Cuba
   Stephen Coonts
  1999 St. Martin's Press NY USA
   ISBN: 031220521X


Snatched from today's headlines, a boat full of refugees sets out for Florida as a dictator lies dying & his ministers plot for power. Old USSR missiles with chemical warheads come online even as the US Navy ships out-dated weapons from Guantanemo Bay.

The Prologue is a fascinating glimpse of the history of USSR/Cuban relationships over the past 40 years as seen through the eyes of an aged Russian missile tender.

Then Rear Admiral Jake Grafton & his side-kick, Commander Toad Tarkington are on the high seas again off the coast of the paradise of Cuba.

Meanwhile, the minister of finance is flying off to Switzerland where the horded wealth of a nation lies hidden, he is dreaming of a new life.

There is a baseball game just ending with a national hero, Ocho Sedano, in grand form as his brother Hector, watches from the bleachers intent upon the politics of the moment. With the great liberator on his deathbed, Cuba is up for grabs.

Ocho is in trouble & is proud, young & bullet-proof or, as it turns out, shark-proof. In the dark of the dawn he sets out in a beat-up fishing boat filled with hopeful refugees bound for freedom across the wide & dangerous Gulf Stream.

We also meet Mercedes, drawn into the pinnacle of power by her feelings for an old man & for her country. Even as she sews her own clothes, she has her finger on the pulse of a nation.

There is a host of bureaucrats & generals strutting about while a ship with live warheads goes missing; a dictator dies & is not allowed to rest in peace & two CIA agents eat a lot of meals in Havana. Hector is thrown into jail, the people become restless & Ocho's luck is wearing thin.

Jake Grafton & Toad Tarkington are in fine fettle hunting for the missing ship & we meet Rita Moravia, an ace pilot of the fabled Osprey 'plane. She & Toad are husband & wife with a young son.

Stephen Coonts' Cuba is grand military fun with brilliant engagements between fighter pilots; old soldiers & young gladiators; venal villains & hapless fools; White House brains & military minds; simple people with complicated intentions; days of disaster & nights of frantic effort & Toad & Rita who are married.

Stephen Coonts' has a reputation for writing fantastic air & sea battles & in Cuba he is in fine form, nonetheless, if I was told Rita Moravia was Toad Tarkington's wife & that she was an ace flyer of the Osprey, one more time I thought I'd hurl, the book that is.

While Coonts' populates his story with all sorts of people he doesn't do relationships too well - they're a mite two dimensional & while the set-up for the climax seemed eternal, his episodes of action were pure adrenaline.

Major Carlos Corrado & his MiG-29 was well wrought & mesmerizing - a canny dash of the Don Quixote!

How it all works out makes for a ripping good yarn & yes, Toad Tarkington & Rita Moravia are still married at book's end!

My beloved enjoyed Cuba & urged me to read it. Only because of what's going on in the news right now did I delve into a genre about which I'm merely an amateur.

Also by Stephen Coonts:
Nonfiction: The Cannibal Queen & War in the Air
Fiction: Fortunes of War; Flight of the Intruder; Final Flight; The Minotaur; Under Siege; The Red Horseman & The Intruders
(03/05/00)

Rebecca