October's Ghost by Ryne Douglas Pearson

commanders who passed judgment upon them and their actions. Ontiveros might not have been a friend in the eyes of Cuba’s neighbor to the north, but he certainly was to the men who had served under him.
    “And what do we get from this? I mean other than a new leadership in Cuba...if the coup succeeds.”
    “It will succeed,” Merriweather said with an arrogant confidence, as though a suggestion that any other outcome was possible was somehow blasphemous. “And we were able to choose the new leadership.”
    “ Choose? ” Visions of Panama after Noriega flashed in the NSA’s mind. “How so?”
    “Bud, it’s not like that,” the President interjected. “It’s not some insertion of a puppet regime. The rebels agreed to accept civilian leadership drawn from the exile community here.”
    “And how were they selected?” Bud asked.
    “It was logical to choose members of the group contacted by the Cubans to serve in an interim government,” the DCI explained. “I brokered the arrangements personally with Jim Coventry.”
    He’s “Jim” and I’m still “James.” I see... “You told the secretary of state, but not me?” Bud sat back and blew out an exasperated breath. “Who else is in the loop?”
    “That’s it, until you brief Secretary Meyerson,” Merriweather said, passing a task rightly his own to the NSA. “We are going to need certain assistance from the military very shortly.”
    The “low” in low risk was rapidly losing its accuracy in describing what the NSA was being told. “Assistance.”
    Merriweather nodded. “Greg will fill you in after the presentation.”
    Drummond gave a courteous nod when his boss looked his way but said nothing. His place in this had been made perfectly clear without explanation.
    “And the purpose of this presentation?” Bud inquired, motioning to the case before the DCI.
    The President shifted forward in his chair. “Validation. I insisted that we have some proof that the coup could succeed beyond just the planning stages.”
    Someone was thinking half-smart, Bud thought. The Man was no slouch in the brains department. Maybe he’d looked at this all carefully enough to ensure that nothing stupid was being done. Maybe, he thought, looking as the DCI reached into the case. Hopefully.
    “Mr. President, are you ready?” Merriweather saw the chief executive nod, an anticipatory smile on his face, and laid out a series of four twelve-by-twelve-inch photographs.
    Bud leaned forward, as did the President after putting on the reading glasses he had come to hate.
    “Sir, these are images from a KH-12 pass two days ago,” the DCI began. “All four are of the military airfield near Santa Clara in the central part of Cuba. The first two are shots from about forty-nine degrees above the horizon. Distance is one hundred and seventy miles.” Merriweather directed the President’s attention to a line of aircraft obvious in the picture. “These are MiG Twenty-threes, all operational. This angle shows clearly their lineup, all on three good sets of landing gear.”
    Bud studied the images with his head and body cocked to the right. The shots were clear, with only a hint of clouds that had been digitally removed, he suspected. “These are a combination IR and visible?”
    “Correct,” the DCI answered. He noticed the President shoot a quizzical look his way. “Sir, this is somewhat of a hybrid photograph. The satellite, as it came over the horizon, focused both its visible light sensors, the cameras, and the heat-sensitive receptors, what is called imaging infrared, on the airfield. Pictures, if you will, were taken by both systems in sync, then, once the images were downlinked, NPIC—that’s the National Photographic Interpretation Center—processed them together to enhance the portions of the visible light photos that were degraded by cloud cover and other atmospherics.”
    “I see,” the President said. “Go on.”
    The DCI jumped right back in. “The second