The Cuban Affair

Chapter 43

Eduardo’s last words to us were, “Vayan con Dios,” and mine to him were, “Have a safe journey home.” And I meant it.

Eduardo and Sara had a more emotional good-bye, mostly in Spanish, and Sara — now sitting next to me as I drove the Buick station wagon through the quiet streets of Vedado — was still upset. But not as upset as I was about Eduardo cancelling my payday — or me being the last to know what was going on.

Anyway, Eduardo had given us a road map with instructions to head south and look for signs for the Autopista Nacional, the A-1, which I was doing.

It was just before midnight, and very shortly Antonio would be knocking on Sara’s door. I hope he had the decency to bring flowers and a bottle of rum. In any case, he would discover that there was no love or money in Room 535 for him. And he’d be furious. But what would he do? Call his police comandante? Or wait to see if Sara showed up? I hoped he waited. We needed to get clear of Havana before the police started looking for us.

I concentrated on the road and my driving. I’d never sat behind the wheel of a vintage American car, and it took some getting used to, especially with Chico’s modifications. It was hot in the wagon, but I had to leave the windows up so that we weren’t so visible. There were, however, little butterfly windows that let in some air. They should bring those back.

Also, as Chico said, the fuel gauge didn’t work, but I’d take his word that the gas tank was full.

The 90-horsepower Perkins boat engine didn’t give the same performance as the Buick’s original 300-horsepower V-8, even with Chico’s newly installed Hyundai manual transmission. But the gas mileage would be better, and maybe we’d have to stop only once for gas. On the other hand, we weren’t going to outrun any police cars.

Sara came out of her funk and said, “He’s like a grandfather to me... This is sad.”

“He’s where he wants to be,” though I wished he was where he was supposed to be — in Miami. And I wished I was where he’d arrived from — Key West.

She asked, “How are you doing?”

“Okay. You see any signs for the Autopista?”

She looked out the windshield. “No, but we’re heading in the right direction.” She added, “We’re in the district of 10 October — near Villa Marista.”

I had a vision of my Villa Marista photo on a screen at the press conference, and maybe all over the news and the Internet. The surprises on this mission never seemed to end. The biggest surprise so far had been the skulls. I could still see them staring at me... as though pleading, “Take me home.”

I continued on through the dark streets of 10 October. The Autopista was south of Havana and it ran east, according to the road map, in the direction of Cayo Guillermo, though it went through the interior of the island, far from the coast. The Soviet-built highway hadn’t existed when Eduardo fled Cuba, but Eduardo and Sara agreed that the Autopista would be faster than the more direct coastal road that the tour bus had taken to Matanzas. And it would be safer — no towns to pass through and no local police. You could legally do a hundred K — 60 mph — on the Autopista, and with luck, said Sara, we might never see a police car. Sounded too good to be true.

Sara and I and Eduardo had loaded the two steamer trunks into the rear, and I was surprised how heavy the legal documents were, and how light the skulls were. We’d covered the trunks with the tarp, and Eduardo had given Sara the padlock keys and said, “The next time these trunks are opened will be in Miami.”

Or when the police ordered us to open them.

Before we’d closed the lids on the trunks, I’d looked at the soil-stained skulls more closely. Some of the lower jaws were missing, but all of them had their upper teeth, mostly intact — and through dental records and DNA they could be identified and matched against the Department of Defense’s list of missing in action. And then we would have names. And those names would have families...

About half the skulls had the distinctive round hole of a bullet entry wound, but one of the skulls looked like it had been crushed with a blunt instrument. The rest were free of trauma, and I assumed those men had died from... who knows? In any case, these skulls would be a powerful visual image, and very strong evidence of imprisonment and murder in Castro’s Cuba. What I — and Sara — had to do was tell the world how we’d gotten them.

Sara asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“Our cargo.”

She nodded. “It’s fitting that it’s you who are bringing the bones home, and that it’s me who’s returning the deeds to the stolen property.”

That sounded like a talking point for the press conference.

I had asked Eduardo about the rest of the remains — the skeletons — and he’d told me and Sara that the bodies had been exhumed from their common grave on the grounds of Villa Marista about a year ago, and the purpose of the exhumation was to burn the bones in order to obliterate any evidence of the American POWs. And this was done, Eduardo said, in advance of the diplomatic talks, and in anticipation of demands from the Americans — politicians, MIA groups, and veterans’ organizations — that a U.S. military body recovery and identification team be allowed to visit Villa Marista to investigate the rumors and accusations that seventeen American servicemen had been murdered there.

And how had the skulls survived the bonfire? According to what Eduardo had been told, the skulls, and especially the teeth, were difficult to burn, so they were to be pulverized before burning. And according to Eduardo, this presented an opportunity and an incentive to someone — maybe a worker or a guard or someone who opposed the regime and recognized the potential value and importance of these skulls — to smuggle them out of Villa Marista. For money. Or for truth and justice. Or both.

I saw signs for José Martí Airport, which brought back memories of my arrival when I stepped off the plane a virgin, hoping to make my fortune in Cuba. And hoping to get laid. One out of two ain’t bad.

Sara said, “Turn here.”

I turned left where a sign pointed to A-1, and we came to a ramp that took us to the eastbound lanes of the Autopista. If we drove through the night, we’d be in Cayo Guillermo at about 7 or 8 A.M. And at about 7 p.m., we’d meet our contact in the lobby bar of the Melia Hotel, then sometime in the night we’d get this cargo aboard The Maine and set sail for Key West. What could possibly go wrong?

The divided highway had four lanes in both directions and the pavement was good, though the road lighting was not — which was also good; the darker the better. There wasn’t much traffic heading away from Havana, but enough so that we didn’t look like the only vehicle on the road. But later, as we got farther into the interior, and into the early-morning hours, we might actually be the only vehicle on the highway — certainly the only ’53 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon, which, even in a country of vintage American cars, would attract almost as much attention as Sara Ortega in a tight dress walking down Calle Obispo at two in the morning.

I mentioned my concern to Sara — without the analogy — and she assured me, “According to Marcelo, the Tráficos — the highway patrol — are underfunded, and they don’t want to burn gas or put miles on their cars if they don’t have to.”

Good that Sara learned so much from Marcelo last year. But all it takes is one Tráfico waking up from his backseat siesta to cause a problem.

She reminded me, “You have a gun.”

“Right.” And I’d use it if I had to.

I pushed the wagon up to what I estimated as sixty miles an hour and it handled okay, despite its ethnically diverse body parts. Which made me think again of our cargo, and do some fact checking.

I wasn’t sure how Eduardo knew that those property deeds were hidden in a church in Havana, and not in the cave at Camagüey as Sara had told me. I could assume that Eduardo knew Sara’s father and/or grandfather, though he didn’t say that, and neither did Sara. Eduardo also didn’t tell me or Sara how the skulls from Villa Marista came into his possession, though the less we knew about that the better. Bottom line, there was a lot of dark matter that held this universe together.

In any case, those exhumed skulls were now sitting next to a trunk of exhumed documents that were to be reunited with the families who’d lost their property, and the skulls were to be reunited with the families who’d lost and loved these men in life. There was something in this for everyone. Mostly loss, unfortunately, but also maybe hope and closure.

We continued on the straight highway, and I hadn’t seen a police car yet, though I’d seen military vehicles in the oncoming lanes. The Buick dashboard had lots of old gauges and instruments, but none of them were working, so for all I knew the engine was overheating, the oil pressure was dropping, and the generator had stopped working. A mechanical problem on the road was basically a survival problem.

“You’re not saying much.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Are you angry?”

“No. I’m saving that for when we’re on the boat.”

She put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

Didn’t we have this conversation?

“Mac? You understand why I had to lie.”

“I can answer that question if you can answer the question of what you actually knew and when you actually knew it.”

“I honestly wasn’t sure that Eduardo would be here... or that we weren’t going to Camagüey. Or that either of those trunks would be waiting for us in Havana...”

I didn’t reply.

“I really thought we’d be able to fulfill my grandfather’s promise to his clients.”

Not to mention her promise to me of three million dollars. I thought back to my boat, to when she was pitching this to me. It was, as I suspected, a story too well told, but... “I can believe that Carlos and Eduardo were not completely honest with you. And we both know that you weren’t completely honest with me.”

She didn’t respond directly but said, “What we’re doing... it’s important... and sometimes the ends justify the means.”

I had a flashback to some bad days in Kandahar Province, and I advised her, “Don’t become what you’re fighting.”

She nodded.

“Are there any new surprises in Cayo Guillermo that I should know about?”

She stayed silent for a few seconds, then replied, “When you ask a question like that, you know the answer.”

“Then why would I ask?”

“The answers are all there. I told you, you’re very smart. You just need to take what you know and come to a conclusion.”

This was sounding like Cuban Zen. “Is it something that will please me more than the money?”

“No.”

So that ruled out me killing time on a nude beach in Cayo Guillermo before our 7 P.M. rendezvous at the hotel. Well, I didn’t want to ruin my surprise, so I dropped the subject.

We drove in silence, then Sara said, “I am sorry about the money.”

