CHAPTER 51
Felipe, wearing jeans, sandals, and a silly tropical shirt with a pineapple motif, walked up to us.
He glanced at me, then tried out his smile on Sara and said, “It’s good to see you here.” And he really did look happy. And relieved to see that his girlfriend was alive and well. He didn’t seem as thrilled to see me alive.
This was supposed to look like a serendipitous meeting, so Felipe and Sara did a hug and double-cheek kiss, then he turned to me and put out his hand. We shook and he said, “I haven’t seen you since Key West. How are you?”
I’m glad he didn’t ask me what I’ve been up to. “I’m well. And you look well.”
“Thank you. And you look . . .”
Unshaven, unkempt, and maybe a bit guilty.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Have a seat,” I said.
He summoned the waitress, whom he seemed to know because he’d been coming here looking for us for the last few nights.
Felipe ordered a daiquiri, which is a close cousin to a pink squirrel, and I knew I could beat him up. Sara and I ordered another round. What the hell?
While the waitress was still there, he asked Sara, “So what brings you to Cayo Guillermo?”
“You.”
He smiled, but clearly he was trying to figure out if I’d seen her naked.
Felipe was looking tan and fit. He was younger than me and younger than Sara, and I wondered what she saw in him. I had no idea what Felipe did for a living when he wasn’t the first mate on Fishy Business, but I had the impression he could have worked in retail. Maybe ladies’ handbags.
He looked around to see if we were alone, then asked Sara, “How did you make out?”
“Good and bad.”
“Tell me the bad.”
“We didn’t get to Camagüey.”
He didn’t look happy. “What happened?”
I didn’t like his tone of voice to Sara, and I said nicely, “It doesn’t matter what happened. It only matters that we didn’t get to Camagüey.” I asked him, “What did Eduardo tell you?”
He stared at me. “Eduardo, the last time I saw him, was undecided about Camagüey.”
“Well, he decided.” I asked him, “How’s Jack?”
“He’s good. And he’ll be happy to hear you’ve made it.”
Did he tell you I was probably fucking your girlfriend?
Felipe said, “You weren’t supposed to meet Jack in Havana.”
Felipe was a little more cocky than I remembered. “It was Eduardo who I wasn’t supposed to meet in Havana.”
He had no reply to that, but asked Sara, “How was my uncle when you saw him?”
“He was happy,” Sara assured him. “He was ready to go home.”
Felipe nodded. “He’s walking with God.”
I said, “He’s walking with too much information.”
Felipe informed me, “You don’t understand.”
I almost said, “Sara has been trying to make me understand,” but I bit my cocktail stirrer.
Sara said, “I pray for him.”
Felipe seconded that. I could see they had a lot in common.
Felipe asked me, “Do you still have the gun?”
“Why would I not?”
“I can take it if you’re uncomfortable carrying it.”
Sigmund Freud would say he wanted to take my dick off. I didn’t reply.
The waitress brought our drinks, and Felipe asked us, for her benefit, “So are you staying here?”
Sara replied, “No. We’re at the Sol Club.”
“Just in from Toronto,” I added.
The waitress left and Felipe told me, “This is where the tournament is staying, and there’s an extra room that you can use to freshen up before our cruise.”
“Sara said.”
He looked at me as though I needed a bath. “I have the key. You can go first, and Sara and I will follow when you come back.”
Really? I didn’t think so. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“We’ll have time after Sara and I use the room.” He smiled. “I need a real shower after five days on your boat.”
I leaned toward him. “Let me make something clear. When we step on my boat, I am in charge. And let me make something else clear—there is no time when you are in charge.”
So we locked eyeballs, and if we’d had horns we’d have locked them, too.
Felipe backed off and said, “The showers can wait.”
Sara said, “Thank you.”
She was obviously a little intimidated by her boyfriend—or feeling guilty. I asked him, “What time do we sail?”
“About eleven.”
“Why eleven?”
