Burke shook his head in disbelief. "One destroyer opening fire from the Bay could knock the h.e.l.l out of Castro's tanks. It could change the course of the battle-"

Jack Kennedy's eyes narrowed. "Burke, I don't want the United States involved in this. Period."

Arleigh Burke wasn't ready to give up yet. "h.e.l.l, Mr. President, we are involved."

Secretary of State Rusk jotted some words on a pad and pa.s.sed the slip of paper to Kennedy. On it he had written: "What about the hills?"

Kennedy looked across the table at Bissell, still the only person in the room on his feet. "d.i.c.k, I think the time has come for the brigade to go guerrilla, don't you?"

Everyone in the room appeared to be hanging on the answer to the President's question. Leo glanced at his chief out of the corner of an eye.

Bissell was terribly alone, a bone-weary emotional wreck of a man. Swaying slightly as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, he seemed close to tears. "Mr. President, going guerrilla is not possible-"

Kennedy appeared confused. "I always thought... you a.s.sured me..." He looked around the table for support.

General Lemnitzer leveled an accusing finger at Bissell. "You specifically said that, in a worst-case scenario, the brigade could fade into the Escambray Mountains and go guerrilla."

Bissell, barely audible now, said, "That was a worst-case option in the Trinidad plan, which we shelved at the request of the President. From the Bay of Pigs, the brigade would have to fight its way across eighty miles of swamp to get to the mountains." Bissell looked around desperately and saw the chair behind him and collapsed back into it. "Mr. President-"

"I'm listening, d.i.c.k."

"Mr. President, to put a fine point on it, our people are trapped on the beaches. Castro has ma.s.sed twenty thousand troops in the area. If we can keep Castro's forces-keep his tanks-at bay, keep them pinned to the causeways, why, we could bring in the ammunition ships, couldn't we? The brigade could regroup, get a second wind." Around the table people were starting to stare at the walls or the ceiling. Bissell, too, was getting a second wind. "The Provisional Government could set up shop, Mr. President. We'd have our foothold on the island-"

"You mean toehold-" Bobby interrupted, but Bissell, oblivious to the sarcasm, rushed on.

"Once the Provisional Government is in place Castro's troops will desert in droves. It's all down here in black and white, isn't it, Leo? Where's that briefing paper we worked up?" Leo went through the motions of riffling through a pile of file folders. Bissell, impatient, began quoting from memory.

"Sabotage is frequent, for G.o.d's sake. Church attendance is at record highs and can be interpreted as opposition to the regime. Disenchantment of the peasants has spread to all the regions of Cuba. Castro's government ministries and regular army have been penetrated by opposition groups. When the time comes for the brigade to break out of the beachhead, they can be counted on to muddy the waters..." Bissell looked around the table. "Muddy the waters," he repeated weakly. Then he shut his mouth.

A leaden silence filled the Cabinet Room. The President cleared his throat. "Burke, I'll let you put six jet fighters over the beach for one hour tomorrow morning on the absolute condition that their American markings are painted out. They are not to attack ground targets-"

"What if they're fired on, Mr. President?" asked Admiral Burke. "There's no reason for them to be fired on if they stay out of range of Castro's antiaircraft batteries. d.i.c.k, you can bring in the brigade's B-26s from Guatemala during that hour. The jets off the Ess.e.x will cover them. If any of Castro's T-33s or Sea Furies turn up the jets have permission to shoot them down. Just that. Only that."

"Aye-aye, sir," Burke said.

"Thank you for that, Mr. President," Bissell mumbled. As the meeting was breaking up, a National Security aide rushed up to the President with a message board. Kennedy read it and, shaking his head in disbelief, pa.s.sed the board on to Bobby. Sensing that something important had happened, several of the partic.i.p.ants garnered around the President and his brother. Bobby said, "Jesus! Four of those Alabama National Guard pilots who were training the Cubans in Guatemala have taken matters into their own hands- they flew a sortie in two B-26s. Both bombers were shot down over Cuba."

"What happened to the pilots?" asked General Lemnitzer.

"n.o.body knows," Bobby said. The President's brother turned on Bissell. "Those American pilots had better G.o.dd.a.m.ned well be dead," he fumed, his voice pitched high into a hatchet man's killer octave.

By midday Wednesday what was left of the units blocking the causeways had began pulling back toward Giron. When word of this reached the beaches, panic spread. Castro's tanks, pushing down the road from the airport, were firing at line-of-sight targets. Blanco's Bar was bracketed and Jack and his tadioman decided the time had come to join Roberto Escalona, who was crouching with a handful of fighters at the water's edge. Sh.e.l.ls were bursting around them, kicking up gusts of sand and dust that blotted out the sun but causing relatively few injuries because the beach tended to dampen explosions.