Not as sorry as I am. But right from the beginning the money seemed more illusion than reality; like El Dorado, the City of Gold, shimmering in the distant hills. How many men died looking for that?

I said, “I’m sure that the exiles and their families will be even sorrier to hear that their money is still in Cuba.”

“We’re going to come back for the money someday. Soon.” She asked, “Will you come with me?”

“No.”

“Think about it.”

“Okay. No.”

“Think again.”

“Maybe.”

“You have adventure in your soul.”

And rocks in my head.

Chapter 44

It was 1 A.M., and the traffic was thinning, and there were fewer signs of human habitation along the highway. The terrain was getting hilly and I noticed that the engine strained on the uphill. Was it ironic that this wagon was powered by a boat engine? Was it Karma? Or was it just Chico’s cheapest option? Well, you get what you pay for. Except in Cuba.

Sara said, “Two things have made this trip more important than money.”

“The day at the organic farm, and—?”

“Us, Mac. We found each other.”

“Right.” With some complications.

“And we are bringing home the remains of those men.”

No argument there. But like everything else in this country, there was undoubtedly a price tag on those skulls, and that made me think of a nation of people who were so desperate that they had become accomplished scammers to survive. Like Antonio. And it occurred to me that maybe those skulls weren’t those of American POWs murdered in Villa Marista prison; that some con artists had capitalized on the story and sold Eduardo and his friends a bill of goods and seventeen random skulls. There was no shortage of executed prisoners in Cuba, and no shortage of Cuban American exiles who’d believe anything that would help topple the regime. But would Eduardo be so gullible? Well, when — or if — we got those skulls out of Cuba, we’d find out, scientifically, what we’d risked our lives for.

And while I was not taking anything at face value, what about those twelve steamer trunks filled with money and hidden in a cave in Camagüey? Did they really exist? And if they did, were they still there?

This country was like an elaborate magic show, a grand illusion, a game of three-card monte, and a Hogwarts for con artists. And I thought the Afghanis were slippery.

Well, the property deeds seemed real enough.

I glanced at Sara. She was real. And she had confessed all her lies. What more could I want?

“What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking about Antonio coming to your room at midnight and seeing the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign.”

“Do you think he’ll notify the police?”

“That depends on whether or not he wants to tell them he had a date with you, and that you jilted him.”

She nodded.

“I myself would be embarrassed, and probably not tell the police that I’d been scammed. But if he’s a good police informant, he might make that call and give the police a heads-up, and by seven A.M., when we don’t show up at the pier, there’ll be no question that we’re gone.”

She thought about all that and replied, “We didn’t get much of a head start.”

“No.” And we were already on a police watch list, thanks to Antonio. And we had a few other problems with this road trip. Like if the police had already made the connection between me and Fishy Business, which would lead them straight to Cayo Guillermo. And we wouldn’t know we had that problem until we got to Cayo, and by that time... Well, as they say, you should never travel faster than your guardian angel can fly.

Another problem with this Misión Imposible was us arriving in Cayo and discovering that the fleet had been booted out of the country. And the third possible problem was Eduardo, wandering around Havana, or beginning his cross-country walk home.

Eduardo was the only person in Cuba — except for Jack and Felipe — who knew where Dan MacCormick and Sara Ortega were going, and he even knew what we were driving. And if the police picked him up, and ID’d him as Eduardo Valazquez, the notorious anti-Castro enemy of the state, they’d ask him why he was in Cuba as they were electrifying his nuts. Eduardo had assured us he would take the poison — but you never know.

And then there was Chico and Flavio, both of whom knew a little more than I wanted them to know. And I shouldn’t forget the old man with the cane. I was sure that Eduardo’s amigos in Miami and Havana had vetted all three of them, but... everyone in Cuba, as Antonio said, had a second job. And everyone sold each other out.

Sara said, “Someday, Antonio and everyone like him in Cuba will face a day of judgement.”

Actually, I would’ve liked to have been in Sara’s room at midnight to deliver my own judgement to Antonio’s nuts. But the mission comes first.

Sara was looking in her sideview mirror, and now and then she glanced over her shoulder.

I asked her, “Do the Tráficos use unmarked cars?”

“They do.” She added, “They drive mostly Toyota SUVs.”

Sara was a wealth of information. Some of it obtained from Marcelo last year. Some of it obtained from her briefing officer, the retired CIA guy. And some information had come to her from Eduardo, Carlos, and their amigos in the exile community. I wasn’t as well-informed as she was, but I noticed that if I asked, sometimes I got an answer. So I asked, “Did Eduardo know your father or grandfather?”

“He knew both.”

“Right. So one or both of them must have told Eduardo that those property deeds were hidden in a church, not in the cave.”

“I guess.”

“But you didn’t know that.”

“I... may have known. But forgot.”

“Or those deeds were in the cave, and someone has already been to the cave and cleaned it out.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that Eduardo has been playing this game long before you or I were even born.”

“This is not a game.”

“It is. But who’s calling the plays?”

“Not you.”

“Right. I’m just the running back. You’re the quarterback, and Eduardo is the coach.”

“Good analogy.” She advised me, “Don’t think about this too much.”

“Okay.” But I was thinking about who owned the team. And I concluded that the Company owned the team.

It occurred to me that cyanide is not that easy to come by. They don’t sell it in Walgreens. I thought, too, about Eduardo’s forged passport, and about his friends in American intelligence. And the more I thought about all this, the more I saw the hand of the Company in some of this mission — the CIA. I mean, any normal American boy raised on conspiracy theories sees the hand of the CIA in everything. Even my father, who blames his bad golf game on CIA mind control. I had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, and seen them at their best in Special Ops. Cuba, however, was another story. The CIA had been intimately, obsessively, and unhappily involved in Cuban affairs even before Castro took over. The careers of CIA officers had been made and broken in Cuba — mostly broken. That was a long time ago, but the pain and institutional embarrassment of those failures lingered on. I mean, the exploding cigars had become a joke, but the Bay of Pigs Invasion was a historic catastrophe.

I assumed, therefore, that the CIA wanted a win. And I suspected that the CIA was no fan of the Cuban Thaw, which would legitimize the regime and help keep the Castros and the Communists in power. And to allow the Thaw to go forward would be a betrayal of all the dissidents risking their lives in Cuba, and all the exile groups in America who still had a relationship with the CIA — people like Eduardo Valazquez and his amigos. So, yes, I could see the hand of the CIA in this mission, and if true, it never was about the money in the cave; it was always about recovering the skulls and the stolen property in the back of this Buick, and stirring up a shit storm that would send the diplomats home, or at least give them more to argue about.

And if all this was true, what was also true was that my three million dollars was just bait — and not even a real hunk of meat; just a shiny lure. Well, as Sara said, I shouldn’t think about this too much. But it explained some of the bullshit. And maybe prepared me for my surprise in Cayo.

Bottom line, though, I felt good about getting out of Havana and sitting behind the wheel of my own car with a loaded Glock in my belt. It was still a long way to Key West, but we were heading in the right direction, and I was in the driver’s seat for a change. The Havana bullshit was behind me. From here it was all balls, all the way.

Sara had retrieved a bottle of water from her backpack and we shared it. She said, “I’ve been thinking about the Yale alum group.”

“Who’s that?”

“Be serious, Mac. I hope we don’t cause them any problems.”

“That’s nice of you to think about them.” While we’re running for our lives. “Any problems they have will be caused by the Cuban government. Not us.”

“I feel that we used them.”

“We did.” I reminded her, “That was your plan.” Or maybe the CIA’s.

“They may be questioned by the police.”

“The highlight of their trip.”

“And kicked out of the country.”

“Or worse. Another week with Antonio. Unless the police beat him up.”

“Be a little sympathetic.”

“Okay, I liked Tad,” I admitted. “And Alison, and Professor Nalebuff, and some of the others, like...” Pretty Cindy Neville. I reminded Sara, “I left my Hemingway T-shirt for Richard.”

She ignored that and said, “I wonder what Tad is going to do when he discovers we’re missing.”

That was the more important issue. “Hopefully, he’ll alert the embassy, who will call the Ministry of the Interior, who will deny we are in their custody but will be put on notice that the U.S. Embassy is aware of our absence and concerned.”

She nodded.

“Unfortunately, before Tad makes that call, Antonio will have made his call to the police sometime before dawn, and the Ministry of the Interior will e-mail our airport photos to every police station, military installation, airport, and seaport in the country, including Cayo Guillermo.”

She stayed silent, then asked, “Do you think we’re going to make it?”

“We are going to give it our best shot.”

She nodded. “Do you remember what I told you in our room at the Nacional?”

“About...?”

“About us sitting on the bow of your boat, with Jack and Felipe in the cabin, looking at the horizon as Key West comes into view.”

“Right.”

“And I said that our mission is blessed. And that just as you returned home from Afghanistan, you will return home from Cuba.”

“I remember that.”

“You need to believe that. That is what got you home from the war.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “When you are blessed, and when your cause is just, God is with you, and you are strong.”

I nodded. And I recalled something handwritten on a piece of paper that had made the rounds among the troops: Fate whispered to the warrior, “You cannot withstand the coming storm.” And the warrior whispered back, “I am the storm.”

