Cuba

CHAPTER NINE

William Henry Chance sat in the back of the van listening to the tape of Vargas’s conversation with his generals. Normally the fidelity of this system was acceptable. Every now and then a word or phrase was garbled or inaudible, the same drawback that affected every listening technology. People mumbled or talked at the same time or turned their heads the wrong way or talked while smoking. Still, this evening he was only catching occasional words.

Chance strained his ears. Phrases, occasionally a plain word, lots of garbled noise …

“Is this the best we can do?”

“The sky was overcast, the window was in shadow with the evening coming on.”

“What about the laser?”

If the crystals were illuminated with a laser beam in the nonvisible portion of the spectrum, the vibrations could be read with the large magnification spotting scope at the usual distance. The problem was getting the laser close enough to the crystals. Maximum range for the laser was less than one hundred meters, so the van with the laser had to be parked literally in front of the building.

“We didn’t want to take the risk without your permission.”

Ah, yes, risk. This equipment had been brought into Cuba by boat. The four technicians — of Mexican or Cuban descent — had arrived the same way.

Miguelito was from south Texas, the son of migrant laborers. He didn’t learn English until he was in his late teens. He had recorded the conversations, listened to the audio as the computer processed it. “What did you think, Miguelito?” Chance asked. Chance’s Spanish was excellent, the result of months of intense training, but he would never have a native speaker’s ear for the language.

Miguelito took his time answering. “It is difficult to say. I hear phrases, pieces of sentences, stray words … and my mind puts it all together into something that may not have been there when they said it. You understand?”

Chance nodded.

“What I hear is a conversation about biological weapons in Guantanamo Bay.”

“You mean using biological weapons against Guantánamo Bay?”

“That is possible. But my impression was that the weapons were already there.”

“Castro. Did they talk about Castro?”

“His name was mentioned. It is distinctive. I think I heard it.”

“Is he still alive?”

“I do not know.” Miguelito looked apologetic.

“Biological weapons inside the U.S. facility is impossible. They must be intending to use them against the people there.”

Miguelito said nothing.

“I’d better listen,” Chance said.

“I will play for you the best part,” Miguelito said. “Give me a few moments.” He played with the equipment. After about a minute he announced he was ready with a nod of his head. Chance and Carmellini donned headsets.

Noise. They heard noise, occasionally garbled voices, but mostly computer-generated noise as the machine tried without success to make sense of the flickering light coming through the high-magnification spotting scope. Every now and then a word or two in Spanish. “Guantánamo … attack …” Once Chance was sure he heard the word “biological,” but even then, he wasn’t certain.

Finally he removed his headset.

Miguelito did likewise.

“Perhaps they are talking about possible targets when and if,” Carmellini suggested. “After all, they can spray this stuff into the air from a truck upwind and kill everyone on the base.”

Chance grimaced. What he had here was absolutely nothing. He was going to need something more definite before he started talking to Washington via the satellite.

“They did a lot of talking about political matters, people and districts, whom they supported and so on,” Miguelito said. “It is not much better than what you have just heard — they talked of this before the sun went down — but I got the impression that Vargas wanted Delgado and Alba to abandon any commitments they had to Raúl Castro or the Sedanos and throw in with him.”

“Hmmm,” said William Henry Chance. He tried to focus on Miguelito’s comments and couldn’t. Biological weapons were on his mind.

He recalled Vargas’s face, remembered how he had looked as Chance had sat there discussing a Cuban-American cigarette company. The strong, fleshy face had been a mask, revealing nothing of its owner’s thoughts. That poker face … that was his dominant impression of Vargas.

The man certainly had a reputation: he was ruthless efficiency incarnate, a thug who smashed heads and sliced throats and got answers from people who didn’t want to talk. Every dictatorship needed a few sociopaths in high places. He was also subtle and smooth when that was required. Nor had he yet surrendered to his appetites, surrendered to the absolute corruption that absolute power inevitably causes. Not yet, anyway.

Yes, Alejo Vargas was a damned dangerous man, one who apparently possessed the brains and managerial skills necessary to produce biological weapons and the brutality to use them.

El Gato may have shipped the Cubans material that they could use to culture bacteria or viruses, but as yet there was no hard evidence that the Cubans had done so.

