Death Orbit (23 page)

So what Crunch had discovered was not exactly a replay of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which much of the American continent was at risk for sudden and indefensible nuclear bombardment. Very few of these nukes were adaptable for launching aboard medium-range missiles.

What were they doing here, then? Why were the forces unfriendly to the United Americans stockpiling such a hodge-podge of atomic weapons so close to the American mainland?

That was what the JAWS team was going in to find out.

They found the site covered with a thick mist; and with a cloud cover above, no moonlight shone through. This was perfect for the JAWS team. For this operation, the darker, the better.

The pair of choppers avoided the west end of the base, where the landing strips and the attack fighters were. Instead, the Sea Stallions stayed as low to the treetops as possible and skirted to the northern edge of the site, where the nukes were being stored.

Using maps generated from the U-2 photos, they quickly found a flattened hilltop about 600 feet from the outer perimeter of the weapons stockyard. The pair of copters set down, quietly and unseen, and disgorged 72 troops.

Now came the hard part.

The JAWS team was not here to destroy the nuclear weapons. That was way too risky. If the UA’s initial intent was to blow up the nuclear stockpile, any number of preemptive air strikes could have been launched. The problem was, the UA had no idea as to the stability of the nuclear weapons. Were some or all of them fused? Were they prefused? Were they “clean” or “dirty” bombs? An air raid might very well take out the whole stockpile in one fell swoop, but the result might also be the triggering of a massive chain reaction of nuclear explosions that would vaporize Cuba and most of the Caribbean—and possibly half the planet as well.

Thus was the need to get some hard, human intelligence on the ground.

As before, the unit broke into four components upon landing. Team Clancy took the southern flank; Team Maas went north. Higgins and his patrol took the center; Snyder and his men set up a defensive perimeter around the choppers and established the command post.

Higgins and crew would move first. Once the others were in place, the 12-man patrol wormed its way down a series of vine-encased slopes, reaching the edge of the nuke junkyard in a matter of minutes. Each of Higgins’s men was equipped with an M-16-663D, complete with three-dimensional target acquisition sight, muzzle-loaded flash suppressors, and extra-long ammo clips. Each man also had an emergency radio, an IF video camera, and a small, lip-mike-mounted tape recorder. The JAWS team was famous for its ability to take on a hardened target, usually against overwhelming odds, destroying said target, making a lot of noise, and then getting the hell out.

This night, however, their mission was more subtle. They were to infiltrate the nuclear stockyard, take photos and record audio versions of what they could, and then get out—all without making a sound. When you came down to it, blowing up things was a lot easier.

Higgins and his men had moved right up to the stockyard fence by 0215. Another strange thing about the nuke pile was the lack of security surrounding it. While the air base nearby was covered with guard towers, AAA guns, and SAM sites, the perimeter of the nuke pile consisted of an elderly chain-link fence and four guard towers, one at each corner of the 125-acre lot. There were no motion detectors, no listening posts, no IF cameras or NightVision huts. The greatest massing of nuclear weapons since the end of the Big War was being protected by less than a dozen individuals spread out so far apart they could barely see each other. This told the JAWS team two things: first, the nuclear stockpile was probably so much of a secret that very few people within the coalition of unfriendly groups knew of its existence. And second, the peons watching over it probably had no idea what the hell they were actually guarding.

This would make it even easier for Higgins’s men to infiltrate—almost too easy. They made short work of the chain-link fence; it was neither electrified nor wired with sensing devices. They cut four holes about 10 feet apart in the barrier, and after leaving one man to guard each entryway, they quickly penetrated the interior of the stockyard.

Higgins was at the lead of this 8-man group; he quickly had his men spread out and start recording anything and everything. What lay before them were dozens of canvas-covered objects ranging from six to 20 feet high. They were arranged in irregular rows and separated by artificial alleyways, each about six feet wide. Higgins selected a group of objects and sent a man into each alley. He took the northernmost pathway, the one closest to the nearest guard tower.