“We’re going home. Jack and Felipe are going home. And the warriors are going home.”

Chapter 45

It was about 2:30 A.M., and we were almost three hours out of Havana. I hadn’t seen another vehicle for awhile, and I was feeling conspicuous by their absence.

On another issue, if I was getting about fifteen miles to the gallon, we had, theoretically, enough fuel to drive a few more hours. But that was based on two assumptions: that Chico had topped off the tank, and that he hadn’t swapped the standard twenty- or twenty-five-gallon tank for something smaller.

Also, without a working speedometer or odometer, the math had too many unknowns. But based on my estimated speed of 60 mph, and three hours on the road, I figured we were about one hundred and eighty miles out of Havana — about three hundred kilometers. It was about another three hundred kilometers to Cayo Guillermo, though a lot of that was on secondary roads, and that could take over four hours.

But my main concern at the moment was hearing the engine sputter. Then having a Tráfico stop to see what our problem was.

The interior lights didn’t work, so Sara was reading the road map by the light of her otherwise useless cell phone. “We should be approaching Santa Clara — a fairly big town.”

“Will they have all-night gas stations?”

“Yes. But... us pulling into a gas station at three in the morning might not be a good idea.”

“Right. But I’m not sure of our fuel situation.”

She thought about that and said, “I think we need to get off the road and continue at dawn when we won’t be the only car on the highway.”

We probably had more gas than I thought, but the real issue now was a police car pulling up behind us. “Okay.”

The signage on the Autopista was either nonexistent or unlit, but we looked for the Santa Clara exit.

Meanwhile, Mama Inés’ ropa vieja was just a distant memory and my stomach was growling. “Did you pack anything to eat?”

“I have some chocolate from the minibar that I might share with you.”

“I’ll give you a hundred thousand pesos.”

She retrieved a Kit Kat from her backpack and we split it. I wondered who was going to pick up our minibar charges at the Parque Central. Well, they had our luggage and all our clothes. My suitcase alone was worth at least fifty dollars.

We drove on, and we were definitely pushing our luck regarding police cars. I would have gotten off the road anywhere, but there were deep drainage ditches along the shoulders and we were basically stuck on the limited-access highway until the next exit.

Meanwhile, I was listening for the sputter of the engine, and looking for headlights in my rearview mirror.

And sure enough, I saw headlights cresting the hill behind us. Sara also saw them in her sideview mirror, but didn’t say anything.

The 90-horse engine didn’t have much more in it, so I maintained my speed, and the headlights got closer. Sara had said the Tráficos used mostly Toyota SUVs, and some of them were unmarked, but I couldn’t make out what was behind us.

She was staring at her sideview mirror. “I can’t tell.”

The vehicle got closer and it was in the right-hand lane, about fifty feet behind me, and now I could see that it was a small SUV. I tried to see if there was anyone riding with the driver, but his headlights were glaring and I couldn’t see through his windshield. “How many cops ride in a car?”

“Usually two. But sometimes one.”

I could take out one guy easily enough, but a second guy could be a problem.

The vehicle was less than thirty feet behind us now. He had three other lanes to use but he wasn’t using them.

I didn’t know who this was, but what I knew for sure was that if it was a cop, he was going to pull us over. And he didn’t need any reason other than to see who was driving the American car at three in the morning.

Sara said, optimistically, “If it’s a police car and he pulls us over, I’ll speak to him and offer to pay a fine for speeding. That usually does it.”

Actually, I would speak to him. A Glock 9mm speaks every language.

“Mac?”

“What if he asks to see what’s in the rear?”

She didn’t reply.

I had no idea if Antonio had alerted the police that Sara was missing, or if he was sitting in the lobby bar of the Parque Central at 2:30 A.M., waiting for his date, torn between his duty and his dick. Hopefully his dick said be patient. But there were a lot of other things that could have gone wrong in Havana — like Chico or Flavio selling us out, or Eduardo singing in the hot seat — and if the police were looking for two Americanos in a Buick wagon, these guys behind us could be waiting for other police cars to arrive, or there could be a roadblock ahead. So I needed to deal with this now. “I assume they have radios.”

“Yes... but they’re not always reliable... They rely on their cell phones.”

The headlights were even closer now and I knew I had to force the situation, so I slowed down and veered toward the shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m seeing what he does.”

“Mac...”

I came to a stop on the shoulder, drew my Glock, and cranked down my window. “Get down.” But she sat there.

The headlights were less than twenty feet away, and the vehicle was slowing to a stop on the deserted highway.

My instincts said that the police in Cuba were not used to approaching a car driven by armed desperados, and they probably sauntered over to you with a shitty attitude and their gun in the holster. If so, I should be able to take care of this. But if they were looking specifically for us, they’d have guns in hand.

The vehicle came to a stop on the highway, and its hazard lights began flashing. I looked over my shoulder and saw that it was definitely an SUV, but its headlights were glaring and I couldn’t see if it had police markings, or how many people were in the vehicle. And no one was getting out. Was he waiting for reinforcements?

Sara said in almost a whisper, “You’re supposed to get out of your car and go over to them.”

That would actually make it easier. I stuck the Glock under my shirt and was about to exit the wagon when the SUV suddenly pulled abreast of us, and I drew the Glock as its passenger window rolled down.

Before I had to make the decision to fire first and answer questions later, a middle-aged lady with a British accent asked, “Are you all right?”

I took a deep breath. “We’re fine. How about you?”

“Oh... Are you American?”

“Canadians, actually.” I glanced at Sara, who was sitting with her eyes closed, breathing hard.

There was a man in the driver’s seat and he leaned past the lady and said, “We’re trying to get to Santa Clara. No bloody road signs. I think we missed it.”

“It’s up ahead.”

Sara leaned over. “It can’t be more than five or ten kilometers.”

“Thank you.” He asked, “Are you having trouble?”

“Just stopped for a wee pee,” I replied.

“Oh... All right, then. Carry on.”

The lady said, “I love your car.”

And off they went, to discover Cuba for themselves.

Sara opened the door and I asked, “Where are you going?”

“For a wee pee.”

“I think I’ll join you.”

We finished our business and got back on the road. I could see the taillights of the British couple up ahead and I closed the distance.

Sara said, “That was the most frightening five minutes of my life.”

I wished I could say the same. “You were very cool,” I assured her.

She stayed silent, then asked, “If they were police, what would you have done?”

“Killed them.”

She had no reply.

I kept a few hundred yards behind our fellow tourists, and I saw now that the terrain was getting more hilly and the countryside was very dark.

Sara took Eduardo’s cigar from her pocket, lit it with Jack’s Zippo, then took a long drag and passed it to me.

We shared the cigar as we drove in silence. She said, “We might not be so lucky next time.”

“Let’s avoid a next time.”

Sara was looking at the map. “The exit should be coming up.”

In fact, I could see the brake lights of our British friends, then their right-hand turn signal.

I closed the gap and followed them onto the exit, which was marked but unlit. At the end of the exit ramp was a T-intersection, but no sign. The Brits turned left.

Sara looked up from her map. “Santa Clara is to the left. The middle of nowhere is to the right.”

I ditched the cigar and turned right onto a dark, narrow road and drove slowly down a hill. There was a small lake to my left, but if there were any houses along this road, they weren’t lit or visible, and there wasn’t a single light in the distance.

Sara said, “The area around Santa Clara was once known for its tobacco. I think most of the farms are abandoned, so maybe we can find an empty house or barn.”

“Right.”

My head beams illuminated the potholed road, but the glare reduced my night vision, so I turned off the headlights, and the moonlight now revealed bare fields, surrounded by low hills.

Sara checked her map. “Nothing on this road until a place called Osvaldo Herrera, about ten kilometers.”

“Okay.” I continued slowly with my headlights off, looking for cover and concealment, just like in my Humvee in Allfuckedupistan.

We went another few hundred yards, and over the next rise Sara spotted a large building up ahead.

As we got closer, we could see that it was a wooden barn-like structure with a partially collapsed roof. There was a dirt path leading to it and I turned onto the path and drove into the building through a doorless opening. I shut off the engine and the night became very quiet.

Sara got out, leaving her door open, and I did the same and looked around. I could see the sky through the holes in the roof, but I couldn’t see any window openings. I smelled the faint odor of tobacco, and Sara said, “This was a tobacco-drying shed.”

“Wasn’t there a tobacco farm on the Yale itinerary for today?”

“Yes.”

Coincidence? Or a great cosmic joke? “Check it off.”

As Sara inspected our accommodations, I went outside and reconned the surrounding terrain. I still couldn’t see a single light in the distance, and I was fairly sure that no one had seen us drive in, and that no one would be calling the police tonight. There might, however, be some activity here in the morning, so we had to get back on the highway at the crack of dawn.

I came around to the open doorway and noticed my tire marks on the dirt path, so I looked for some fallen vegetation to cover my tracks. There wasn’t much around, but the moon would set soon, and darkness was the best concealment.

Sara came out of the barn and asked in a whisper, “What are you doing?”

“Earning my pay.”

“Come inside.” She took my arm and led me back into the barn.

It was past 3 A.M., so we had less than four hours until dawn, then we could get back on the road.