“Two reasons. One is port security. The Guarda Frontera—the border guards—have two patrol boats, and Jack and I have watched them. One goes out at dusk, and returns at about three or four in the morning. The other, the faster one, goes out at about midnight and returns at dawn.” He continued, “We want an hour head start on that one.”
“Then let’s leave earlier and get a two-hour start.”
“We can’t. The second reason is the tide. It’ll be high tide at eleven-twelve and I’m going to take the boat into the mangrove swamp on the south side of the island, and I can only do that at high tide.” He added, “I will meet you both there.”
I’d thought we were going to load up and cast off at the marina, and I wasn’t sure about The Maine in a mangrove swamp. “We have only two trunks to load. Why can’t we leave from the marina?”
He explained, a bit impatiently, “Because the border guards want to know what you’re doing, who and what you’re bringing onboard, and if they don’t recognize you, they check passports and tourist visas.”
“They actually want a donation to their retirement fund.”
Felipe nodded, but said, “I don’t want you two to interact with them.”
He sounded like he knew what he was doing. If he could stop thinking about me screwing his girlfriend, he should be able to concentrate on the great escape. “And we meet you in the mangrove swamp?”
He nodded. “This place was scouted a few months ago, and I checked it out and drew a map for you.”
Apparently every Cuban thought he was Magellan.
He continued, “There’s a dirt road that goes down to a floating dock in the mangrove swamp. Locals and tourists use the dock, usually during the day, and the road will support a heavy vehicle.” He asked, “What are you driving?”
Sara replied, “A Buick station wagon.”
He looked at her. “What’s in the two trunks?”
I replied, “If your uncle didn’t tell you, you don’t need to know.”
“I think I know.”
“Then don’t ask.”
He started to say something, then thought better of it and finished his daiquiri, then signaled the waitress for another. I didn’t want him drunk, so I said, “That’s the last one.” I asked, “Is there a problem for you and Jack getting the boat out of the marina at that hour?”
“I just need to have the Guarda Frontera sign a despacho for some night fishing, which I’ll do when I get back to the marina. If it’s just Jack and me, and if I don’t have our three fishermen aboard, the Guarda won’t think we’re all trying to escape from Cuba for some paranoid reason.”
“Will your fishermen be okay after we disappear?”
“They’ll be as surprised as the border guards tomorrow morning. They should be okay under questioning.” He added, “They have tickets to fly to Mexico City on the last day of the tournament.”
Unless they were in jail. Well, every mission has collateral damage. “All right. And you’re sure you can navigate through the mangrove swamp.”
“No, I’m not sure, and neither is Jack. But my tide table says I have seven feet of water at that dock at high tide, and Jack says The Maine draws about five feet, depending on her weight, and we’re light on fuel.”
I wasn’t sure h
e should put so much faith in the tide table. “Side clearance?”
“There’s a path cut through the mangroves that the sightseeing boats use, from the dock to the Bahía de Perros—the Bay of Dogs.”
I liked that he translated.
“I’ll back it in, then we load up from the dock and off we go.”
I was going to miss the Buick Roadmaster. But not as much as I was going to miss my red Porsche 911.
I didn’t want to sit here too long, and the question of who was going to use the room and when was still not resolved. Would I let Felipe and Sara go to the room together? Would Sara go, and take one for the team and the mission? Stay tuned.
Well, when you’re looking for something to talk about, the weather is a good subject. I asked Felipe, “What’s the weather looking like?”
He sipped his daiquiri. “Not good.” He glanced out the window. “There’s a late tropical storm developing, and it’s about sixty K east of here, moving west-northwest at ten or fifteen K. So it should hit”—he looked at his watch—“maybe midnight. Maybe earlier or later.” He complained, “It’s hard to get an accurate forecast here.”
“What are the winds?”
“About thirty to forty knots. Waves are between five and ten.”
I hoped he meant feet, not meters.
