Cuba (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "His hair was white, close-cropped, and his skin deeply tanned..." (more)
Key Phrases: stranded freighter, culture trays, silo one, Jake Grafton, Alejo Vargas, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When a North Korean freighter carrying a cargo of biological weapons runs aground in international waters off Cuba--Rear Admiral Jake Grafton wants go aboard, taking just one other man with him. His new chief of staff, Capt. Pascal, is skeptical and suggests that he takes along a half-dozen well-armed marines. Jake's reply is patient and succinct: "I don't know what's on that ship.... It just makes sense to have a point man explore the unknown before we risk very many lives. I am going to be the point man because I want to personally see what is there, and I make the rules. Understand?" Had Capt. Pascal been one of the millions of readers of Coonts's six previous books about Grafton, he wouldn't have raised the issue. Jake is a take-charge guy, the kind of believable hero trusted by his military superiors (if occasionally viewed as a loose cannon by politicians), and not even the possibility of an all-out war with Cuba is going to make him start playing it safe.

Fidel Castro is very close to death from cancer, and his chief aide plans to win the hearts of the Cuban population and gain control of the government by using a 40-year-old secret weapon against an American city. Meanwhile, Adm. Grafton and his carrier fleet have been sent to Guantånamo Bay in Cuba to supervise the removal of some U.S. biological weapons there. Very soon, Grafton and other Coonts regulars are up to their helmets in action on the air, land, and sea. Along the way, we meet a large cast of vivid supporting players: a Cuban family whose fate is closely linked to Castro's rise and fall and a CIA agent with the perfect cover--a lawyer for giant tobacco companies who want to make cigarettes in Cuba. We also increase our knowledge of military jargon: "strangling the parrot" means turning off a radar transponder. Cuba is an intriguing and surprisingly compassionate scenario, in which superb military action alternates with high family drama and political in-fighting. --Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly

The future of Cuba is up for grabs in this crackerjack speculative thriller by the author of Flight of the Intruder and Fortunes of War. Coonts regulars Rear Admiral Jake Grafton and staff operations officer Toad Tarkington are providing military cover for a shipment of American chemical and biological weaponsAweapons that should have been destroyed long agoAout of Guant namo Bay, where they have been in storage. When the shipment goes missing, it's Grafton's job to find it and get those weapons back. But that's the least of his worries, because Cuba is developing its own biological weapons; as soon as they are ready, they will be loaded onto missiles already aimed at American cities. Meanwhile, an aged Castro is dying of cancer, and even if he lives long enough to name a successor, Alejo Vargas, head of the Cuban secret police, has his own plans for the future of the country. While there's little doubt that Grafton will save the day, Coonts's sharply drawn charactersAincluding dapper CIA operative and biological weapons expert William Henry Chance and his safe-cracking sidekick, Tommy CarmelliniAand a plethora of intersecting plot lines take what one character calls "another Cuban missile crisis" to a rousing action finale. But the surprise pleasure here is how clearly Coonts paints a picture of Cuba by focusing on the three Soldano brothersAHector, a Jesuit priest who may be Castro's chosen successor; Ocho, the handsome ballplayer who has the chance to sail to Florida with the woman he got pregnant; and Maximo, the finance minister who is more interested in money than the revolution. This gripping and intelligent thriller is a standout for Coonts, taking the death of Castro as a starting point for an all-too-possible scenario of political turmoil and military brinkmanship. $325,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Aug.) FYI: In one of this season's more interesting coincidences, Coonts chooses for his epigraph the same poem by Jos? Mart! as does Amy Ephron in her book White Rose, reviewed above.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 390 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (August 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031220521X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312205218
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #512,848 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 7 in The Jake Grafton Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hidden Meanings?, January 11, 2000

By	Donald Ray Hopkins "donhesq" (Oakland, California USA) - See all my reviews

I appreciated the reviews shared with readers regarding this title. I did not, however, find any comment which resonated with my reasons for appreciating the work. Therefore, I am prepared to believe that perhaps I was reading too much into it; that is, perhaps I was feasting on hidden meanings of the diaglogue which might have been far afield from anything the author had in mind. In any event, here is what I like about the book. First and foremost, given the events of recent weeks in this Nation's relationship with Cuba, I considered the book a felicitous example of "art imitating life." The entire episode of Ocho and his countrymen floundering around in the Florida straits is redolent of the young Cuban kid and his experiences that are now an international causa celebre. The hunt for the biological weapons, etc., is of course a replay of our recent experience with Iraq. The episode of the Cuban pilot casually cruising around in his Mig29 wreaking destruction on far superior American forces is a parody of a real life incident that occurred when the U.S. invaded Grenada; one simple, nonchalant Cuban worker found an old cannon of some sort that hardly functioned but used it to wreak havoc on the American forces that sought to land on the airstrip the workers had under construction. And of course there are countless other examples. What I enjoyed most about the book was how it lent itself to being taken almost wholly as satire. That is the hidden meaning I found. Politics aside (because who can ever agree on whether it was Castro or Uncle Sam that defeated the Revolution?), there is something palpably absurd about the entire battlefield scenario--a first world nation using the latest high tech gadgetry to subdue a third world nation that for all practical purposes has neither Army, AirForce or Navy! While the U.S. President, et.al., were ruminating over strategies ostensibly designed to save America from attack if not the world, what little cerebration that was being expended in Cuba had to do with nothing more lofty than the personal pursuit of a few ingots of gold! The only missle ever fired was fired by the hapless CIA interloper; non of the missles had been tested or kept in repair; no Cuban forces were identified who had the remosted idea of how to access the silos, let alone fire the rockets; the bio weapons lab was a joke; one lone dissolute, spent scientist in charge--whose assasination was surely in a world with real morality a more negative reflection on the good guys than on the Cubans..it was an act of depravity of the first water! So, if it was all good fun, a novel ala Grisham, Sheldon, King, etc.,, let's chalk it up to being fun. If there was a hidden meaning--that is if it was a sly indictment of a foreign policy that is morally and strategically senseless and bankrupt, then I'd rate it five stars, well earned....

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Cuba" is a worthy part of the Jake Grafton series., August 9, 1999

By A Customer

I found this to be an exciting read, once I got past the inconsistency with Coonts's "Under Siege," in which Fidel is executed as a democratic movement takes over Cuba. In this one, we seem to be in an alternate reality, where, years later, Castro is about to die of natural causes. Whether he'll be succeeded by the brutal secret police chief or an anti-Castro dissident is one of the several plot lines of this book.

The main plot line, concerning use of left-over Scud missiles to potentially deliver deadly viruses to major cities in the Southeastern U.S., consumes most of the book.

What I liked best was the secondary plot concerning two CIA agents operating in Cuba. They were well fleshed-out characters who added enough variety to the typical Grafton-Tarkington-Moravia plot to make this more than a formulaic add-on to this series.

You can still depend on Jake Grafton to supply laconic common-sense reactions to military and political situations, as others run in circles, scream, and shout.

One final point -- the final mini-chapter climax was both surprising and satisfying.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT BOOK!, December 5, 1999

By A Customer

I read it in just one weekend. It's a good story, packed with action and subplots to keep the reader's interest until the end. It was great to find Jake, Toad and Rita again, after all these years. I only wish they had appeared in more central roles. I think Toad has grown as a character in "Cuba", though.

The development of the characters in Cuba, as well as all the Steve Coonts' previous novels, is the best I've ever seen.

Reading about Jake, Toad and Rita again is like reading about old friends.

A great book for all the Jake Grafton serie lovers.