Sara said, “Let’s get some sleep. You want the front seat or back?”

Obviously she had never camped out in a combat zone. “I’ll stand watch for the next two hours, then wake you to relieve me, and give you the gun. You’ll wake me at first light, and we’ll leave here as soon as we don’t need to use our headlights.”

She stayed quiet a moment, then said, “All right.” She asked, “Can I have a kiss?”

I don’t normally kiss the guards that I post, but I made an exception and we kissed good-night. She climbed into the rear seat of the Buick Roadmaster and shut the door without making a noise.

The barn door was missing, so I sat on the dirt floor with my back resting against the Buick’s rear bumper, and drew my Glock, facing the open doorway.

Well, it had already been a long day and a longer night and I should be tired, and I probably was, but I was fully alert. I remember this feeling in Cantstandthishit Province.

The moon was setting and the sky was dark, and there was no breeze. Tree frogs croaked nearby and a night bird sang in the distance.

I stared out the open doorway into the darkness, watching for a movement, listening for the sound of a motor or a footstep, or the sound of too much silence.

It’s always good to visualize the path home, so I did. If we could get through this night and get to Cayo Guillermo in the morning without getting stopped by the police, we were a boat ride from home.

An hour passed, then another, and a false dawn lit up the eastern sky, then sunlight peeked over a distant hill and spread over the empty fields.

Sara came out of the wagon. “I thought you were going to wake me.”

“I wanted to see this sunrise.”

She nodded. “Our next sunrise will be on the water. We’ll see it together.”

“We will.” I stood. “Time to go.”

Chapter 46

We found a servicentro on the outskirts of Santa Clara. You don’t pump your own in Cuba, so an attendant filled us up with petróleo especial at about six bucks a gallon, which is pricey if you make twenty dollars a month.

Sara got out of the wagon and spoke with the young attendant as he pumped, and he seemed more interested in her than the vintage Buick or me sitting behind the wheel with my face in the road map. More importantly, the guy seemed at ease, joking and laughing, and not looking at us like he’d seen our photographs somewhere.

Sara paid with pesos and got back in the wagon. The pump showed we took fifty-eight liters, about fifteen gallons, and even though I didn’t know how many gallons the tank held, I was sure we could make it to Cayo Guillermo on this tank.

I pulled away and Sara said, “I told him I was from Baracoa. That’s on the remote eastern tip of the island, where the accents are very different.”

I didn’t think she could pass as a native, especially with her Teva hiking boots, but the young man seemed like he’d believe anything she said as he was pushing his nozzle into her tank and pumping her up with petróleo especial while thinking of something else.

She said, “I told him you were my older brother.”

“Thanks.”

“And we were taking the American car to Havana to sell it.”

“Good thinking.” Bullshit must come naturally here.

We found the entrance to the eastbound lanes of the Autopista, and within a few minutes we were cruising along at an estimated sixty miles an hour.

There was some early-morning traffic going in both directions, mostly trucks and vans, and though there were no vintage American cars on the highway, no one was gawking at us.

I noticed a group of people on the side of the highway, waving at us, and I said to Sara, “Friendly people here.”

“They’re hitchhikers, Mac. They’re waving pesos at us.”

“I see an opportunity to pay for our gas.”

“Public transportation is a catastrophe. The people are so desperate that they rely on hitching a ride in anything that moves, and the government has set up botellas — hitching spots — where government workers are assigned to decide who gets to ride in any vehicles that stop.” She added, “Life is very hard here.”

Actually, it sucked.

We continued on the Autopista. The sky was clear, as it had been every day since we’d landed in Havana, but on the far horizon I saw black clouds gathering.

I said, “I hope they’ve had good weather for the tournament.”

“Do you enjoy fishing?”

“I don’t fish. My customers fish.”

“But do you enjoy what you do?”

If I did, I wouldn’t be on the Autopista. “I like being on the water.”

“My condo overlooks the water.”

“So does my boat.”

“Tonight we go for a midnight cruise on The Maine.”

“Looking forward to that.”

We were making good time, but there was no hurry. We had time to kill. I thought about Jack and Felipe and the three fishermen who should be out on the water now, competing with the nine other boats. This was day four of the Pescando Por la Paz, but today was the last day for Fishy Business, one way or the other. Jack and Felipe had been waiting for us, but they didn’t know when — or if — we’d show up. I wondered if Jack was worried about me — or worried about his money. Well, I had two surprises for him; I made it, and the money didn’t. Actually we didn’t even know if the fleet was still there. I said, “Turn on the radio. Maybe we can hear something about the tournament.”

She turned on the vacuum tube radio and static filled the car. She figured out that the chrome dial tuned in the stations and she played with it for awhile, but all I heard was Cuban music, and a few excited people who Sara said were shit eaters spouting propaganda.

About twenty miles out of Santa Clara, we hit a bump and the radio went dead and Sara shut it off. “We’ll try again later.”

“No news is good news.”

“Here’s some bad news. I see a police car in my sideview mirror.”

I looked in my rearview and saw the green-and-white Toyota SUV about a hundred yards behind us in the inside lane of the highway, which was now down to three lanes. I was in the middle lane, behind a big truck, and I moved into the outside lane, pushed the pedal to the metal, and slowly came abreast of the truck, blocking the Tráfico’s view of me. I stayed next to the truck and saw the police car move ahead at a high speed in the inside lane. I dropped back and put the Buick behind the truck again.

Well, this was going to be a cat-and-mouse game for the next three or four hours. We actually had no reason to believe that the police were looking for a 1953 Buick Roadmaster wagon, but by now — 8 A.M. — we had lots of reasons to believe they were looking for Sara Ortega and Daniel MacCormick, who had gone missing from the Parque Central. So I shouldn’t play too much cat-and-mouse with my driving and draw attention to ourselves.

We were definitely in the hills now, and the 90-horsepower was straining on the upgrades. Sara looked at her map. “The next big town is Sancti Spíritus, another half hour or so, then about thirty kilometers farther, the Autopista ends.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“The regime ran out of money when the Soviets pulled out. But we have a few options to get us farther east, then north to the causeway that will take us to Cayo Coco and Cayo Guillermo.” She looked at the map. “There’s the old highway, called the Carretera Central, that continues east into Camagüey Province.”

“We’ll remember that for next time.”

“Or this time.”

I glanced at her and saw she had a piece of paper in her hand that she put in my lap. I looked at it and saw it was in fact our treasure map. Copy number three, which she forgot to tell me or Eduardo about.

“That’s yours,” she said. “For next time — or this time.”

I didn’t reply.

“It’s your call.”

“We don’t have our contact info for Camagüey.”

“We don’t need that. We have the map.”

“We need a truck.”

“Steal one.”

Well, the lady had balls. Or lots of bluff. “We don’t know if the money is still in the cave.”

“We’ll find out when we get there.”

“I guess the question is, do we take the risk?”

“We’re already in a high-risk situation, Mac. You may have noticed.”

“I did. But now I’m thinking about not putting our cargo at further risk.”

“I’ll let you answer that question.”

“All right... well, life’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

She didn’t reply.

I drove on, thinking about my three million dollars, which had suddenly reappeared. If we could get to Camagüey Province without getting caught, we could steal a truck, ditch this Buick, find the cave, and drive to Cayo Guillermo with twelve steamer trunks stuffed with cash, then meet our contact tomorrow night, if in fact he or she was at the Melia Hotel every night at 7, as instructed. This could be doable. “How far is it to Camagüey Province?”

She glanced at the map. “About a hundred fifty kilometers to the border of the province. Then... we follow your map to the cave.”

“Okay...” So, putting aside the logistics and the suicidal nature of this detour, I had to consider the cargo we already had, and also wonder if Sara was bluffing or serious. Was she trying to make amends for the aborted mission? “I’ll think about it.”

“We’ll be in a city called Ciego de Ávila in about an hour. That’s where we need to head north toward the Cayo Coco causeway. Or continue east toward Camagüey.”

So, causeway or Camagüey? The first option was easier and safer, but my monetary reward would be much smaller. The second option, if it worked, would be a clean sweep — the contents of the cave, plus what I already had in the back of the wagon, and whatever else I could squeeze out of Carlos in Miami. I said, “Eduardo voted no on this. How do you vote?”

“This is your decision, Mac. And if you decide to go for it, I’m with you. And if you decide not to, I don’t want to hear about the three million dollars — ever.”

Comprende? Well, I give her credit for clarity and balls.

“Whatever you decide, the map is yours. I trust you to let me know if you plan a future trip to Cuba.”

“You know I wouldn’t—”

“I said I trust you.”

“Thank you. I’ll make a decision before we get to Diego Devilla.”

“Ciego de Ávila.”

“Whichever comes first.”

We continued on through the highlands of Santa Clara, which were starkly beautiful and which in no way resembled the mountains of Afghanistan, except for their quiet, brooding presence above the dangerous road.

We drove in silence and passed the exit for Sancti Spíritus. About ten minutes later the highway went to two lanes and Sara said, “The Autopista will end in a few kilometers. We need to get on the CC — the Carretera Central — and continue east to Ciego de Ávila.”

“Okay.”