“We should be able to keep ahead of the storm,” said Felipe with the phony nonchalance of all seafarers. “Depending on its speed and how it tracks.”
Thanks for your insight into the obvious. Sara was looking a little concerned, so I said, “The Maine can handle much worse weather.” With me at the helm. “In fact, a little weather will be good if the patrol boats are out and about.”
Felipe agreed, and had some good news. “I’m told they don’t usually go out in bad weather.” He explained, “They’re mostly out there to look for rafters, so they might not be out on a night when there’ll be no one trying to escape this paradise.” He smiled.
Sara returned the smile.
“Also,” said Felipe, “they try to conserve fuel.” He added, “The regime is broke.”
This was sounding like an escape from the Swiss Navy. Unless the Cuban Ministry of the Interior was specifically looking for us. I asked Felipe, “What kind of patrol boats do they have?”
“They’ve got, like I said, two boats here. They used to have seven here, gifts from the Russians, but after the economic collapse they’re running only two out of Cayo Guillermo. One is a Zhuk-class eighty-footer, which can make about twenty-five knots—same as The Maine.” He glanced at Sara, hesitated, then said, “She mounts two sets of twin 12.7-millimeter machine guns, manually aimed, and she has a crew of eleven.”
I didn’t think he got all that from the Cuban crew or from a public information tour of the boat. So I concluded that Felipe had been briefed back in Miami by Eduardo’s amigos.
Felipe sipped his daiquiri and continued, “That’s the boat that goes out at dusk and returns about three or four in the morning. It runs west along the coast, looking for rafters, which it can’t see on its radar. But its radar can see a small boat that may have been stolen for an escape.” He added, “If we’re spotted visually or by radar, the Zhuk can’t overtake us at his max speed, but he can stay with us, and if he’s close enough, he can hail us and order us to stop, or . . .” He glanced at Sara again. “. . . Or fire warning shots.”
Right. It’s hard to ignore machine-gun fire.
Felipe looked at me. “I think, with our speed, we can avoid this guy.”
I agreed. “And we have radar.”
Felipe nodded. “Also, half the Russian electronics on these tubs don’t work, and the crews aren’t well-trained in electronics.”
They must have gone to the same school as Jack. Well, this was sounding easier. I wondered what we could do to make it a fair fight.
Felipe finished his daiquiri and looked for the waitress.
I said, “Make it coffee.”
He didn’t like that but he didn’t argue, and got back to business. “Okay, then there’s the second boat, which is a Stenka-class patrol boat. The one that goes out about midnight. She’s big, about a hundred and twenty feet, and can make thirty-eight to forty knots.”
That was the patrol boat I saw anchored at the marina. I wouldn’t want to see her on the high seas.
Felipe continued, “At that speed, she’s a threat, and at that size she can go out in any weather.” He drank the dregs of his daiquiri and continued, “She has a crew of thirty-four, but usually sails with half that. Her radar is sophisticated, but again, not always operational or well-manned.”
“Armaments?”
“A few manually aimed machine guns, and two radar-controlled thirty-millimeter twin rapid-fire cannons—one in the bow, the other in the stern.”
That’s what I saw at the marina. And radar-controlled meant they could hit you in the dark, even with rough seas and fog. Not good. Maybe I should call for another round of drinks.
Felipe looked at Sara and assured her, “They’re not supposed to fire at boats that are trying to flee Cuba.” He looked at me. “You may remember an international incident about twenty years ago.”
I was fifteen. And totally uninterested in international incidents. “Refresh my memory.”
“There was a tugboat, named 13 de Marzo, stolen by Cubans trying to escape. A Guarda Frontera boat fire-hosed it, but it wouldn’t stop, so they rammed it and sunk it. Seventy-two people drowned, including twenty-three kids. There was a big international uproar, and since then the regime has promised not to fire on or use any force to stop a fleeing boat.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is that they’re full of shit. They may or may not fire warning shots that accidentally hit you, and they may or may not try to ram you, but they will definitely come alongside and board you.”