"Darkness at noon," Jack called over the din of combat. Roberto, clutching a BAR with two almost empty ammunition belts crisscrossing his chest, stared out to sea through the sooty air. An American destroyer, its hull number painted out, was patrolling a mile offsh.o.r.e. Jack shouted, "I can get them to come in close and take us all off." Roberto shook his head. "If it has to end, let it end here." The brigade's fate had been sealed earlier in the morning when Bissell's topside planners in Washington, dazed from lack of sleep, forgot there was a one-hour difference in time zones between Cuba and Guatemala. The six carrier-based A4Ds with their American markings painted out had turned up over the beaches an hour early for the rendezvous with the B-26s flying in from Retalhuleu. When the brigade's planes did show up, the American jets were on the way back to the Ess.e.x and Castro's T-birds had a field day shooting down two more B-26s.

At the water's edge a half-crazed Cuban fighter crouching near Jack screamed obscenities at the American destroyer, then leveled his rifle at the hull and managed to shoot off two rounds before Roberto punched the barrel down. On either side, as far as the eye could see, men were scurrying in every direction, leaping in and out of shallow craters gouged in the dunes by the bursting sh.e.l.ls. Orlando, monitoring the radio through earphones, grabbed Jack's arm to get his attention. "Quieren hablar con usted, senor, " he cried. Jack pressed one of the earphones to an ear. A static-filled squeal made him wince. Then a voice forced its way through the static: "Carpet Bagger, this is Whiskey Sour patrolling off Blue Beach. Do you read me?"

Jack grasped the microphone and waded into the water, with Orlando right behind him. "Whiskey Sour, this is Carpet Bagger. I read you. Over."

"Carpet Bagger, I have orders for you from Kermit Coffin. You are instructed to leave the beach immediately. I repeat-"

Jack interrupted. "Whiskey Sour, no way am I leaving this beach by myself."

Roberto came up behind Jack. "Get your a.s.s out of here," he yelled. "You can't help us anymore."

"Jesus H. Christ, I'll leave when everyone leaves." Two sh.e.l.ls exploded, one hard on the heels of the other, scooping shallow craters on either side of the group. For a moment the sandstorm obscured everything. As it settled, a bearded fighter, blood spilling from a gaping wound where his ear had been, stumbled toward them, then fell down in the sand. Another soldier rolled the wounded man onto his back, looked over toward Roberto and shook his head. Jack became aware of a sticky wetness on his thigh. Looking down, he saw that shrapnel had grazed his leg, shredding his trousers, lacerating the skin. Roberto, cracking like porcelain, s.n.a.t.c.hed the .45 from the holster on Jack's web belt and pointed at the American's head. "Castro captures you," he cried, his voice breakne tears of frustration streaking his sand-stained cheeks, "he'll tell the world we were led by American officers. For Christ's sake, Jack, don't take away our dignity. It's the last thing we have left. Okay, Jack? You hearing me, Jack? I swear to you-I'll kill you before I let you fall into their hands alive."

Jack backed away. Water swirled around his knees. "You're a s.h.i.t," he yelled at Roberto.

"Gringo carajo! I'll blow your head off, you'll be just another body floating in the surf."

Jack turned and waded deeper into the water, then lost his footing and began to dogpaddle away from the beach. From time to time he glanced back. The first of Castro's Stalin III tanks, their cannons spurting flames, were lumbering through the lanes between the concrete bungalows. One of the brigade tanks dug into the sand exploded; the mangled turret slid off to one side and its cannon nosed into the sand. Troops, running low and shouting in Spanish, poured onto the dunes behind the tanks. Along the beach, men were emerging from holes and slit trenches with their hands stretched high over their heads. Jack turned back and went on paddling. He saw a raft up ahead, partially inflated and half submerged, and made for it. Squirming onto it, he lay there for a long time, his face turned toward the sun, his eyes tightly shut. Visions of riot clashed with images of Millie slithering slowly up his body, cauterizing his wounds with her burning lips.

Jack lost track of time. He raised himself on an elbow and looked back at the beach. The shooting had stopped. Lines of men, their hands clasped on their heads, were being prodded at bayonet point up the dunes. Floating not far from the raft was a broken plank-it must have come from the wooden benches in one of the sunken LCUs. Jack retrieved it and, lying flat so he couldn't be seen from the beach, began to paddle out to sea. After a while blisters formed on his hands and burst, and the makeshift paddle became slick with blood. Slivers of sunlight glancing off the bay blinded him. When he was able to see he caught a glimpse of the destroyer riding on its inverted reflection. The sun scorched the back of his neck. From time to time, despite the heat, he shivered uncontrollably, calming down only when he summoned images of Millie's long body fitted against his. He could hear her voice in his ear: Come home when you can, Jack. I couldn't bear it if..."