The Autopista petered out and I followed the traffic to the CC, a badly paved road heading east, and joined a line of trucks and buses in the two slow-moving lanes. Hitchhikers lined the road, calling out to the passing vehicles, and a few of them looked like backpackers from somewhere else: blonde hair, young, fearless and clueless, on a great adventure. God bless them. And I hope they never see what I saw when I was their age.

Sara said, “About thirty minutes to Ciego de Ávila.”

I glanced at her and asked, “If we go to Camagüey, what’s in it for you?”

“Two things. The first is to make good on my grandfather’s promise to his clients. The second is to make good on my promise to you.”

That sounded very nice. But that wouldn’t incentivize me to risk my life. “Tell you what — if we go to the cave and find the money, I’ll split my share with you.”

“Thank you. But I’m not doing this for money.”

“Never turn down money you’ve earned.”

“I’m also giving you this choice so I don’t have to hear you complaining about losing three million dollars.”

“That sounds like put up or shut up.”

“Take your pick.”

“Thanks.”

The CC was moving at about forty miles an hour, and I shared the road with lumbering trucks and farm vehicles that were in no hurry. I spotted an old Ford sedan in the oncoming lane, which made me feel less like the only hot dog in a bowl of chili.

Sara glanced at her map. “There’s a ring road around Ciego de Ávila. When we get on it, we can continue to Camagüey, or take the Carretera Norte to the coast.”

I didn’t reply, and we drove on in silence.

We came to the circular road and the moment of truth. The first exit road headed south, then we came to the exit road that continued east to Camagüey. I slowed down and glanced at her, but she had her head back and her eyes closed.

The road to Camagüey beckoned, like the road to El Dorado, and I hesitated, then waved good-bye to my three million dollars and turned onto the Carretera Norte, toward the sea.

I drove for a few minutes, then said, “I’ll buy you a drink at the Melia Hotel.”

She kept her eyes closed, but nodded.

Well... I would have risked it if it was only me. But I wasn’t going to risk Sara’s life, or risk losing the remains of the forgotten dead who had been waiting too long to go home to their families and their nation. Jack would agree. You never leave a body behind.

There wasn’t as much traffic on the Carretera Norte, and the road was mostly downhill, and the highlands were flattening out as we headed to the coast. “How far?”

She opened her eyes and looked at the map. “About thirty kilometers to a town called Morón, then fifteen kilometers on a road that leads to the Cayo Coco causeway.” She added, “The causeway looks about fifteen kilometers long.”

So, to do the math, it was about sixty kilometers to Cayo Coco. Maybe another hour at this speed. I checked my watch. It was just past 11. We should be in Cayo Guillermo at about 12:30. I said, “I think we’re going to make it.”

“There was never any doubt in my mind.”

“Me neither.”

“Do you have any regrets?”

“About what?”

“The money.”

“What money?”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll come back someday.”

“Give me a call. Or stop by the Green Parrot.”

She didn’t reply.

I took the treasure map off my lap and handed it to her. “Burn this.”

“It’s yours.”

“Then I say burn it.”

She looked at the map. “A great hike through the Camagüey Mountains.” She fired up Jack’s Zippo, touched the flame to the map, and let it fly out the window.

I took my cigar out of my pocket and handed it to her. “We’re in the home stretch.”

We shared our last cigar as we headed for Cayo Guillermo and our rendezvous with Jack, Felipe, Fishy Business, and fate. I wondered when I’d get my surprise.

Chapter 47

We drove through the picturesque town of Morón and took a two-lane road that skirted a lake and cut through an expanse of lush and pristine marshland. A flock of pink flamingos settled into the water, fishing for lunch.

There didn’t seem to be anyone else on this road. “Where is everyone?”

Sara took her eyes off the flamingos and replied, “Most people arrive at the resort islands by boat or plane. There are actually direct commercial flights to the airport on Cayo Coco from Toronto and London, and charter flights from all over Europe.”

“What’s the draw?”

“It’s warm and it’s cheap.”

“Right.” The Europeans would go to hell if they could get a cheap charter package.

She continued, “Also, as you know, this is some of the greatest sports fishing in the world.” She smiled. “In fact, I think there’s a fishing tournament going on right now.”

“I hope so.”

“They’re still here, Mac.” She added, “Someday, maybe soon, Americans will be coming here in droves to fish.”

Not if Eduardo and Carlos and their amigos had anything to say about it. But maybe — now that I needed to work for a living again — I could run charters to Cayo Guillermo from Key West. Two nations, one vacation. All I needed was my boat and a new identity.

The road continued through the wetlands, and up ahead I could see blue water, which Sara said was the Bahía de Perros — the Bay of Dogs — and a spit of land jutting out to the horizon.

She said, “That’s the causeway.”

We continued through the wetlands, which were now giving way to the deeper waters of the bay ahead.

She assured me, “Once we’re over the causeway, we won’t attract any attention.”

“What do we do for the next six hours?”

“Whatever we do, we need to stay close to our cargo.”

“I could use a wash. Are there any nude beaches?”

“What did it say in your guide book that you were supposed to read?”

“I didn’t get that far because I didn’t think we’d get this far.”

“Well, let me brief you. First, there’s not much of a Cuban population on the islands except for day workers at the resorts, so there are no neighborhood watch groups. That doesn’t mean there are no chivatos among the hotel and restaurant workers, but almost all the foreigners on the islands are Europeans, Canadians, and Brits, whom the regime does not associate with suspicious activity.”

I didn’t think any of that was in the guide book. That came from someplace else. I suggested, “Let’s be Canadians again.” I got laid last time.

“There is a police presence on the islands, but I’m told it’s light and soft.”

“That’s a nice change. But, as per what I did read in my guide book, Cayo Guillermo is an entry port, so there’ll be port security and patrol boats.” I added, “Getting in by car is easy. Getting out by boat, maybe not so.”

“We’ll find out tonight.”

“And we’ll find out very soon if the fleet is still here or back in Key West.”

“They’re here,” she said.

“If not, is there a Plan B?”

“We’ll find out when we meet our contact.”

“What if he or she doesn’t show up?”

“He’ll be there, and the fleet will be there.”

“We’ll see. And last but not least, there’s the possibility that the police have connected me to Fishy Business, and are waiting for us in Cayo Guillermo.”

“No, they’ll be waiting for us at the toll booth on the causeway where we have to show our passports.”

“No one mentioned toll booths or passports.”

“It was in the guide book that Carlos gave you.”

“Is there a way around the toll booth?”

“No. But there’s a way around showing our passports.”

“Do I need my wallet or do I need my gun?”

“Neither.” She pulled two blue passports out of her pocket and handed one to me.

I glanced at it and saw it was a Canadian passport, which was a lot more authentic-looking than my Conch Republic passport. I thumbed open the cover and looked at the photo, which was the same as my real passport photo. But my name was now Jonathan Richard Mills. The passport was issued in Toronto. I didn’t even remember being there. “Where did you get this?”

“Amigos.”

“Right.” I looked at the passport pages and saw a few exit and entry stamps. I didn’t know I’d been to London’s Heathrow Airport.

She said, “These passports will withstand visual scrutiny at the toll booth, but not a passport scanner at an airport.”

I reminded her, “We’re sailing home.” I also reminded her, “Our airport photos are probably being circulated, and mine looks a lot like this one.”

“Hopefully, the Ministry of the Interior forgot the Cayo Coco causeway toll booth. And if not, just smile at the toll collector and say buenos días as he’s glancing at your Canadian passport and taking your two CUCs.”

“Okay.” I looked at the solitary toll booth that was placed in the middle of the road so that the toll taker could collect from the drivers in either direction. “Do they have SunPass here?”

“Give him a sunny smile.”

“Right.” I asked, “What’s your name?”

She handed me her Canadian passport. “Anna Teresa Mills. We’re married.”

“When did that happen?”

“That explains my Latina appearance if someone is thinking about the face matching the name.”

“Right.” And obviously someone back in the U.S. thought about it. “Do you speak Spanish?”

“Un poco.”

“Is this going to work?”

“Mac, if you can’t get past a toll booth, we should turn around.”

I didn’t know architects could be so cool and calm. But then I remembered she’d been briefed — or trained — by a retired CIA guy... or maybe not retired.

As we approached the toll booth, a pickup truck pulled in front of me from a side road, and in the bed of the truck were about a dozen men and women, joking and smoking.

Sara said, “Day workers.”

I felt like I was home.

The toll booth guy waved the truck through, but I knew we had to stop.

Sara said, “Don’t offer the passports. Let him ask.”

I pulled up to the booth, smiled, and said to the uniformed toll taker, “Buenos días,” as I handed the guy two CUCs.

“Buenos días, señor... y señorita.” He hesitated, then said, “Pasaporte, por favor.”

I gave him the two passports, which he flipped through, then glanced at me, then bent his head to get a look at Anna Teresa, who was leaning toward the window, smiling at him.

He said something in Spanish and handed me the passports. Adios.

I proceeded onto the causeway. “I’m glad he didn’t ask to see what was in the back.”

“This is not a border crossing.” She added, “I was told this was easy.”

I didn’t ask who told her that, but I said, “Well, we can beat the toll when we leave here.”