Sort of like Pirates of the Caribbean. “All right, I think we understand the threat assessment, but we’re not Cubans trying to flee the country. We’re actually Americans, and Fishy Business is part of the Pescando fleet, and you’ve gotten permission to go night fishing.”
“If they see us on radar, they don’t know that. They’ll try to call us on the radio, or hail us on their bullhorn and order us to stop. At that point, we can stop and explain on the radio who we are and hope they don’t come aboard and start looking at passports and cargo, and looking for a donation. But—”
“They’re not coming aboard,” I assured him.
Felipe nodded.
Sara looked at her Cuban boyfriend and said, “I will not be taken alive.”
Felipe didn’t know how to reply to that, but said, “The choice may not be ours to make.”
She looked at me.
I said, “If I can get into open water, The Maine can outmaneuver a bigger craft, even if it’s capable of forty knots.” Which was true. But we all knew I couldn’t outrun radar-controlled rapid-fire cannons.
Felipe said, “We have another issue. Fuel.” He explained, “We’ve been keeping the fuel light.” He looked at me. “On your orders. But we always had enough to make it to Key West. Except tonight.” He further explained, “We came in about four this afternoon, and as always we pulled up to the pumps to put a few hundred gallons of diesel in the tanks, but the pumps were closed.” He added, “Probably out of fuel.”
“What do we have?”
“We have less than three hundred gallons.”
“Okay . . .” So, depending on winds and tides, at a speed of twenty-five knots we might have a cruise range of three hundred miles. It was about two hundred and fifty miles to Key West, but the rule of thumb is always to have one hundred and fifty percent of the fuel you think you need, particularly for a blue-water trip. But to radiate optimism I said, “We’ll make it.”
Felipe looked doubtful, thinking, I’m sure, about his side trip into the mangrove swamp, rough seas, winds, and maybe outmaneuvering a faster patrol boat.
“Or close enough,” I sai
d. “We’ll be in international waters in less than an hour, and U.S. waters in about six hours.”
He nodded, but we both knew we didn’t want to be towed in by the Coast Guard. Not only was it embarrassing, but if they had to tow us they might also ask questions. Like, “Where were you and what do you have onboard?” Or, “Are those bullet holes in your hull?”
Well, that was a worry that wasn’t worth worrying about. We should be so lucky as to get that far.
CHAPTER 52
I decided we could all actually use another drink, though I insisted it be beer. You can’t get drunk on beer.
I glanced at my watch. We’d been here close to an hour, and though we weren’t attracting attention, we should think about splitting up—Sara to the room, and me nursing a beer and keeping an eye on the Buick. Felipe needed to go back to the marina.
Our beers came—Coronas—and we clinked bottles and Sara said, “To a happy voyage home.”
Anchors aweigh.
Felipe took a piece of folded paper from his pocket and handed it to Sara. “That’s the map. It’s easy. You go west on the beach road for about two miles and you’ll see a sign on the left that says ‘Swamp Tours.’ It’s about a half mile on the dirt road to the dock.”
That sounded close to where I’d taken my siesta in the thick brush. “Anybody go there at night?”
“I checked it out two nights ago at eleven. No one there.”
I had to admit that Felipe was competent. Or he was a jerk-off who was motivated. I mean, like Jack, Sara, and me, he was putting his life on the line, so he had motivation to keep his head out of his ass. And why, I wondered, had he volunteered for this? I’m sure for the money. And maybe for the cause. But also because he couldn’t stay in Miami while his girlfriend was risking her life in Cuba. She might think less of him. Or even cheat on him.
I asked him, “How do you get around the island?”
“Everyone rented bicycles. That’s how I got here.”
“And Jack’s with the boat now?”
He nodded. “Someone has to stay onboard.” He explained, “The Cubans are not thieves, but they take things.”
I could use that line at the Green Parrot. “Any problems with the guns onboard?”