Death Orbit (22 page)

There were two people inside. Two scantily clad young girls, mere teenagers, were floating around the cabin, eyes drawn, bodies deflated, mouths open, and tongues stuck out, attempting to catch as much of the free-floating cocaine and heroin as they could.

Tasers up and ready, Hunter and Elvis stared at them as they floated by, trying their best to be human vacuum cleaners. One was topless and a sure bet to be the owner of the article of clothing they’d found next door. A quick visual check of the rest of the capsule showed no one else was here, just the two girls, apparently the playthings of the pair of spacemen Hunter and Elvis had just eliminated.

“Where is Viktor?” Elvis asked them harshly.

The two young girls ignored him.

“Where the hell
is
he?” Elvis demanded.

The pair just kept swimming through the cabin, snagging bits of drug crystals like fish trying to capture smaller prey. Either they didn’t hear him or they weren’t interested in talking.

Finally Elvis reached up and grabbed the topless one by the leg, pulling her down in front of them. She stared back with a mixture of horror and confusion. It really did look like she was noticing them for the first time.

Hunter was at eye-level with her. She was pretty, but obviously ill from drug use and malnutrition.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

The girl had to think a moment.

“I… I really don’t know,” she finally replied unconsciously rubbing her smallish breasts.

“How about your friend?” Hunter asked, indicating the other girl, who was floating directly above their heads at the moment. “What’s
her
name?”

The first girl had to think a bit. Finally she shook her head again. Tears were beginning to form in her eyes.

“I used to know,” she whispered. “But now…”

She began crying, treating Hunter and Elvis to the odd spectacle of tears coming from her eyes—and floating away.

Hunter reached into his pocket and came up with the bathing suit top. He gave it to the girl and she obligingly put it on. Then Elvis pulled the other girl down and rested her beside the first.

“How about Viktor?” Hunter asked both of them as calmly as possible. “Do you remember who he is?”

Surprisingly, both girls laughed a little.

“Of course we do,” the first girl said. “He’s the A-hole who brought us up here in the first place…”

Elvis leaned forward—he was obviously more personally involved in this little discussion.

“Okay, then you know who he is,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Now, tell us
where
he is…”

Again, both girls laughed, this time somewhat grimly.

“Where is Viktor?” the first girl said. “How should we know?”

Both Hunter and Elvis were stunned.

“What do you mean?” they both asked at once.

The first girl laughed again.

“Jesus, get with it, man,” she said. “Don’t you get it?”

“Get what?” Hunter asked them.

“We’re the last ones left,” the second girl explained. “Viktor left a long time ago…”

Key Lime

T
HE PAIR OF CH-53E
Sea Stallions circled the small island from about 1000 feet up, their engines rumbling in the warm, breezy Caribbean night.

It was close to 0100 hours, and the seas all around the quarter-mile square island were eerily calm despite the growing tide. The moon was three-quarters full, providing enough light to feed the NightScopes being used by the helicopter pilots. It was very important that they were able see exactly what they were doing and where they were going. One wrong move and disaster would be the result.

Finally, the first Sea Stallion set down onto the hard rock beach on the north end of the island. The second chopper came in about 10 seconds later. Both pilots quickly killed their engines and reengaged their noise dampeners. The Sea Stallion was a great aircraft, but it could make a commotion when landing. The special mufflers cut that racket by about two-thirds.

Thirty seconds after landing, all was quiet again. Slowly the side doors on both choppers slid open and a small legion of dark figures came pouring out. There were three dozen inside each chopper. As they jumped out onto the beach, half of them went immediately to defensive positions around each Sea Stallion; the other half went plunging into the thick jungle which made up the rest of the tiny island.

They were looking for gasoline.

Key Lime was one of the smallest and southern most specks in the string of islands known as the Florida Keys. It was slightly out of position, about 28 miles southwest of Big Pine Key and therefore not really a part of the main archipelago. But this made it a perfect launching point for special operations, especially ones in which absolute stealth was needed. That was definitely the case for this particular night.

