediately filled with the
loud tactical chatter from the furball still going on out to the
east.
From the sound of it, the Americans were continuing to dominate. Not
surprising though he wished he were there himself to see it. Still,
maybe that’s what getting more senior earned you going head-on head
with UAVs instead of MiGs. If that was true, he was damned sure he
didn’t want that next star! What would that entail taking on a
satellite single-handedly? Maybe a space shuttle? Surviving near
death always brought with it its own sense of giddiness.
“I’ve got a visual,” he said, surveying the landscape ahead of him.
The Cuban naval base was easily visible in the sunlight now pouring out
from the east. Brilliant white buildings set against the lush tropical
foliage, some of them partially concealed by towering palm trees. A
thin line ran around the compound, undoubtedly a fence of some sort.
Tombstone could see people moving around, the damaged building still
smoldering from the strike the day before, and heavy construction
equipment invading the open field that had contained the alleged
missile silos.
Farther to the west, he established a visual on his target.
From the air, the command center looked innocuous a single-story
building no different from its fellows. But according to intelligence,
it burrowed deep into the earth, and the actual command center was cut
off from the Potemkin village structures aboveground.
“Home Plate, this is Tomcat Two-zero-two,” Tombstone said into his
microphone. “Commencing bombing run.”
“Stoney!” Batman snapped over the circuit. “Goddamn it, one of these
days I’m going to” Tombstone cut him off. “Listen, shipmate, I don’t
have time to talk right now. I’m gonna blast this bastard back to the
Stone Age. As for the details well, if you come clean with me when I
get back to the ship, I’ll fill you in on them.
Otherwise, you’re permanently out of the loop.”
“Not on the circuit,” Batman snapped. “Jesus, don’t you think that I”
“I’m betting you didn’t do anything,” Tombstone interrupted again.
“You remember a certain conversation we had in the Flag Mess two days
ago? About Vietnam and what we learned from that?”
“Yes.” Batman’s voice was wary. “You’ve been thinking about that?”
“You bet. And I think I know how this whole thing developed and how to
keep it from happening again.
We’ll talk about that when I get back, but the priority right now is
preventing Cuba from launching on the U.S. Quick now I’m almost in is
there any later intel?”
“It’s as we suspected, Stoney,” Batman said. “It’s that command center
we ID’d from the photos. We believe the complete command staff is down
there and they’ve got tactical control of every weapon on that
island.
If you damage them, even take out all their antennas, they’ve got no
way to launch. Not unless they’ve got a remoted capability to each of