The two causeway lanes weren’t much wider than a single lane, and there were no guardrails on the road, which was built on piles of rock. A truck came toward me, and we both had to squeeze to the side, and I thought one of us was going to wind up in the Bay of Dogs. An accident would not be good. “How long is this?”

“I told you. Fifteen kilometers.” She suggested, “Enjoy it.”

I kept my speed down and continued on the causeway, which reminded me of the Overseas Highway where I’d begun this vacation. Gulls and pelicans swept back and forth over the road, and the bay was alive with waterfowl.

Sara said, “I’d like to come back here someday.”

I’d like to get out of here tonight.

The causeway continued in an almost straight line across the bay and I could now see the shoreline of Cayo Coco in the distance.

I thought back to the uniformed toll booth collector, which made me think back to the uniformed passport guy at José Martí Airport — the guy who called ahead and had Sara stopped. I said, “The police could be waiting for us on the other end.”

“There’s not much we can do about it now.”

“Right.” U-turns were not an option.

I could see a jetliner making its slow approach into the island airport, and as it got lower I saw the Air Canada maple leaf logo on its tail. And this brought home the fact that for the rest of the world, Cuba was just a holiday destination. For us, it was a legacy of the Cold War, a place where Americans were loved or hated, depending on who you ran into.

As we got closer to the end of the causeway, I could see what looked like mangrove swamps along the shore. The causeway curved left and I had a clear view of the road that went inland. I looked for police activity on the road, but it appeared to be clear. “I think we’re okay.”

Sara, who had seemed cool as a frozen daiquiri, now took a deep breath. Then, out of the clear blue Cuban sky she asked me, “What did you mean when you said, ‘Give me a call, or stop by the Green Parrot’?”

Well, I guess what I meant was that we were going our separate ways. Freudian slip?

“Mac?”

“Just a dumb joke.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

“Right.” Had she been brooding this whole time? I mean, we had more immediate problems.

She said, “If we get out of here alive—”

Like that problem.

“—we’ll have a bond that can never be broken.”

Did her boyfriend have a gun?

“Do you believe that?”

“I do.” I let her know, “The bonds I formed in combat will be with me all my life.” Though I wasn’t having sex with those guys.

“Do you love me?”

“I do.”

“That’s what I needed to know... in case we get... separated.”

“And you?”

“You don’t have to ask.”

We held hands as we drove off the causeway onto Cayo Coco and continued on a narrow tree-shaded road.

“Turn left for Cayo Guillermo.”

Next stop, Key West, Florida, U.S.A.

Chapter 48

Cayo Coco, the largest of the islands in the archipelago, seemed to be in the midst of a construction boom, with hotels and cottages rising along the white beaches. This was a different Cuba, and I wondered if all this foreign investment was in anticipation of the arrival of the Americans. If so, the investors might have a longer wait than they thought.

Sara was looking at a map in her Cuba guide book. “Stay on this road for the Cayo Guillermo causeway.”

“Okay.” I spotted a few vintage American cars, which I assumed were taxis, and in fact, an older couple tried to wave me down. I waved back. “Dave Katz should come here.”

“Who’s that?”

“A taxi driver in Key West.”

“We should come back here. On your boat.”

Did she mean the same boat that we were going to use to escape from Cuba? “I think we’ll be unwelcome here after our Miami press conference.”

She didn’t reply.

I drove onto the Cayo Guillermo causeway, which was lined with anglers, and I saw that one guy had caught a red snapper. “You like sushi?”

“Don’t talk about food.”

The sand banks and shallows along the causeway were pink with hundreds of swaying flamingos, and Sara said, “This is breathtaking.”

“It is.”

The short causeway ended and we were now in Cayo Guillermo — not the end of our journey, but maybe the beginning of the end. And that depended on the Pescando Por la Paz fleet still being here. And we’d know that in about ten minutes.

Sara said, “We made it.”

Indeed we did. “Where’s the marina?”

She glanced at her guide book. “Take a right.”

Cayo Guillermo wasn’t as developed as Cayo Coco, and there was almost no traffic on the narrow road, except for bicycles and Coco cabs. I saw a sign ahead that said: MARINA MARLIN, and I turned into a gravel parking area and stopped.

The marina was a collection of decent-looking buildings along the shoreline, including a big open shed where the fishermen brought their catch to be weighed and photographed while they told fish stories and had a brew. I noticed, off to the left, a shabbier structure flying the Cuban flag, and I assumed this was the government Port of Entry building. In fact, there were four olive drab military-type vehicles in front of the building, and I saw a wooden sign that said: GUARDA FRONTERA. And under that, it said, MINISTERO DEL INTERIOR — same as Villa Marista prison. These assholes were everywhere.

As I watched the building, a guy in an olive green uniform came out, got into one of the vehicles, and began driving toward us. I drove the wagon toward the main marina building, but I saw the guy give us a glance as he passed by.

Some of the docks were visible behind the marina and there weren’t many boats tied. I looked at my watch. It was a little after 1 P.M., and the fleet should still be out. Unless it was in Florida. “I’ll go see what I can find out. You stay with the cargo.”

She said something to me in Spanish that I didn’t understand, but I got her point. “Adios, and good luck.”

She got out of the wagon, walked to the main marina building, and went inside.

Well, this was another one of those moments on which hung the fate of this mission and our own fate. If the fleet had been ordered out of Cuba, we’d be joining the balseros on a raft tonight.

I saw a boat anchored about a hundred yards from the marina — a 100-footer, painted gray, and though I couldn’t see the markings, I saw a Cuban flag flying from its stern, and on its rear deck was a gun turret. That was not a fishing boat.

It occurred to me, again, that too much of this mission relied too heavily on a series of events over which we had little or no control. I would have liked a plan that didn’t depend so much on vaya con Dios.

Another military guy came out of the government building, looked at the American station wagon, then got into his vehicle and drove off. Must be lunch time. And here we were parked right next to a Guarda Frontera and customs and immigration facility whose employees made a living asking for your passport. Pasaporte, señor? What was my name again?

Sara came out of the marina and I couldn’t tell from her face if she had good news or if we were swimming home.

She got into the wagon and said, “Good news. Fishy Business is now in third place.”

I never thought third place would be good news. “They’d catch up if they had a few more days. Okay, where to?”

“Melia Hotel. Down the road a few hundred yards.”

I pulled out of the parking area and turned right on the sand-swept road.

The first hotel we came to was the Grand Carib, then a place called the Iberostar Daiquiri, which reminded me that I needed a drink.

“Turn here.”

I pulled into the long palm-lined driveway of the Melia Hotel, a complex of pink stucco buildings with lush landscaping. This was where the three fishermen were staying while Jack and Felipe lived on the boat, and it was where Sara and I would meet our Cayo Guillermo contact tonight at 7. If he — or she — showed.

Sara, confirming what she’d been told about the Melia, said, “For a nice tip, we can park here tonight in the circular driveway and keep an eye on the wagon from those windows, which are the lobby bar.”

Well, when I pictured this scene after my cemetery briefing, I saw me sitting here in a truck with sixty million dollars in the back. I suppose I should be grateful I got this far. But would I have accepted this job if I knew the sixty million was optional? No. But I might have if they’d told me about the Villa Marista bones.

“Mac? Let’s go.”

“Okay... but now that we’re Canadians, we can get a room here right now and take turns showering and getting some sleep while one of us hangs out in the bar.” Though I didn’t know how we were going to have sex with that plan. “We’ll pay cash.”

“Sounds tempting, but we also need to show visas, and show our means of arrival and departure.”

“Okay, then let’s just go to the bar.”

“We’re not supposed to be here until seven and we’ll follow the plan.” She added, “I have a place we can go. Take a right on the road.”

Sara had obviously been instructed on what to do here and what not to do. All I knew — from Sara in the cemetery — was Melia Hotel lobby bar, 7 P.M. And I guess that was all I needed to know until I needed to know more.

I pulled out of the Melia Hotel and turned right on the beach road. We passed a hotel called the Sol Club, which seemed to be the last hotel on the road. Ahead was an expanse of low tropical growth, punctuated by palm trees, and to our right was the white sand beach and the Atlantic Ocean, where I’d be tonight if everything went according to the plan we’d hear at 7.

We came to the end of the road and a wooden sign that said: PLAYA PILAR. Sara said, “Named after Hemingway’s boat.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“He named his boat for his heroine in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Would you name a boat for me?”

“Of course.” If I had a boat. Anna?

I pulled into the sandy parking area, which was hidden from the road by high bushes, and stopped under a palm tree. There were a few other cars in the parking area, and closer to the water was a long blue building with a thatched roof that looked like a beach bar and restaurant.

Sara said, “We can kill some time here and still keep an eye on the wagon from the back deck.”

Obviously someone had done a recon, which encouraged me to believe that someone knew what they were doing.

We got out of the wagon and retrieved our backpacks from the rear seat. I pulled the Glock out of my belt and shoved it in my pack.

We walked into the restaurant, called Ranchón Playa Pilar, and through a beach bar called Hemingway, which was no surprise. We went out back to a raised wooden deck where a few people sat at plastic tables, mostly couples in their thirties, and others ranging in age from old to young, and in color from pale to lobster red. I could smell french fries.