Earlier in the day, two similar helicopters had visited Key Lime. They were aerial cargo trucks as opposed to troop carriers, and in their holds were two fuel bladders, each containing about 1000 gallons of aviation gas. They’d dropped the fuel into the deepest part of the jungle and their crews had camouflaged it as best they could. Now, nearly 24 hours later, three dozen soldiers, all dressed in black, were looking for this precious gasoline.

About five minutes into the search, they found it—and this came as a welcome relief for Major Mark Snyder, the XO of the famous JAWS team. It was his men who were now on the ground on Key Lime, getting ready to attempt one of the most treacherous yet important missions in their history. The gasoline found here in the jungle would fuel the two big choppers for the next leg of this jump. Had the gas not been there, or had it leaked or been discovered by unfriendlies, then the JAWS team would have wound up high, dry, and very exposed on the tiny island out in the middle of nowhere.

But the celebration in finding the fuel was a short-lived one. Now they had to get the gas into the choppers, top off the tanks, and get the hell going. They were still on their mission schedule for the moment. But every second would be precious when the real work began.

The JAWS team quickly laid out six hoses and began hand pumping the gas into the Sea Stallions’ bottom-mounted fuel tanks. The whole refueling operation had to be pulled off in 12 minutes in order to stay on time. Snyder was intent on getting it done in under 10 minutes.

The first five minutes of the gas-up went well. While three dozen JAWS troopers provided the muscle power to move the gas through the hoses to the choppers, the other three squads maintained the defensive integrity of the island. Captain Warren Maas was in charge of the 12-man unit watching the southern tip of the tiny island. His squad was equipped with a long-range IR/NightScope capable of seeing more than 15 miles away. Two of his men had their eyes glued to this device, searching the southern horizon for any sign of activity, either on the surface or in the air.

Six minutes into the refueling operation, their scope picked up something.

It was just a tiny blurb of heat spotted due south of Key Lime, way out on the cloudless horizon. At first the men on the long-range NightScope feared it might be an incoming missile, an Exocet or even a Harpoonlike weapon. This initial apprehension drained away after they intensified their heat filter and discovered that the source was not moving fast enough to be a missile. And it wasn’t coming toward the island, but moving parallel to it.

But then another heat blurb was detected. Then another—and another. Maas himself got on the scope and after further refinement of the image discovered the heat sources were actually small patrol boats. He called his intelligence guys up and had them take a look. The first thing they did was declare the vessels not to be of friendly origin—they were not a kind or class found in the arsenal of the UAAF or any of its immediate allies.

This racheted the tension up a notch or two. Maas told the intell men to make a definite ID on the four ships, now moving in a line about 12 miles off the southern tip of the island. They began pumping all the data from the NightScope into their IFF-AQ computers, devices which were able to identify just about any weapons system currently in vogue around the world. The IFF-AQs chewed over the information for about 30 seconds and then popped out an answer. The ghostly forms the JAWS team had detected were
Sparvieros,
small, speedy hydrofoil vessels that usually carried a vast array of weapons, including ultradeadly surface-to-surface Styx missiles.

This was not good news. If fully armed, a single “Sparvee” could unload about a third of its weapons stores and wipe Key Lime and everyone on it off the map. Four of them could take out a fair-sized city. Maas called back to Snyder, who’d set up a temporary CP outside the first Sea Stallion helicopter. A quartet of Sparvees was out there, but they were not heading toward them—not yet, anyway. Though they had no idea who the deadly ships belonged to, Maas suggested they get the refueling operation done as quickly as possible.

It was a suggestion that Snyder really didn’t need to hear. He’d been urging his men to get the gas through the hoses and into the helicopters as quickly as humanly possible. At that moment they were about 65-percent done; 1300 hundred gallons had been transferred. Snyder knew they could go with 1500 gallons and leave the rest behind. But in missions like the one facing them, fuel was usually the most precious resource. He really wanted to get as much gas on-board as possible before lifting off.

But about a half minute later, Snyder heard another piece of bad news. This came from the patrol watching the western horizon. They’d picked up a disturbing indication, too. Captain Sean Higgins was the CO of this unit. His intell guys had identified no less than 16 aircraft moving in a circular fashion about 12 miles due west of Key Lime.

