Sara was still in the cabin, talking to her boyfriend, and I was left with Jack, who complained, “I think I got a cracked rib.”
“An AK-47 round will do that.”
“You owe me combat pay.”
“You owe me your life.”
“No, you owe me your life, asshole.”
“We’ll work it out.”
He asked, “What’s in the trunks?”
“Well . . . the heavy trunk has a billion dollars’ worth of property deeds, worth nothing.”
“Yeah? And the other trunk?”
“I’ll show you later.”
“Worth risking our lives for?”
“It is.”
“Better be.”
“What are we drinking?” I asked.
“Whaddaya want?”
“Rum and Coke. Hold the Coke.”
He turned and went below. I called after him, “Cigar, if you have one.”
I plopped my butt into the starboard fighting chair and swiveled around, looking at the bay and the distant shorelines. When we got out of the bay, we were basically in the Atlantic Ocean, and we needed to take a northwesterly heading. If I recalled correctly, the Zhuk-class patrol boat was running west along the coast, and if he got the call he’d come around and run a course that would intercept us.
The Stenka-class patrol boat, the 120-footer that could make forty knots, would still be at anchor, but not for long, and she could come around from the marina and might overtake us before we got out of Cuban territorial waters.
I glanced at Felipe at the helm and saw he was looking at the console—the radar screen—and I was sure he’d figured this out for himself. I would have joined him in the cabin to discuss our options and strategy, but he seemed involved in an intense conversation with Sara. I’d give him ten more minutes at the helm before I kicked his ass out and took my ship back.
Jack came topside with two tumblers filled with dark rum and handed one to me. We touched glasses and drank.
Jack had taken off his Kevlar vest, and he had a T-shirt with a map of Vietnam on it that said: “When I Die, I’m Going To Heaven, Because I’ve Already Been To Hell And Back.”
Indeed.
Jack asked, “You waste anybody?”
I nodded.
He thought about that and asked, “Are we protected as combatants under the Geneva Convention and the Rules of Land Warfare?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“That sucks.”
“You got a cigar?”
“Yeah.” He pulled a cedar-wrapped cigar out of his jeans pocket and handed it to me.
I unwrapped it, bit off the tip, and lit up with Jack’s Zippo. Jack had a cigarette in his mouth, and I lit him up and handed him his lighter.
He looked at it and said, “This is my good-luck charm. Kept me alive for a year.”
“No it didn’t.”
“Everybody in my company had a good-luck charm. Mostly crosses, some rabbit’s feet, or an AK bullet that was the bullet that would’ve killed you if you didn’t have it on you. Stuff like that.”
“Does that mean nobody in your company was KIA?”
“Yeah, guys got killed. But if you had a charm, you didn’t think you were gonna get killed.”
“Right. Well, thanks for lending it to me.”
“It worked.”
“Must have.” I downed half the rum.
“What happened with the money?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I got time.”
“We’ll pick it up on the next trip.”
He laughed.
I stood. “Look, if we make it back, this boat’s mine, free and clear. We sell it and split the money.”
“Okay. So you owe me half a million for the trip, half a million for combat pay, and four hundred grand for the Glock, and let’s say another half mil for saving your ass. How much is the boat worth?”
“We’ll figure it out.” I asked, “Hey, did you get laid in Havana?”
“Ten minutes after I left you.” He asked me, “Did you get laid in Havana? Or . . .” He cocked his head toward the cabin. “. . . Or did you get fucked?”
I wasn’t sure. “Okay, stay here and look for unfriendly craft.”
I put the rum in the cup holder and went into the cabin where Felipe sat at the helm, wearing a Kevlar vest. I noticed that the windshield had two neat holes in it, to the left of Felipe’s head.
Sara and I exchanged glances, and I thought she was going to go below, but she remained standing.
I said to Felipe, “You did a good job,” meaning you didn’t do an excellent job. In fact, you got a little shaky back there, amigo.
Felipe kept looking out the windshield and nodded.
I sort of ignored Sara and looked at the radar screen. There were no craft in the bay, which was good for starters. I could see the surrounding shorelines on the screen, but not the open water outside the bay, and we wouldn’t see that until we navigated through the archipelago of small islands that ran west from Cayo Guillermo. Then we could see if there were two craft on a course to intercept us.
Felipe seemed to understand the situation and said, “We can transit into the next bay, Buena Vista, and keep the archipelago between us and the ocean for about a hundred and fifty kilometers, then break out into the ocean around Punta Gorda.”
“Do we have a chart?”
“I do. And we have the radar, depth finder, and GPS.”
Life at the edge is all about life-and-death decisions. Pilots, sea captains, combat commanders, deep-sea divers, sky divers, mountain climbers, and other risk-taking crazies know this, and they see it as a challenge. You can get away with a bad decision, but not a bad mistake.
Felipe asked, “What do you think?”
“I think I don’t want to be hemmed in by islands and shorelines. I want to be in open water.”
“But—”
“You’re relieved. Please leave the cabin.”
He looked at me, then stood and went below. He probably needed to pee.