There was no waitstaff around, so we seated ourselves at a table with a good view of the beach and the Roadmaster. At the other end of the wooden deck was a couple with three children, and the kids were running around, being obnoxious.

Sara said, “I’d like to have children.”

“I’ll have the fries.”

I looked out at the water, which was partially blocked by high sand dunes. There were wooden walkways going out to the beach, and someone had built a lookout tower where I saw people with binoculars and cameras. This was a nice piece of the world.

So we sat there, smelling the fries and salt air, and listening to the surf and the hyperactive children. We could have been anywhere on holiday in the Caribbean or South Florida. But we weren’t. We were, in fact, in Cuba, where, as Sara once said, the police state is not always apparent.

I noticed that the dozen or so customers were dressed in casual beach attire, including bare feet, whereas Sara and I were dressed more like hikers, complete with boots. Also, I was fairly sure I was the only person on the deck with a gun in my backpack. Fitting into your environment is more a matter of state of mind than of attire, and trying to be inconspicuous draws attention.

A young waitress wearing black pants and a pink T-shirt came over to our table and wished us buenos días as she checked us out, maybe trying to determine our national origin. I’m Canadian.

Sara returned the greeting in Spanish, then said in English, “We’d like to see a lunch menu, por favor.”

“Sí, señora.”

I thought Sara was señorita. This trip must have aged her.

“Meanwhile,” I said, “I’ll have a beer. Do you have Corona?”

“Sí.”

There is a God. I asked Sara, “Have you thought about what you would like, Anna?”

“Well, Jonathan, I’d like a daiquiri.”

“Just like in Toronto.” I said to the waitress, “A daiquiri for the señora, por favor — eh?”

“Sí, I will return.” And she left.

Sara said, “You’re an idiot.”

“You have to immerse yourself in your cover story. Didn’t they teach you that?”

She had no reply.

“Can we hang out here until seven?”

“This place closes at four-thirty.” She looked at me. “Sometimes, before a clandestine rendezvous, it’s best to be static. Sometimes it’s best to be mobile.”

“They taught you well.”

“I read Richard Neville novels.”

“Don’t confuse fact with fiction.” Which reminded me of something. “Do you have our group roster?”

“I do. I took it in case we could use it for cover. Why?”

“I want to get a Hemingway postcard from here and send it to Richard.”

“Please focus on the mission.”

“I have many missions in life.”

“Not if you don’t complete this one.”

“Right.”

I looked again at the beach. The sand was almost iridescent, with a touch of blue and pink, and the water was a deep aquamarine. But farther out, I could see whitecaps and wispy clouds scudding quickly from east to west. There was a weather system on the way.

The waitress returned with our drinks and two lunch menus, and I noticed the prices were in CUCs only, which effectively barred Cubans in their own people’s republic. The waitress said she’d come back for our orders, but we didn’t let her get away. We both ordered the specialty of the house, which was a lobster salad, and I ordered two bottles of water and papas fritas — french fries. I asked the waitress, “Do you know where I can buy postcards?”

“Sí. Inside you will find these.”

“Gracias.”

Sara asked, “Los baños?”

The waitress directed us to the baños, took our menus, and left.

I asked, “What are we going to do with all our Cuban pesos?”

“Save them for next time.”

Send me a postcard.

Sara took her backpack and stood. “Keep an eye on our cargo.”

“Find me a Hemingway postcard.”

So I sat there, rehydrating with my Corona, which, though it came from Mexico, brought back memories of home. And I looked out at the sea in the same way that the Habaneros on the Malecón stared wistfully at the Straits of Florida. So near, yet so far.

Actually, Cayo Guillermo was about three hundred and fifty kilometers from Key West — about two hundred and fifty miles from Cayo to Key. That would be about a ten-hour cruise at twenty-five knots, depending on winds, waves, and tides. If we left here at midnight tonight, we should be at Charter Boat Row no later than 10 A.M., and at the Green Parrot in time for lunch. And Fantasy Fest was still in full swing.

More important, we should be in international waters an hour after leaving here, theoretically safe from Guarda Frontera patrol boats.

I wasn’t sure what the plan was to transfer our cargo to Fishy Business, but we’d find out at 7 tonight, and I hoped the plan didn’t rely too heavily on a prayer to the Virgin Mary. If it did, I, as captain, would change it.

One of the obnoxious kids ran over to me, a six- or seven-year-old porker wearing only a bathing suit. He had a paper cup of french fries in his hand that I would have broken his wrist for. He stuffed a handful of fries in his mouth and inquired, “Where are you from?”

“Canada. Can’t you tell?”

“We’re from Hamilton. Where are you from?”

“Toronto.”

“You sound like an American.”

“Go play in the riptide.”

“You’re an American.”

“Are you a chivato?”

“What’s that?”

“Give me a french fry and I’ll tell you.”

“You mean a chip.”

Busted by a six-year-old. “Right.”

He stuck the cup toward me and I grabbed a few fries — chips — before he pulled them away.

“What’s a... chovi—”

“Comemierda. It’s a smart person. In Spanish. Say it.”

He got it right on the second try and I encouraged him to use the word with the waitstaff.

His mother called to him to stop bothering the nice man and he ran off with his chips, yelling, “They’re Americans!”

Thanks, kid. Well, it wasn’t a crime to be an American in Cayo Guillermo, but it was a crime to be Daniel MacCormick and Sara Ortega in Cuba. I should have shown the kid my Canadian passport. If it fooled him, it would fool the police.

Sara returned and I decided not to mention the kid. She didn’t spook easily, but she might want to leave before I got my lobster salad.

She put a stack of postcards on the table. “Pick one. We’ll keep the rest as souvenirs.”

I was hoping for three million dollars to remember Cuba by, but I wasn’t allowed to say that.

I flipped through the postcards and found one of a fishing boat that said, Cayo Coco and Cayo Guillermo, Where Ernest Hemingway Loved to Fish. Perfect. “Dear Richard, I hope you liked your T-shirt and I hope you and Cindy went to Rolando’s.”

“And I hope you get to mail that postcard from Key West.”

“We will.”

So we sat there and enjoyed the moment. I glanced at the Buick Roadmaster in the parking area. Almost as important as us getting out of Cuba alive was getting our cargo safely and secretly into the U.S. And that made me think ahead to the American Coast Guard cutters and the DEA intercept boats. But Jack and I and The Maine — now Fishy Business — were in the computer system and we were considered trusted boat owners and crew, and we knew some of the Coast Guard people by name and we’d chatted with them on the radio. Same with U.S. Customs in Key West. And that, I knew, was one of the many good reasons why Carlos and his amigos picked Jack and me for this interesting job.

Our lobster salads and fries came and we ate and drank in silence, dividing our attention between the sea and the parking area where the Buick wagon sat — and where the police would come if they were looking for us.

Well, we’d gotten to Cayo Guillermo, and we’d learned that the fleet was still here. That was the good news. The bad news was that Sara and I were by now the subject of a nationwide police hunt. But Cuba was a big island, and the police, as in most police states, were better at intimidation than police science. I was sure that most fugitives were found as a result of chivatos tipping off the police. So we were relatively safe here, in a chivato-free zone.

Unless, of course, the police had made the connection between me and Fishy Business, which could have happened an hour ago, or could happen an hour from now.

So that was my analysis of enemy strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities. Now for my friends.

First, there was Eduardo on the loose. I probably should have stuffed him in a car trunk in Chico’s garage, but Sara would have been upset.

Next, I still hadn’t gotten my surprise. It wasn’t my birthday, so it had to be something else. Maybe the plan called for leaving me and Jack in Cayo Guillermo. Surprise! But they needed us for the press conference — unless that was all bullshit. But they also needed Jack and me to get the boat past the Coast Guard, and to avoid U.S. Customs. Also, now that we didn’t have the sixty million dollars with us, the chances of Jack and I being double-crossed were greatly reduced. But not zero.

And finally, I couldn’t help but think — for the last time, until next time — about the three million dollars. Two for me, one for Jack. That would have been a life changer. But maybe the money was still there, and maybe I’d come back for it with Sara — if we didn’t have a life-changing experience here in the next few hours.

Meanwhile, our contact person at the Melia Hotel didn’t know what night we’d show up, but I hoped he — or she — showed up at the lobby bar every night as instructed. It’s good to see you here.

Sara asked, “Have you figured out your surprise?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well... then maybe I should tell you now.”

“Now would be good.”

She hesitated, then said, “Our contact at the Melia bar is Felipe.”

That was a surprise. But not a big one. And it made sense from a security standpoint — fewer people involved, and someone with skin in the game. “That’s good.” But why did she think I wouldn’t be pleased? Well... if I’m so smart, I should know.

I looked at her, and we made eye contact. “Okay...” I think I got it. “Okay... and...?”

“I’m sorry, Mac. You needed to know before we met him.”

Right. So I could act as though Sara and I were barely on a first-name basis after a week together. Well, these people really did keep it in the family.

She looked at me. “I... don’t know what to say.”

“Well... me neither. But what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that we wouldn’t get this far. So it didn’t matter. I wanted you... and I guess I should have thought ahead.”