That tantalizing word, “biological.” Why would the interior minister and the head of the Cuban Army and Navy use that word if they weren’t talking about weapons? Sure as hell they weren’t talking about barracks sanitation or the condition of the mess halls.

If there was a biological weapons program, Chance told himself, the evidence would be inside the ministry, the headquarters of the secret police. There must be paper, records, orders, letters — something! No one could run a serious project like that without paper, not even Vargas.

The evidence is inside that building, he told himself.

After Fidel died of poison she had handed him, Mercedes was locked in her bedroom by Vargas and Santana. Which was just as well.

She pulled a blanket over herself and curled up on the bed in the fetal position. The silence and afternoon gloom were comforting.

Amazingly, no tears came. Fidel had been dying for months, she was relieved that he had finally come to the end of the journey, the end of the pain.

In the stillness she listened to the sound of her breathing, the sound of her heart pumping blood through her ears, listened to an insect buzzing somewhere, listened to the distant muted thump of footfalls and doors closing, people engaged in the endless business of living.

She saw a gecko, high on the wall, quite motionless except for his sides, which moved in and out, just enough to be seen in the dim light coming in through the window drapes. He seemed to be watching her. More likely he was waiting for a fly, as he did somewhere every day, as his ancestors had done since the dawn of time, as his progeny would do until the sun flamed up and burned the earth to a cinder. Then, they say, the sun would burn out altogether and the earth, if it still existed, would wander the universe forever, a cold, lifeless rock, spinning aimlessly. Until then geckos clung to walls and God provided flies. Amazing how that worked.

She wondered about Hector, wondered if he would be found and arrested, or murdered and shoveled into an anonymous grave. God knows she had done everything possible to warn him. Perhaps the man didn’t want to be warned: perhaps he knew the task before him was impossible. Perhaps he really believed all that Jesuit bullshit and in truth didn’t care if he lived or died. Most likely that was it.

The truth was that the more you knew of life, of the compromises one must make to get from day to day, the more you realized the futility of it all. None of it meant anything.

Man lived, man died, governments rose and fell, justice was done or denied, venality was crushed or triumphant; in the long run none of it mattered a damn. The world spun on around the sun, life continued to be lived ….

When we perish from human memories we are no more. We are well and truly gone, as if we had never been.

She threw aside the cover and sat up in bed, hugging her knees. She thought again of Fidel, and finally let him go. She then had only the twilight, the room falling into darkness.

Toad Tarkington was waiting for Jake Grafton beside the V-22 Osprey on the flight deck of United States.

The Osprey was a unique airplane, with a turbo-prop engine mounted on the end of each wing. Just now the pilot had the engines tilted straight up so that the 38-foot props on each engine would function as helicopter rotor blades. The machine could lift off vertically like a helicopter or make a short, running takeoff. Once airborne the pilot would gradually transition to forward flight by tilting the engines down into a horizontal position. Then the giant props would function as conventional propellers, though very large ones. The machine could also land vertically or run on to a short landing area. A cross between a large twin-rotor helicopter and a turbo-prop transport, the extraordinarily versatile Osprey had enormous lifting ability and 250-knot cruise speed, capabilities exceeding those of any conventional helicopter.

Jake Grafton stood looking at the plane for a few seconds as it sat on the flight deck. With its engines mounted on the very ends of its wings — a position dictated by the size of the rotor blades — the machine could not stay airborne if one of the rotor transmissions failed. It could fly on one engine, however, if the drive shaft linking the good engine to the transmission of the distant rotor blade remained intact.

The Osprey’s extremely complicated systems were made even more so by the requirement that the wings and rotors fold into a tight package so that the plane could be stored aboard ship. The transitions between hovering and wing-borne flight were only possible because computers assisted the pilots in flying the plane. Complex controls, complex systems — Jake thought the machine a flying tribute to the ingenuity of the human species.

The evening looked gorgeous. The sky was clearing, visibility decent. The late afternoon sun shone on a breezy, tumbling sea. Jake took a deep breath and climbed into the plane.

He put on a regular headset so that he could talk to the flight crew.

“’Lo, Admiral.”

“Hello, Rita. How are you?”

