Arsenal

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Cuban Air Force Colonel Emilio Santana banked his Soviet built MiG-29 Fulcrum to the left, skirting the air defense perimeter of the American battle group. The fighter twisted through the sultry night air as though the mechanics of airspeed, altitude, and control surfaces were mere formalities in the relationship between man and machine. The advanced composite struts and fuselage were extensions of his own body, the howling jet engines an echo of the blood rushing through his arteries and veins. The single-seat fighter seemed to read his mind, translating the smallest twitches of human muscle and nerve into tactical maneuvers that would have been impossible in any other aircraft in Cuba’s inventory.

Tonight he was alone in the sky, suspended between the heavens and black water, surrounded by hard points of light that bit into the dark without dissipating it. Spattered overhead, the stars. To his right, Cuba, city lights clustered into hard gems set in velvet. Directly below him, fog seeped up from the ocean and mixed with broken cloud cover to obscure patches of water. Water and land, night and stars the world below him seemed remote and untouchable, changing in response to universal rhythms that man could neither understand nor alter.

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