I sat in the skipper’s chair and scanned the dials and gauges, including the fuel, then looked at the radar screen and took a heading that would put us into the Atlantic Ocean in about fifteen minutes.
The bay was choppy, meaning the ocean was going to be rough. I took a drag on the cigar.
Sara said, “I was scared to death.”
“You really did fine.”
“Jack is a brave man.”
And Felipe is . . . ? Well, to be generous, not too many people do well during their baptism of fire. It gets easier each time, and one day you don’t give a shit. I suggested, “Why don’t you go below and get some rest?”
She glanced down the steps to where Felipe was, then asked, “Did you tell Jack what’s in the trunk?”
“No.”
“I’ll show him.”
“Okay.”
She went out to the deck and took a key out of her pocket.
I thought I should be there, so I checked the radar, put the boat on autopilot, and went out to the deck.
I said to Jack, “You remember what Carlos said on this boat about the POWs in Villa Marista prison in Havana?”
“Yeah . . .”
Sara knelt, opened one of the trunks, and lifted the lid.
Jack stared at the skulls. “What the . . . ?”
“These are those seventeen men. They’re going home, Jack.”
He looked at me, then at Sara, then back at the skulls. He moved closer to the trunk, made the sign of the cross, and said, “Welcome home, boys.” He took a step back and saluted.
I left Jack with Sara and went back to the cabin and took the helm. As we got closer to the ocean, the sea became rougher. The wind was from the southeast and we had a following sea as we headed northwest at twenty-five knots. This was going to be a hell of a ride.
I saw the western tip of Cayo Guillermo on the radar, and a smaller island west of that, and I steered for the passage between th
e islands, keeping an eye on the depth finder.
It started to rain, and Jack and Sara came into the cabin. Sara, maybe sensing that Jack and I needed a minute, went below.
Jack said, “She told me you met up with Eduardo.”
“Right.”
“He’s a foxy old bastard.”
“So are you.”
“He told me when he left The Maine in Havana Harbor that he had something important he was going to give to you and Sara, and that when I saw it, I’d understand.”
That sounded familiar.
“I guess what I just saw is it.”
“It is.”
“So now we’re gonna go on TV and talk about it.”
“Let’s get to Key West first.”
“Yeah, I guess those . . . those guys are gonna be used to fuck up the peace talks.”
Sometimes, as someone once said, the dead past should just bury its dead. “I think those men should be identified, and returned to their families for a proper burial.”
“Yeah . . .”
“What did Eduardo offer you?”
“Don’t matter.”
“Okay.”
“You need help at the helm?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He started down the stairs, then said, “Get us the fuck out of here.”
“Can do.”
The military teaches you about the loneliness of command, and the weight of command that sits on your shoulders and is the combined weight of everyone whose lives you are responsible for. It is the worst feeling in the world. But that’s what you signed on for, and no one ever said it was going to be easy.
I took The Maine through the windswept passage between the islands and I was out into the Atlantic.
I looked at my radar screen and saw only two craft—one was to the west, about ten nautical miles from me, and the other was to the east, only six nautical miles, traveling west.
These could be any ships on the sea, but I was fairly certain I knew who they were, and I knew I was about to earn my pay.
As I watched, both craft, having spotted me on their radar, changed course and began converging on The Maine.
We were in trouble.
CHAPTER 54
The Maine was getting tossed around by the wind and waves, though I was able to keep her on a straight northerly heading toward international waters, which were about ten miles ahead. But no matter how I did the math, the two Guarda Frontera patrol boats were going to intercept us before I crossed that imaginary line—which was imaginary enough for them to ignore.
In fact, the two patrol boats had by now been told what happened to their colleagues in the mangrove swamp, and it didn’t take too much genius for them to figure out that the radar blip they saw was the boat used by the murderers in the swamp. A little more thought would draw them to the conclusion that this was the American fishing boat Fishy Business, and those patrol boats would follow us to hell to get revenge.
The rain was getting heavier, and I wasn’t able to see much through the windshield, even with the wipers going full speed. There wasn’t much to see anyway; if you’ve seen one storm, you’ve seen them all. The radar, however, showed a clearer picture of the danger, and it wasn’t the weather.
Jack came into the cabin and looked at the radar screen. “Do I see what I think I’m seein’?”
“You do.”
“Shit.” He asked, “What’re we gonna do?”
Well, we were going to get captured or killed. Unless the other guys made a mistake. Or unless I could make them make a mistake. “It’s like a chess game. Except everybody gets only one move.”
“Okay . . . what’s our move?”
I looked at the radar screen. The Zhuk-class patrol boat was heading for us from the west, probably at his full speed, which was twenty-five knots. If I maintained a direct north heading, he’d veer north, and at some point his machine guns would be within firing range of us, but he couldn’t actually overtake us. The real problem was the Stenka-class boat, which at forty-five knots was close enough at six nautical miles to be alongside us within maybe ten or fifteen minutes—or within firing range with his radar-controlled guns sooner than that.