“Ready to rock and roll, sir. Let me know when you’re strapped in.”

“I’m ready.” Jake settled back and watched Toad and the crewman strap in.

Lightly loaded, the Osprey almost leaped from the flight deck into the stiff sea wind, which was coming straight down the deck. Rita wasted no time rotating the engines forward to a horizontal position; the craft accelerated quickly as the giant rotors became propellers and the wings took the craft’s weight.

An hour later Rita Moravia landed the Osprey vertically on a pier at Guantánamo between two light poles. The sun was down by then and the area was lit by flood lights.

A marine lieutenant colonel stood waiting. He had the usual close-cropped hair, a deep tan, the requisite square jaw, and he looked as if he spent several hours a day lifting weights.

As they walked toward him Toad muttered, just loud enough for Jake to hear, “Another refugee from the Mr. Universe contest. If you can’t make it in bodybuilding, there’s always the marines.”

“Can it, Toad.”

The lieutenant colonel saluted smartly. “I am deploying a company around the warehouse, Admiral. We’re taking up positions now.”

“Excellent,” Jake Grafton said. “I brought an aerial photo that was taken this afternoon”—Toad took it from a folder and passed it over—“if you would show me where you are placing your people?”

“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt, the landing team commander, used the photo and a finger to show where he would put his company. He finished with the comment, “My plan is to channel any intruders into these two open areas formed by these streets, then kill them there.”

“What are your alternatives?”

They discussed them, and the fact that Eckhardt planned to divide one platoon between several empty warehouses and use them as reserves. “I think this will be a very realistic exercise, sir,” the colonel finished. “I have even had ammunition issued to the men, although of course they have been instructed to keep their weapons empty.”

“Colonel Eckhardt, this is not an exercise.”

“Sir?”

“That warehouse, warehouse nine, contains CBW warheads. They are being loaded aboard this freighter and the one that left the other day for transport back to the states, where they are supposed to be destroyed. The first ship that left carrying the damned things has disappeared. We’re hunting for it now. I don’t know just what in hell is going on, so I’m putting your outfit here just in case.”

“What is the threat, sir?”

“I don’t know.”

Jake could see Eckhardt was working hard to keep his face under control.

“If the Cubans or anybody else comes over, under, around, or through the perimeter fence, start shooting.”

“Yes, sir,” Eckhardt said.

“Have your people load their weapons, Colonel. They will defend themselves and this building. No warning shots — shoot to kill.”

“If we are assaulted, sir, how much warning would you expect us to have?”

“I don’t know. Maybe days, maybe hours, maybe no warning at all.”

“The more warning. I have, sir, the fewer lives I am likely to lose.”

“I will pass that on to Washington, Colonel. When I know something is up, you’ll hear about it seconds later. That’s the best I can do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just so we’re on the same sheet of music, Colonel, I want that warehouse defended until you are relieved or the very last marine is dead.”

Eckhardt said nothing this time. Toad Tarkington’s grim expression softened. Eckhardt could have said something like, “Marines don’t surrender,” or some other bullshit, but he didn’t. Toad was taking a liking to the lieutenant colonel.

“Anything you need from me,” Jake Grafton continued, “just ask. The battle group and the base commander will supply you to the extent of our resources. The cruiser will provide artillery support — I want you to interface with the cruiser people in the next hour or two, make sure you’re ready to communicate and shoot.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which brings up a point: I see that your people are building bunkers from sandbags.”

“Yes, sir. We’re trying to fortify some positions, create some strongpoints.”

“Get a couple of backhoes from the base people, get someone to locate the utilities, and dig fortifications. Jackhammer the concrete. By dawn I want your people dug in to the eyes.” This order might be stretching the phrase “business as usual,” but Jake wasn’t worried. Freighters carrying weapons don’t normally turn up missing.

“Yessir.”

“What are you going to do if the Cubans send tanks through the fence?”

“Their tanks are old Soviet T-54s, I believe,” Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt said. “We’ll channel them into these two avenues,” he pointed at the aerial photo, “then kill them — cremate the crews inside the tanks.”

“Okay. When your people are dug in, dig any tank traps that you want. You have carte blanche, Colonel.”

“Nobody is going into that warehouse, sir.”

