staff or ashore at the Pentagon. In Bird Dog’s case, he’d had a chance
to apply his new skills even before he graduated.
He’d wangled his way out to Jefferson in the Med just in time to take
part in the Black Sea conflict.
“Well, maybe they should have,” Gator said. “If I had to guess, I’d
say there’s a reason the admiral wants Cuba’s air assets worried about
the north. We’re already getting I and Windications and warnings that
they’re launching more of them and vectoring toward us.”
“If I’d been planning it, I would have waited until the weather was
better.” Bird Dog glanced overhead, looking for any patches of clear
sky. No luck. “Where are our playmates, anyway? The ones we’re
supposed to be diversioning. If we’re gonna boogie, we might as well
do it.”
“I hold a MiG on two-seven-zero at fifty miles,” Gator answered.
“About time you switched into targeting mode, don’t you think?”
‘Too far away.”
“The bad guys won’t know that, will they? No, they won’t,” Gator
continued, answering his own question. “Get it through your thick
skull. Bird Dog the point of being up here is not to engage another
aircraft, it’s to make someone on the ground think we’re up to
something interesting. That spells targeting illumination, simulating
every electronic and radar signal we generate when we’re actually
attacking.
Get with the program.”
Bird Dog sighed and switched the powerful AWG-9 radar into illumination
mode. The ESM sensors arrayed along the coast of Cuba and perched on
its highest peak would undoubtedly detect it within seconds. “There.
Are you happy?”
“I am. The question is are the Cubans?”
0310 Local (+5 GMT) Fifty Miles Southwest of Fuentes Naval Base The
small RHIB-rigid-hull inflatable boat slid smoothly up the side of one
swell, picking up speed as it descended into the trough. The eight
SEALs on board held grimly to the ropes around its hard rubber sides.
Their bodies had gotten accustomed to the rhythmic movement thirty
minutes earlier, and even the greenest of them was well past worrying
about seasickness.
Not that SEALs got seasick. Or that they’d ever admit to it if they
did.
A cold front had moved into the area yesterday, increasing the
difference between wet-bulb and dry-bulb temperatures to less than two
degrees. Consequently, dense fog was forming on the surface of the
ocean, wafting up and enveloping the Special Forces platoon in a
cloaking mist.
Overhead, low clouds were rolling in, spitting short bursts of rain
that left their wet suits gleaming in the low ambient light diffused
about them. Each man held his weapon with his free hand, close to the
chest. Not that they’d need them-at least, they wouldn’t if everything
went well.
“Three miles,” Huerta said softly. He stretched his legs, twisted his
torso to loosen the muscles growing stiff from the cold and damp. “Be
ready.”
One by one, the team members flashed a silent hand signal in
acknowledgment. As if it were needed. SEALs were always ready.
The brief mission was relatively simple in planning, with the potential
for unexpected complications in execution.
They were to go ashore and take a quick sneak and peek at the Cubans’
facility on the southwest corner of the island.
The overhead imagery revealed new construction on the base, as well as
the possibility that the downed American pilot was being held hostage
there. Their orders allowed them to take action, if they could do so
without compromising the unit’s safety, to free him. Every one of them
had firmly resolved to do just that if at all possible.
In addition to the normal bag of tricks, Huerta carried a few extra
goodies. A low-light camera, capable of concentrating the ambient
light to take pictures even under the worst of conditions. Two small,
portable motion detectors, each barely larger than a small tape
recorder, for mounting at the entrances to their areas of
surveillance.
And finally, the piece of gear responsible for the particularly grim
expression on their leader’s face a microcircuitized Geiger counter.
The muffled hammer of the specially silenced engine attached to the
RHIB soaked into the fog around them.
Barring exceptionally poor luck, the team was undetectable.