When he looked up again, the destroyer was near enough to make out the fresh paint on the bow where the hull number had been blotted out. In the fantail, sailors were shouting encouragement at him. He guessed that there was enough distance between the raft and the beach for him to sit up now. Punctuating each stroke with a rasping grunt, Jack made a clean catch and felt his blade lock onto a swell of sea water. A splinter of pain stabbed at the rib that had mended and broken and mended again. His head reeled. He thought he heard hoa.r.s.e shrieks from the students lining the banks of the river. Coiling and uncoiling his limbs in long fluid motions, he caught sight of the finish line ahead.

And then the plank in Jack's hands became stuck in the water and it dawned on him that he wasn't rowing in a sleek-sculled eight on the Charles after all. He tugged at the plank but couldn't pull it free. He looked over the side-there was something queer about the water. It was a dirty red and washing through a ma.s.s of greenish gulfweed. And then he saw that the tip of the plank had embedded itself in the stomach of a bloated corpse that was tangled in the weed. Jack let go of the plank and gagged and turned and vomited, and vomited again in long spasms, the pain searing his throat, until he felt that nothing could be left inside him-no heart or lungs or stomach or intestines.

This sense of perfect emptiness overwhelmed him and he blacked out.

Ebby rang up Elizabet from his office in mid afternoon. "Have you been listening to the news?" he asked.

"Everyone at State's glued to the radio," she said. "UPI is talking about hundreds of casualties and more than a thousand taken prisoner."

"All h.e.l.l's broken loose here," Ebby said. "I can't talk now. Leo and I think it might be a good idea for you to pick up Adelle and drive over to Millie's to hold her hand."

"How come she's home?"

"She called in sick this morning. She said there was nothing wrong physically-given what's happening she just couldn't concentrate."

Elizabet didn't dare breath. "Is there bad news?"

"There's no news," Ebby told her. "But there could be bad news."

"Oh, Elliott, it's turning out the way you said it would-it's Budapest revisited."

Adelle was waiting at the curb when Elizabet came by. The two had gotten very close over the years but they barely uttered a word on the way over to Millie's. They went around to the back and, pushing through a screen door, found Jack's wife sitting in the kitchen. She was staring at a daytime television quiz program, waiting for it to be interrupted with the latest news bulletin. An open bottle of Scotch was within arm's reach. There was a mountain of unwashed dishes in the sink, dirty laundry heaped on the floor in front of the washing machine.

Millie jumped up and looked at her friends with dread in her eyes. "For G.o.d's sake don't beat around the bush," she pleaded. "If you know something, tell me."

"We only know what's on the news," Elizabet said.

"You swear to G.o.d you're not hiding anything?"

"We know it's a disaster," Adelle said. "Nothing more."

"Jack's on the beach," Millie said.

The three women hugged each other. "You can bet they'll move heaven and earth to get him off," Adelle a.s.sured her.

"There's been no mention of an American in the bulletins," Adelle pointed out. "Surely Castro would be boasting to the world by now if he had captured one of ours."

"Where's Anthony?" Elizabet asked.

"My mother came around and took him and Miss Aldrich over to her place the minute she heard what was happening."

Millie poured out three stiff shots of Scotch and clinked gla.s.ses. "Here's to the men in our lives," Elizabet said.

"Here's to the day they're so fed up working for the Company they get nine-to-five jobs selling used cars," Millie said.

"They wouldn't be the same men we married if they worked nine-to-five selling used cars," Adelle said.

The women settled down around the kitchen table. On the television screen, four housewives were trying to guess the price of a mahogany bedroom set; the one who came closest would win it.

"The Company really screwed up this time," Millie said. "d.i.c.k Bissell and the Director are going to be drawing unemployment."

To take her mind off the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Elizabet asked Millie how she'd Jack had met. Millie smiled at the memory as she described the brash young six-footer sporting a Cossack mustache and wearing a three-piece linen suit who had made a pa.s.s at her on the sixty-sixth floor of the Chrysler Building.

"I thought you met in Vienna during the Budapest business," Adelle said.

"He propositioned me in New York," Millie said. "I said yes in Vienna five years later."

"Never hurts to keep 'em waiting," Adelle said with a laugh.

They talked for a while about Elizabet's daughter, Nellie, and about Ebby's boy by his first marriage, Manny, who had turned fourteen and was at the top of his cla.s.s in Groton.