“Fine. We’ll keep the Cuban Navy off your back and give you air support. The cruisers will provide artillery. Call us if you see or hear anything suspicious.”

Toad passed the colonel a list of radio frequencies and they discussed communications for several minutes.

Jake took that opportunity to wander off, to look at the warehouse from all angles.

He was standing beside six large forklifts that were parked near the main loading dock when Toad and Eckhardt walked over to him. “Don’t isolate these forklifts from the pier when you’re digging up concrete,” Jake advised.

“Of course not.”

“One other thing,” Jake said. “You’d better break out the MOPP suits and have them beside every man.” MOPP stood for mission-oriented protective posture, a term designed by career bureaucrats to obfuscate the true nature of chemical and biological warfare protection suits.

The colonel was going to say something about the suits, then he decided to pass on it.

They talked for several minutes about the battalion’s problems, how the colonel was deploying it. The colonel told Jake he was putting people on the roofs of all the warehouses.

As Jake and Toad walked back to the Osprey, Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt turned toward warehouse nine and scratched his head. He didn’t for a minute believe that building contained chemical and biological weapons.

He frowned. A hijacked freighter? He had been in the Corps long enough to know how the navy operated: this was just another readiness exercise but the admiral didn’t have the courtesy or decency to say so. “Let’s keep the grunts’ assholes twanging tight.” MOPP suits, in the heat of the Cuban summer!

Yeah.

“Cuba must learn to live with the elephant,” Hector Sedano told the crowd of schoolteachers and administrators. “Our relations with the United States have been the determining factor in our history and will be the key to our future. Any Cuban government that hopes to make life better for the people of Cuba must come to grips with the reality of the colossus ninety miles north.”

That was the nub of his message, pure and simple. He was careful never to criticize Fidel Castro or the government, knowing full well that to do so would be the height of folly, an invitation to a prison cell. Most of the people in this room were teachers, a few were agents for the secret police. Cuba was a dictatorship, a fact as unremarkable as the island status of the nation.

Still, he was talking about the future, about a day still to come when all things might change, a day that Cuba would have to face someday, sometime. Everyone in the room understood that too, including the secret police, so no one objected to his remarks. Hector Sedano talked on, talking about education, jobs, investment, opportunities, the building blocks of the life sagas of human beings.

When he finished he sat down as the thunder of applause rolled over him. He thought that his audience’s reaction was not to his message, which in truth was not that new or fresh or interesting, but to the fact that he was a private citizen speaking aloud on sensitive political subjects. This his audience found most remarkable. They stood on their feet, applauded, pressed forward to touch him, to give him a greeting or blessing, reached between people to touch his clothes, his hands, his hair.

Afterward he sat and spoke privately to a knot of people who wanted to be with him when that someday came. He was more open, spoke about specifics but still spoke guardedly, careful not to speak openly against the government or to criticize Fidel.

In his heart of hearts Hector Sedano knew that Fidel Castro must know what he had to say, must know his message almost as well as he himself did. Everything that the government knew, Fidel knew, for he was the government.

And still Fidel let him speak. That was the remarkable thing, and Hector had a theory about why this might be so. When he was a young revolutionary in jail, Fidel had written a political tract in defense of the Cuban revolution that became its manifesto. He entitled it, “History Will Absolve Me.” In it he defined “the people” as “the vast unredeemed masses, those to whom everyone makes promises and who are deceived by all.”

Maybe, Hector thought, Fidel Castro was still looking for absolution from those who would come after. Maybe he was thinking about “the people” even now, thinking of the promises he had made and the reality that had come to pass.

When he was leaving the school, on the way to the borrowed car with two friends who accompanied him, Hector found himself surrounded by well-dressed men, obviously not local laborers.

“Hector Sedano,” said one, “you are under arrest. You must come with us.”

He was stunned. “What am I charged with?” he demanded.

“That is not for us to discuss,” the man said, and took his elbow. He pushed him toward a government van.

“They are arresting Sedano,” someone shouted. The shout was taken up by others. As a crowd gathered, shoved closer, shouting threats and obscenities, the men around the van pushed Hector into it and jumped in themselves. In seconds it was in motion.

Hector protested. He had done nothing wrong, he was not wanted for any crime.