I wasn’t sure of the effective firing range of the Stenka’s 30mm rapid-fire cannons, but that’s a relatively small caliber, and the cannon shell was about the size and shape of a big Cohiba in an aluminum tube—but this was an exploding cigar. Guns like that were used mostly for anti-aircraft and ripping up a small ship—like The Maine—and I knew it was a close-range cannon. Maybe accurate at two miles.
The question was, did these guys want to kill us, or capture us? I would have said capture, except I’d left a lot of Guarda Frontera corpses back on the shore. So the guys in the patrol boats would fire first, no questions asked.
“Talk to me, Mac.”
“I’m thinking.”
“I think you gotta make your move.”
I turned on the radio and switched to Channel 16, the international distress and hailing channel, where the Cuban gunboats might try to contact me. I could hear voices in Spanish, and they weren’t singing “Guantanamera.” I would have called below for a translator, but I understood “Guarda Frontera,” and I was also able to translate “Feeshy Beesness,” and that’s all I needed to know. I shut off the radio.
Jack said, “Holy shit.”
“What do you do, Jack, when any move you make is the wrong move?”
“You hope the other guy makes a bad move.”
“Right. And what do you do when you’re in contact with a superior force and you can’t break contact?”
“You do the unexpected.”
“Right.” I looked at the radar screen. If I kept a northerly heading, I’d be intercepted from the east and the west. If I turned south, I could get back into the inter-coastal waters between the archipelago and the coast of Cuba, and maybe play cat-and-mouse with these guys for awhile, but that would just delay the inevitable.
I asked Jack, “So if the bad guys are pressing you from two sides and you can’t break contact, what do they not expect you to do?”
“Attack.”
“Right.” I turned the wheel to port and took a direct heading toward the Zhuk-class boat that was coming at us from the west.
Jack said, “I guess you want to get this over with sooner than later.”
“Correct.”
Felipe came up to the cabin, wondering, I’m sure, about our new heading. “What are you doing?”
I tapped the screen. “We’re meeting the beast. The Zhuk.”
“Are you crazy?”
Why do people always ask me that? But I took a moment to explain, “We need to stay as far from the Stenka as possible, so we’re heading directly away from him.”
Felipe looked at the radar screen. “But you’re heading right for the Zhuk—”
“I know where I’m heading.”
He asked again, “Are you crazy?”
“Go below.”
But he had a suggestion. “Turn around and get back into the archipelago.”
“Go below.”
Felipe was staring at the screen, transfixed. “Listen . . . if we get back into the archipelago, they’ll lose us on their radar—”
“Until they follow us.”
“Their radar is going to pick up shore clutter, islands . . . We can get into a mangrove swamp—”
“I’ve had enough mangrove swamps for awhile, amigo. Go below. That’s an order.”
But Felipe was not taking orders from me and he said, “You’re going to get us killed.”
We were as good as dead anyway, and Felipe knew that. He just didn’t want to deal with it.
Jack said to him, “The captain ordered you below.”
Felipe looked at him as though crazy was contagious. Felipe took a deep breath, stepped back from Jack, and pulled my .38 Smith & Wesson from under his shirt. “Turn this boat south.”
I reminded him, “You promised to take orders.” br />
“Now! Or I’ll—”
Unfortunately, Sara came into the cabin, looked at Felipe, and saw the gun. “Felipe! What is going on—?”
“Looks like a mutiny.” I suggested, “Take him below before I get pissed off.”
Felipe explained to Sara, “He’s going to get us killed.”
Sara looked at me, then back at Felipe. She didn’t know how I was going to get everyone killed, or what the debate was about, but she stepped past Felipe and stood between me and her boyfriend with the gun.
Well, I’m not comfortable hiding behind a woman, especially when I had a Glock in my belt and the woman was now in my line of fire. I said to Jack, “Take his gun and escort him below.”
Felipe stepped back from Jack and descended a few steps into the lower cabin. “Stay where you are.”
Jack made like he didn’t hear him and put his hand out. “Give it.”
Felipe realized he was outnumbered by crazies, but before he retreated, he had some advice for my crew. “Make him tell you what he’s doing. And make him stop. Or we’re all dead.”
Dead anyway. Once you understood that, you were left with the one move—attack—that would either keep you alive or let you go out in a blaze of glory. Sara had said she would die before she was captured, and I was taking her at her word.
Felipe retreated below, still armed, but not dangerous. For now.
Jack offered to go and disarm him, but I said, “Just keep an eye on him. We’ll need him if we get into a shoot-out.”
Sara had no comment on that, but she was very interested in what I was doing that would get everyone killed.
I pointed to the radar screen and explained, “The faster boat, the Stenka that has the cannons, would intercept us quickly if we headed north at an angle away from him. But if we head directly away from him, he has a lot of catching up to do.”
She looked at the screen and nodded, but then noticed the other blip heading directly toward us. “What’s that?”
“That’s the Zhuk—the smaller boat that goes the same speed as us.” I was going to add, “The Zhuk has only machine guns,” but that didn’t sound reassuring, so I also explained, “The closer we are to the Zhuk, the less likely it is for the Stenka to fire its cannons.”