Adelle described how her twin girls had giggled when they caught sight of a pregnant woman in a store the week before. When Adelle started telling them about the birds and the bees, Vanessa had interrupted. "Oh, mommy, we know all about thingamabobs turning hard and getting shoved into thingamagigs and the whatsit swimming up to fertilize the egg and stuff like that." "Where on earth did you learn about thingamabobs and thingamagigs?" Adelle had inquired with a straight face. The two girls had explained how their school chum, Mary Jo, had swiped a Swedish s.e.x education book filled with photographic ill.u.s.trations of naked people actually "doing it" from an older stepsister, and men spent the weekend poring over the pages with a magnifying gla.s.s.

"Oh, they do grow up fast these days," Elizabet said.

"Don't they, though," Adelle agreed.

And then the phone rang. Elizabet and Adelle exchanged looks. Millie lifted the receiver. The blood drained from her lips when she heard Dulles's voice.

"Yes, speaking," she said..."I see," she said..."You're absolutely sure? There's no chance you're wrong?"

On the television screen a woman was laughing deliriously because she had won the bedroom set. Adelle went over and snapped off the set. The pinp.r.i.c.ks of light disappeared as if they had been sucked down a drain.

Millie said into the phone, "No, I'll be fine. Director. I have two friends here with me... Thank you. Director. I am proud of Jack. Very. Yes. Goodbye."

Millie turned to her friends. Tears welled in her eyes. She was too choked up to speak. Adelle, sobbing, came around the table and hugged her tightly.

"It's not what you think," Millie finally managed to say. "Jack's safe and sound. They got him off the beach. A destroyer picked him up from a raft-" Tears were streaming down her cheeks now. "His paratrooper boots turned white from the salt water. His hands were covered with blisters. He has shrapnel wounds-the Director swears they're scratches, nothing more." She began laughing through her tears. "He's alive. Jacks alive!"

Lights blazed late in the West Wing of the White House Wednesday night. A very tired secretary dozed at a desk immediately outside the President's office. Even the four Secret Service agents posted in the corridor were swallowing yawns. Inside, silver trays with untouched finger sandwiches filled a sideboard. Committee chairmen trudged in and huddled with a shaken President and departed, wondering aloud how such a smart man could have gotten sucked into such a c.o.c.kamamie scheme in the first place. Shortly after eleven Leo came by with the most recent situation report. Jack Kennedy and his brother Bobby were off in a corner, talking with McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor. Waiting inside the door, Leo caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation. "Dulles is a legendary figure," the President was saying. "It's hard to operate with legendary figures-he'll have to fall on his sword."

"Bissell will have to go, too," Bobby said.

"I made a mistake putting Bobby in Justice," Kennedy told Bundy. "He's wasted there. Bobby should be over at CIA."

"That's about as logical as closing the barn door after the horse has headed for the hills," Bobby observed.

Bundy agreed with Bobby but for another reason. "To get a handle on a bureaucracy you need to know what makes it tick. The CIA has its own culture-"

"It's a complete mystery to me," Bobby admitted.

"You could figure it out," Kennedy insisted.

"By the end of your second term I ought to be able to," Bobby quipped.

The President spotted Leo at the door and motioned for him to come in. "What's the latest from Waterloo, Kritzky?"

Leo handed him a briefing paper. Kennedy scanned it, then read bits aloud to Bobby and Bundy, who had come up behind him. "A hundred fourteen dead, eleven hundred thirteen captured, several dozen missing." He looked up at Leo. "Any chance of some of these missing being rescued?"

Leo recognized the PT-109 commander from World War II brooding over the safety of his men. "Some of our Cubans made it into the swamps," he replied. "The destroyers have been picking them off in ones and twos. A bunch escaped in a sailboat and were rescued at sea."

As Kennedy sighed aloud Leo heard himself say, "It could have been worse, Mr. President."

"How?" Bobby challenged; he wasn't going to let the CIA off the hook anytime soon.

Leo screwed up his courage. "It might have succeeded."

Kennedy accepted this with a dispirited shake of his head. "A new President comes to the job a.s.suming that intelligence people have secret skills outside the reach of mere mortals. I won't make the same mistake twice."

"The problem now is Khrushchev," Bobby said. "He's going to read you as a weak leader, someone who doesn't have the nerve to finish what he starts."

"He's going to a.s.sume you can be bullied," Bundy agreed.

Kennedy turned away. Leo, waiting at the door to see if the President wanted anything else from the CIA that night, heard him say, "Well, there's one place to prove to Khrushchev that we can't be pushed around, that we're ready to commit forces and take the heat, and that's Vietnam."

"Vietnam," Bobby said carefully, "could be the answer to our prayers."