The man showed him a badge. “You are under arrest,” he said. “We have our orders. Now be silent.”

The van raced through the streets of the city, then took the highway toward Havana.

Maximo Sedano was too excited to sleep. The adrenaline aftershock of stabbing an ice pick into Vargas’s thug should have floored him, but the thought of $53 million, plus interest, kept him wide awake. That and the possibility of sirens.

He lay in the darkness listening. Every now and then he heard a siren moaning, faint and far away. He waited in dread suspense for that moan to join others and become a wailing convoy of police vehicles converging on his hotel, followed by the stamping of a hoard of policemen charging upstairs to arrest him. He twitched with every howl in the night, though they were few and faint and never seemed to grow louder. In the silence between moans he amused himself by trying to calculate the amount of interest that might be due on Castro’s hoard.

He hadn’t seen a statement in about six months … call it six months exactly, half a year. Interest at 2.45 percent, on $53 million … almost 650,000 American dollars.

Ha! The interest alone would buy a nice small villa on Ibiza. Of course he should not rule out Majorca, nor Minorca for that matter, until he had traveled over each of the islands and seen local conditions for himself, and checked the real estate market. No, indeed. He would visit all the Balearic Islands in turn, including Formentera and Cabrera, stay at local inns, drink local wine, eat lamb and beef and fish prepared as the islanders preferred …

Ahh, his dream was within his grasp. Tomorrow. In just a few short hours. When the banks opened he would go immediately to the one with the largest account, submit the transfer card, then to the next one, and finally, the one with the smallest amount on deposit, a mere $11 million.

Maximo paced the room, stared out the window at the lights of the city that housed his fortune, paced some more.

He was full almost to bursting, too excited to sleep.

He had almost run back to the hotel from the railroad station. He had taken his time though, walked slowly and unhurriedly, paused to feed the ducks under one of the Limmat bridges, slipped the ice pick into the river when no one was watching, then walked on to the hotel so full of joy and happiness he could barely contain himself.

At about four in the morning he began to wind down somewhat, so he lay down on the bed. In minutes he was asleep.

When Maximo awoke the sun was up, he could hear a maid running a vacuum sweeper in the next room.

He checked his watch. Almost eight-thirty.

He showered, shaved, put on clean clothes from the skin out, then packed his bags. He would come back to the hotel this afternoon when he had finished his banking and check out. He wanted to be long gone if Santana showed up looking for Rall and the money.

There was a continental breakfast laid out in the hotel dining room, so Maximo paused there for coffee and a French roll.

Suitably fortified, with his attaché case in his left hand and the transfer cards signed by Fidel in his inside breast pocket, Maximo Sedano set off afoot for the bank that was to be his first stop. It was a mere two blocks away, a huge old building of thick stone walls and small windows, a building hundreds of years old with the treasure of the ages in its vaults.

He spoke to a clerk, was ushered into a small windowless office to see a middle-aged man who wore a green eyeshade and spoke tolerably good Spanish. Maximo surrendered the appropriate transfer card and settled down to wait after the clerk left the room.

The bank was quiet. Footsteps were lost on the vast wood and stone floors. Humans seemed to be the intruders here, temporary visitors who came and went while the bank endured the storms of the centuries, a monument to the power of capital.

Five pleasant minutes passed, then five more.

Maximo was in no hurry. He was prepared to wait quite a while for $53 million, even if it took all day. Or several days. After all, he had waited a lifetime so far. But he wouldn’t have to wait long. The clerk would be back momentarily.

And he was.

He came in, looked at Maximo with an odd expression, handed him back the transfer card with just the slightest hint of a bow.

“I am sorry, señor, but the balance of this account is so low that the transfer is impossible to honor.”

Maximo gaped uncomprehendingly. He swallowed, then said, “What did you say?”

“I am sorry, señor, but there has been some mistake.”

“Not on my part,” Maximo replied heatedly.

The clerk gave a tight little professional smile. “The bank’s records are perfectly clear.” He held out the transfer card. “This account contains just a few dollars over one thousand.”

Maximo couldn’t believe his ears. “Where did the money go?”

“Obviously, due to the bank secrecy laws I have limited discretion about what I can say.”

Maximo Sedano leaped across the table at the man, grabbed him by his lapels.