The airplanes were identified as Ilyushin I1-28 “Beagles.” A favorite of air mercenaries, the specialty of these two-engine, light-strike jet bombers in the post-Big War world was the sneak attack on poorly defended targets, such as advance airfields or unsuspecting population centers. The Beagles could get in quick, usually under radar, drop nearly four tons of high explosives, and exit, all in a matter of seconds.

These sixteen airplanes were either gathering for an operation or flying a pre-mission pattern, a practice run for a later bombing strike. Either way, should they detect what was going on on Key Lime, a two-second pass by just one aircraft could sink the whole island.

Snyder checked his watch. The pumping operation was now eight minutes old. They’d crossed the magic 1500-gallon mark; the remaining 500 gallons were gravy. What to do? Take off now and go into the mission flight? Or risk another few minutes and take on the extra gas? Just as he was weighing these options, he received a third report, this one from the patrol watching the eastern side of the key, a unit under the command of Major Clancy Miller. Their long scopes had found something even more disturbing breaking the surface of the water not two miles offshore: a periscope.

Snyder quickly ordered Clancy to get an ID on the device. Clancy’s reply came back exactly 20 seconds later. The scope belonged to a Enrico Toti-class submarine, a conventionally powered U-boat known for its ability to operate in very shallow water and launch surprise “pop-up” attacks with its unique surface-to-air-to-surface “Popeye” torpedoes. Each of these weapons could carry a 150-pound warhead. In the past few months, UAAF intelligence had heard that some of these flying torpedoes had been adapted to carry nerve agents, poison gas, or even small tactical nuclear weapons.

That was enough for Snyder. He immediately cut off the refueling operation and ordered all units back to the helicopters. They’d selected Key Lime for this sensitive fueling operation because of its isolation. Yet they’d unwittingly set down in the middle of a hornet’s nest of military activity, all of it unfriendly and most probably gearing up for an attack on the American mainland. Yet due to the highly sensitive nature of this operation, Snyder could not call back to base ops at KSC and sound a warning. He would just have to hope that other UA units would detect the enemy forces in time.

Still, though he was hardly one for superstition, Snyder couldn’t help feeling that all this was a bad omen for the rather scary mission he and his men were about to attempt.

All of the troops were back on their respective choppers within two minutes of Snyder’s order. Their sound dampeners clamped down as tight as possible, the pilots started up the pair of Sea Stallions and lifted off the second they were airworthy.

Getting down very close to the surface of the water, the pair of big troop-laden choppers immediately turned due south, their noses pointing directly into the heart of Cuba, now just 62 miles away.

Behind them on Key Lime, they’d left a total of 400 gallons of precious gasoline.

The pair of Sea Stallion choppers made landfall over Cuba at exactly 0150 hours.

Remarkably, they were still on schedule, despite the hasty departure from Key Lime and a couple of squall lines through which they’d been forced to fly.

Now, as they crossed over the island at the point near Matanzas, their engine dampeners became their most important weapon. The Sea Stallions were covered with black, radar-absorbing paint to ward off roving radar sweeps. Their power plants were sealed in heat-absorbing material to deflect any heat-seeking weapons. But they had to be quiet, too, or the whole game would be blown. Luckily, the mufflers on both choppers were working up to snuff.

They were heading for the Jovellanos region, the fog-enshrouded valley where Crunch had found the mysterious dual air base, redesignated the rather ironic “Double-Trouble” by the UAAF intelligence corps. A subsequent series of U-2 overflights had confirmed the existence of the huge twin bases, as well as the presence of nuclear weapons on-site. But intensive analysis of photos taken by these spy flights had also raised several baffling questions.

There were a total of 44 nuclear warheads in storage at the base; this was confirmed either by normal photography or images taken by infrared, radiation-sensitive cameras. One odd thing was that the weapons were not all the same size, shape, or capacity. Some nukes were blockbusters—25-megaton hydrogen bombs many times more powerful than the weapon dropped on Hiroshima so long ago. Others were battlefield nukes, mortar-round-sized warheads that could fit in a toolbox and whose capacity was measured in low-range kilotons. Still others appeared to have been taken from nuclear-tipped torpedoes, nuclear-tipped artillery shells, antiship missiles, even Russian-built cruise missiles.