Getting down on his hands and knees, he activated both his video camera and his audio recorder. The camera lens fit conveniently on the snout of his rifle, so anywhere he pointed his weapon, he got a video image as well. Moving swiftly, he scurried up against the first object and lifted its canvas covering as if it were a lady’s skirt.

Underneath he found exactly what they’d come here to look for: a clear plastic crate containing a nuclear device inside. This particular weapon seemed to be a STB-350, intell-speak for the standard-sized Russian-built 350-kiloton tactical nuclear weapon. This one was in the form of an air-dropped parachute-release gravity bomb, the sort that would be carried on a Russian-built fighter-bomber or attack aircraft. On its case was a mouthful of Germanic writing, plus a line of swastikas. This left no doubt as to who owned all this megatonnage, not that anybody needed any further confirmation. Higgins got full footage of the weapon and then moved on.

The next weapon was a same-sized warhead; this one looked like it had come off a nuclear mine. It was lying in the same kind of swastika-happy plastic coffin, a small, very rinky-dink cooling apparatus attached to it. Higgins got footage of the length of it twice and continued on.

In his headphones he could hear the activity of the other infiltration units. Clancy’s men were already inside the north end of the stockyard; Maas and his guys were just going through the fence to the south. At this rate, and with no problems, they would have the place taped and covered inside of 10 minutes. Then it would be a quick withdrawal, a short run back to the choppers, and the ride back home. If everything went right, they could be eating breakfast at the KSC by sunup.

Higgins got great footage of the third weapon’s coffin—an air-dropped nuke similar to the first—and then moved on. Unlike the others, the fourth weapons crate was made of wood, old pine that was still sticky in some spots. Higgins considered passing it by—videotaping the weapons through the clear plastic cases was no problem. Fucking around with a wooden sarcophagus might be more trouble than it was worth. But Higgins wasn’t in JAWS to have things go easy. He knew that it was important that each and every weapon be chronicled if they were to discover exactly why the weapons were being kept here.

So he put down his gun/camera, unstrapped his utility belt, and dug out his old-fashioned jackknife. It took him about a half-minute to work the six nails holding the top of wooden crate on. He was becoming increasingly aware of a strange odor emanating from the box. Higgins knew he had to be careful here—he had to make sure he left the crate as undisturbed as possible once he’d taken his pictures. Anything he moved he’d have to put back. Even losing one nail could be disastrous.

Finally he was able to wiggle all six nails out of the top. Now, using the butt end of the knife as a hammer, he pushed the lid up and over to one side. Suddenly, he was overcome with the most putrid of smells.

And something began moving inside the box.

To Higgins’s absolute astonishment, a man sat up from inside the crate.

He was old, bearded, and covered with blood. He had hideous wounds on his face, neck, and arms. Most of his shoulder looked as if it had been bitten away by some kind of animal, maybe a shark. He was missing his left ear and part of his skull. Higgins nearly vomited at the sight of him. What the hell was happening here? This man not only looked like he should be dead—he looked and smelled like he
was
dead.

“Hey, there, how are you doing?” the bloody ghost asked him. “My name is Pooch. What’s yours?”

At the other end of the nuclear stockyard, Warren Maas and his men had come upon something other than clear plastic caskets holding nuclear weapons.

Both Crunch and the U-2 spy photos had indicated that a separate holding area inside the stockyard was at the northern end of the bin. Instead of lines of different-sized containers, this area held just a handful of covered objects, these being huge in comparison to the weapons yard. Some of them were more than 100 feet long and 20 feet wide. What could be inside these containers? It was up to Maas and his men to find out.

Because of the prepositioning planning, when the Maas squad came through the fence, they were the unit closest to a guard station. The 25-foot tower was darkened, though a .50-caliber machine gun could be seen hanging off its edge. Maas had his NightScope guy sweep the guardhouse with his IR and heat-seeking equipment. Two heat blurs came back on this man’s scope. At least two people were definitely inside the guardhouse, but luckily for the raiders, they were probably asleep.