“Where did the money go, fool?” he roared.

“Someone with the proper authorization ordered the money transferred, señor. That much is obvious. I can say no more.” And the clerk wriggled from his grasp.

The story was the same at the next two banks Maximo Sedano visited. Each account contained just a few dollars above the minimum amount necessary to maintain the account.

The horror of his position hit Maximo like a hammer. Not only was there no money here for him, Alejo Vargas would kill him when he got back to Cuba.

He told the bank officer at the last bank he visited that he wanted to make a telephone call, and he wanted the bank officer there to talk to the person at the other end.

He called Vargas at home, caught him before he went to his office.

After he had explained about the accounts, he asked the bank officer to verify what he had said. The officer refused to touch the telephone. “The bank secrecy laws are very strict,” he said self-righteously. Maximo wanted to strangle him.

Vargas had of course listened to this little exchange. “There is no money,” Maximo told the secret-police chief. “Someone has stolen it.”

“You ass,” Vargas hissed. “You have stolen the money. You are the finance minister.”

“Call the other banks, Alejo,” he urged. “They are here in Zurich. I will give you their names and the account numbers. Listen to what the bank officers have to say.”

“You are a capital ass, Sedano. The Swiss bankers will not talk to me. The money was deposited in Switzerland precisely because those bastards will talk to no one.”

“I will call you from their office and have them speak to you.”

“Have you lost your mind? What are you playing at?”

This was a scene from a nightmare.

“If I had the money I would not set foot in Cuba again, Vargas. We both know that. Use your head! I don’t have the money: I’m coming home.”

He tried to slam the instrument into its cradle and missed, sent it skittering off the table. Fumbling, he picked it up by the cord, hung the thing properly on the cradle.

The account officer looked at him with professional solicitude, much like an undertaker smiling at the next of kin.

Perhaps the banks have stolen Fidel’s money, Maximo thought. These Swiss bastards pocketed the Jews’ money; maybe they are keeping Fidel’s.

He opened his mouth to say that very thing to the account officer sitting across the table, then thought better of it. He picked up his attaché case with the pistol in it and walked slowly out of the bank.

The van took Hector Sedano to La Cabana fortress in Havana. It stopped in a dark courtyard where other men were waiting. They took him into the prison, down long corridors, through iron doors that opened before him and closed after him, until finally they stood before an empty cell in the isolation area of the prison. Here they demanded his clothes, his shoes, his watch, the things in his pockets. When he stood naked someone gave him a one-piece jumpsuit. Wearing only that, he was thrust into the cell and the door was locked behind him.

The journey from the everyday world of people and voices and cares and concerns to the stark, vile reality of a prison cell is one of the most violent transitions in this life. The present and the future had been ripped from Hector Sedano, leaving only his memories of the past.

Hector was well aware of the fact that he could be physically abused, beaten, even executed, at the whim of whoever had ordered him jailed. People disappeared in Cuban prisons, never to be heard from again.

The parallels between his situation and that of Christ while awaiting his crucifixion immediately leaped to Hector’s Jesuit mind. Not far behind was the realization that Fidel Castro had also been imprisoned before the revolution.

Perhaps prison is a natural stage in the life of a revolutionary. Imprisonment by the old regime for one’s beliefs was de facto recognition that the beliefs were dangerous and the person who held them a worthy enemy. The person imprisoned was automatically elevated in stature and respect.

These thoughts swirled through Hector’s mind as he sat on a hard wooden bunk without blankets and gave in to his emotions. He found himself shaking with anger. He paced, he pounded on the walls with his fists until they were raw.

Finally he threw himself on the bunk and lay staring into the gloom.

Angel del Mar pitched and rolled viciously as she wallowed helplessly in the swells. In every direction nothing could be seen but sea and cloudy sky. The sky was completely covered now with cloud, the wind was picking up, and the swells were getting bigger, with a shorter period between them. Aboard the boat, many people lay on their stomach and hugged the heaving deck.

Everyone on board suffered from the lack of water, some to a greater degree than others. Ocho Sedano, who had had only a few mouthfuls since the boat left Cuba and had pushed himself relentlessly, without mercy, was desperate. His eyes felt like burning coals, his skin seemed on fire, his tongue a thick, lifeless lump of dead flesh in a cracked, dry mouth.