Maas and his men stealthily moved through the stockyard, keeping low to the ground and making no noise whatsoever. They reached the inner containment area inside a minute and quickly went under its even older chain-link fence. Maas was almost overwhelmed by the size of the objects he’d been sent to identify. They looked much bigger than they appeared on the U-2 photos, much bigger than they looked when he’d first seen them from the hill. The thinking back at UA Command was that these hidden objects might actually be ICBMs, long-range missiles that could reach the other side of the globe.

But Maas knew a thing or two about long-range weapons systems. He knew right away that these were not ICBMs.

Maas stationed six of his men at the entranceway they’d made under the inner fence and then proceeded with the second half-dozen inside the corral itself. The objects they were looking up at were at least the size of an airliner, sans wings and tail. There were four large ones and two smaller ones. They were shrink-wrapped in white plastic and whenever a slight breeze blew through the fog-enshrouded area, the rippling was enough to send shivers up the spine.

Maas faced an interesting problem here: unlike his colleagues, he couldn’t lift up a canvas covering and videotape whatever the hell was inside. The shrink wrap would have to be peeled away for him to reveal this secret. His solution was found in the cigarette lighter one of his men was carrying with him. They could peel back the shrink wrap, take a peek underneath, then maybe melt the stuff back on.

It sounded like a good idea, so Maas carefully began unsticking the taut white plastic from underneath the largest object. He was immediately hit with a smell that seemed to be a combination of things: kerosene, engine igniter, plain old motor oil, and scorched metal. It was an odor he’d encountered many times recently. It was the prevailing smell back at the Kennedy Space Center.

More intrigued than ever, Maas dislocated about thirty feet of the shrink wrap and then climbed underneath the massive object. It was being suspended about five feet off the ground by a series of concrete and metal supports. The smell under here was almost too much. Maas had to retrieve his bandanna and quickly tie it around his nose and mouth just to breathe, the fumes were so bad.

Finally he got to a point where he could lie down and shine his flashlight up and under the object and see most of its length. He did just that—and was astonished at what he saw. This was indeed a missile he’d crammed himself beneath; that was the reason for the overwhelming fumes reminiscent of the KSC. But as he’d previously divined, it was not an ICBM; it was much too big for that.

No, what the object was was an immense
Energia
booster rocket, a Russian-built behemoth used to lift thousands of pounds of cargo into outer space. And that was when it all started to come together for Maas. The booster rockets, the collection of nuclear weapons, big and small.

There really was only one conclusion…

They found Higgins crawling along the inside of the chain-link fence.

He was about 55 feet south of where he should have been. His rifle and video camera were gone, as were his utility belt, radio, and helmet. He was dazed, to say the least. He looked like he’d been drugged or gassed. He was incoherent when the men watching the southern hole in the fence discovered him. He was shimmying along on his hands and knees, babbling incoherent nonsense. His face was wet with some kind of gooey substance, as were his hands and neck.

At first they thought he’d been in a fight with one of the unfriendlies—what other explanation could there be? When they radioed this information back to Snyder at the CP, he sent in his reserve squad and then prepared to transmit a coded radio scramble back to KSC Command, telling them the mission had probably been compromised and they might need air support to get out.

Snyder then slid down the hill to the fence and, with Clancy Miller’s help, dragged Higgins through the hole under the wire and back up to the helicopter. Now every JAWS guy inside the stockyard was ready to do battle—the problem was, there was no one to fight. A quick check of the guardhouses told of people still inside, snoring away. A quick IR sweep of the weapons depot showed no heat sources anywhere inside or around the immediate perimeter.

What
had
happened to Higgins? What had caused him to abandon his weapon and gear and wind up crawling along the fence?

It was a question that would have to wait for an answer. Snyder and Miller had a quick conversation and then decided it was best to sedate their colleague and ask questions later. They had one of the medics pump him with 20 cc’s of morphine and then loaded him aboard one of the helicopters. Then Snyder put out the recall order to the remaining JAWS members inside the weapons yard. They’d been on the ground now for 20 minutes. It was time to get going.