He wasn’t perspiring much now. Of all his symptoms, that one worried him the most. As an athlete he knew the importance of regulating body temperature.

Dora lay in the shade cast by the wheelhouse and said nothing. She had been sick a time or two, vomit stained her dress. She seemed to be resting easier now.

Beside her lay her father, Diego Coca. He was conscious, his eyes fierce and bright, his jaw swollen and misshapen. He hadn’t moved in hours, unwilling to let anyone else have his spot in the shade.

Ocho sat heavily near Dora, scanned the sea slowly and carefully.

My God there must be a ship! A ship or boat — something to give us food and water …

In all this sea there must be hundreds of fishing boats and yachts, dozens of freighters, smugglers, American Coast Guard cutters hunting smugglers, warships … Where the hell are they? Where are all these goddamn boats and ships?

From time to time he heard jets flying over, occasionally saw one below the clouds, but they stayed high, disappeared into the sea haze.

Under the mast an old woman sat weeping. She was the one who grieved for the captain, for some of the people who were washed overboard that first night. She wept silently, her shoulders shaking, her breath coming in gasps.

He wanted to hug her, to comfort her, but there was nothing he could say. His brother Hector would have known what to say, but Ocho did not.

He looked longingly at Dora, Dora who was once beautiful, and he could think of nothing to say to her. Nothing.

All the promise that life held, and they had thrown it away on a wild, stupid, doomed chance. Diego had led them, prodded them, demanded they go, and still he could think of nothing to say to Diego.

He was so tired, so lethargic. He had pumped for hours, just keeping up with the water. If the water came in any faster … well, he didn’t want to think about it. They would all die then. They would have little chance swimming in the open sea.

Ocho slumped over onto the moving deck. He was so tired, if he could just sleep, sleep ….

The old fisherman shook him awake. The sun was setting, the boat still rolling her guts out in the swell.

“A fish …” He held it up, about eighteen or twenty inches long. “No way to cook it, have to eat it raw. Keep up your strength.”

With two quick swipes of his knife, the fisherman produced two bleeding fillets. He offered one to Ocho, who closed his eyes and bit into the raw fish. He chewed.

Someone was clawing at him, tearing at the fish.

He opened his eyes. Diego Coca was stuffing a piece of the fish in his swollen mouth.

The old man kicked Diego in the stomach, doubled him over, then pried his jaws apart and extracted the unchewed fish.

“He’s manning the pump that keeps you afloat, you son of a bitch. He has to eat or every one of us will die.”

Diego got a grip on the fisherman’s knife and lunged for him.

He grabbed for the slippery flesh, swung wildly with the knife.

This time the old man kicked him in the arm. The knife bounced once on the deck, then landed at an angle with the blade sticking into the wood, quivering.

The fisherman waited for the boat to roll, then kicked Diego in the head. He went over backward and his head made a hollow thunk as it hit the wooden deck. He went limp and lay unmoving.

Retrieving his knife, the fisherman ate his chunk of raw fish in silence. Ocho chewed ravenously, letting the moisture bathe his mouth and throat. He held each piece in his mouth for several seconds, sucking at the juices, then reluctantly swallowing it down.

Dora watched him with feverish eyes. He passed her a chunk of the fish and she rammed it into her mouth, all of it at once, chewed greedily while eyeing the old man, almost as if she were afraid he would take it from her.

After she swallowed it, she tried to grin.

Ocho averted his eyes.

“Your turn on the pump,” the old man said.

Diego lay right where he had fallen.

Ocho got up, went into the wheelhouse and down into the engine room. The water in the bilge was sloshing around over his shoes as he began working the pump handle, up and down, up and down, endlessly.

Hours later someone came to relieve him, one of the men in the captain’s family. Ocho staggered up the stairs, so exhausted he had trouble making his hands do what he wanted.

The people on deck had more fish. Ocho sat heavily by the wheelhouse. In the dim light from the stars and moon, he could see people ripping fish apart with their bare hands, stuffing flesh into their mouths, wrestling to get to fish that jumped over the rail when the boat rolled.

He collapsed into a dreamless sleep.