Well, in truth, I myself don’t often think farther than my dick, but... I had to admit I was... angry? No, more like surprised at my feelings. When the boyfriend was abstract and in Miami, it didn’t bother me too much. But now that I could put a handsome face on the generic boyfriend, and a name, Felipe, it was starting to hit me — hard.

“Say something.”

I looked at her and saw she was upset. I assured her, “When we meet Felipe, I will act as though nothing has happened between us.” I saw Casablanca six times.

“He’s already half crazy with jealously.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“He’s Cuban.”

And this was the guy I’d be on the boat with for ten hours. Well, I had a gun. But so did he. I thought back to when I’d asked her, “How well do you know Felipe?” And she’d replied, “I’ve met him.” Well, I guess so. And I also thought back to Sara in Floridita, asking if Jack had asked me if I was sleeping with her. I recalled, too, that Jack had told me that Felipe knew Sara. Was Jack trying to tell me something? Also, Eduardo knew what was going on, maybe from Jack, or maybe from looking into Sara’s eyes at Chico’s garage, and I remembered that Eduardo reminded her that she was committed to a man in Miami. And he’d stared at her when he confirmed what the contact — Felipe — would say. It’s good to see you here.

So, yes, I had all the clues I needed. Then why didn’t I put them together? Because love is blind.

In any case, Eduardo had no way of contacting his nephew about his suspicions. And he never would. So I assured her again, “I will be an officer and a gentleman.”

“Is that all you have to say.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say you want me.”

She may have watched too many Cuban soap operas, which was what this was starting to sound like.

“You said you loved me.”

“I do.” And I really did. So I had to ask, “Do you love him?”

“I did. Not anymore. I wouldn’t have had sex with you if I did.”

“Okay. Does he love you?”

“He confuses jealousy with love.”

I never had that problem, though I have confused sex with love. But not this time.

Well, I was feeling really crappy, and I’m not used to being one side of a triangle. “We’ll stick to our story tonight, and when we get home, we can sort it out.”

She nodded and took my hand. “When we get back, I’ll tell him.”

I thought she was going to do that in Havana. But Felipe was not reachable by phone because he was on the boat. She must have forgotten.

She forced a smile. “I love you even though you have no money.”

Thanks for reminding me. But that was nice to hear, and I smiled.

She looked around for the waitress. “Let’s have another drink.”

“Not for me. But you have one.” I stood and slung my backpack on my shoulder.

“Where are you going?”

“For a walk on the beach.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. We should split up — for tactical security. If the police are looking for us, they won’t get both of us, and one of us will be able to get to the hotel bar and meet our contact... Felipe.”

She stood. “No—”

“I’m giving the orders now, as I will be when I’m captain of my ship tonight. So get used to taking orders.”

“Mac... no...”

“You need to stay with the cargo.” I threw the keys on the table. “I’ll meet you at the Melia Hotel, lobby bar, at let’s say six-thirty.”

She looked really upset, and we were starting to attract attention, so I gave her a kiss and said, “It’s okay. This is the way to do it. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

And off I went, down toward the beach with my backpack and Glock. I glanced back to see if she was following, but I didn’t see her.

In love and war, you need to make hard decisions.

Well, this should be an interesting night. And hopefully the last surprise.

Chapter 49

I walked west along the nearly deserted beach, then came around to the tip of the island and continued along the southern shore, but I ran into a mangrove swamp and headed inland. Sometimes you need to recon the terrain, and sometimes you need to do a one-man recon of your head.

I made my way through the bush for awhile before I realized I was half asleep and still walking. I used to be good at sleepwalking on forced night marches, but I had no objective today except to be alone, so I found a patch of clear ground under a tall palm and sat.

I pulled my Glock from my pack, stuck it under my shirt, and leaned back against the tree trunk. It was hot inland, and buggy, so I didn’t expect company.

Thinking back on all this, I should have suspected that Sara’s boyfriend in Miami was none other than Felipe. The clues, as I said, were there, but I wasn’t putting them together. And not because I’m dense, but because I didn’t want to go there. My mother used to call this willful ignorance. She still does.

Well, I’ve been in situations like this before, but this was the first time the boyfriend was going to be onboard the boat we’d all have to share on our midnight run. Me, Jack, Felipe, and Sara. We’d have to figure out the sleeping arrangements. Could be awkward, even though we were all going to pretend that I’d been a perfect gentleman in Cuba.

I understood why Sara had lied, and I understood that she was conflicted, and that at some point she’d made up her mind about Felipe. But the only way this wasn’t going to be a problem in Cayo Guillermo was if she and I had never made it here, as she said. But here we were, against all odds.

Side two of this triangle was Felipe. I really didn’t give a shit that he was half crazy with jealousy because his girlfriend was alone with me in Cuba. But as a guy, I could sympathize with him. I actually liked him when I met him in Key West. He seemed competent, assured, and trustworthy. But thinking back, I realized now that he was sizing me up, probably trying to guess if I was the kind of guy who’d try to pop his girlfriend. If I’d known what the situation was, I would have assured him that I wasn’t that kind of guy. But no one told me, so I didn’t have the chance to be noble. Instead, I had a chance to get laid.

And why, I wondered, did no one tell me that Sara and Felipe were an item? Maybe Sara was supposed to tell me. And if not her, why not Carlos or Eduardo? Well, maybe because they really wanted me to come onboard, to use a nautical term, and Sara Ortega was one of many shiny lures. Sara, though, did say she had a boyfriend. She just couldn’t remember his name.

Bottom line, this mission was important to Eduardo, Carlos, and their amigos, and they’d do or say anything to make it happen. I could only imagine what they’d said to Felipe to make him agree to send his girlfriend on a dangerous mission with a handsome stranger. And what did Sara say to assure Felipe that she’d keep her legs crossed? I suspect there were promises made and talk of issues larger and more important than two people. And maybe a large cash payment to Felipe, to help him with his jealousy. And no one was really thinking about this moment when it all came together.

And then there was Sara, the object of many men’s affection — me, Felipe, Eduardo, and of course Antonio. Carlos liked her, too, but Carlos was all business. Love is a subparagraph in the contract.

But Sara, I was sure, had thought all this out more than she let on — and maybe more than she knew. She’d teased and flirted a bit on my boat, and I understood what she was doing. And long before we got to Havana, she knew we’d wind up in bed. I mean, I wasn’t sure, but she was. And she told me, matter-of-factly on day one in Havana at the Hotel Nacional, that we had a date. So at least she wasn’t pretending to me or to herself that she had been seduced. She was in fact, as I knew, making a deal with me: sex for reliability and commitment to the mission.

But when you make a deal like that, there are unintended consequences. Like falling in love. I think that’s what happened.

Now we needed to come full circle, back to the mission, and make sure that hearts full of passion, jealousy, and hate didn’t screw it up in the last act. Key West was in sight. Except it would be me at the helm with Jack. And Felipe and Sara would be sitting on the bow — or in a stateroom together. Should I make a captain’s rule — no screwing onboard?

It should be an interesting cruise. But first, cocktails at 7. Then a midnight escape past Cuban gunboats.

I closed one eye and went into that half-sleep that I’d perfected in the Army, with one hand on my gun and one half of my brain awake and alert.

My last conscious thought was that Sara really believed she was in love with me in Cuba — palm trees, danger, daiquiris, moonlight, and love songs. We’d see how this played out in Key West and Miami. But first we had to get there.

Chapter 50

I woke from my afternoon siesta, stuck my Glock in my backpack, and made my way through the bush to the road that led to the Melia Hotel.

It was just past 6 P.M., the sun was low on the horizon, and the beach road was deserted. I guessed it was about two miles to the Melia, and I could make it in less than half an hour if I picked up my pace and if a police car didn’t offer me a lift.

On that subject, I felt just a bit guilty about leaving Sara on her own, but she could take care of herself, and splitting up really was a good tactical move. Also, she’d pissed me off.

I’d had no startling revelations during my half-sleep, no subconscious insights or fuzzy feelings, and no epiphany when I woke up. I was actually still pissed off.

And what pisses me off is when people lie to me, and I was also pissed off at Carlos and Eduardo. Carlos had a lot of explaining to do when I got back. Eduardo was a dead man walking, so he got a pass.

If I thought about it, Felipe was the guy who’d been totally bullshitted. And there was more bullshit to come for Felipe.

I passed the Sol Club, and I could see the Melia ahead, set back from the road. I checked my watch. It was 6:30. I noticed that the sun set a little earlier here than in Havana. I also noticed that the sky was dark with fast-moving clouds.

I picked up my pace and walked up the palm-lined driveway of the hotel, hot, sweaty, and looking for the Buick in the circular driveway — but I didn’t see it. Shit.

I was about to ask a car park guy if he’d seen a beautiful lady in a beautiful American car, when I spotted the Buick pulling up. Sara saw me, but stayed in the wagon and spoke to one of the attendants in Spanish, then gave him some folding money and parked the car herself in the driveway. She got out with her backpack, locked the doors, kept the keys, and walked over to me.

I didn’t know what to expect, but she said, “I was worried sick about you.”

“I’m fine. How about you?”

“Do you care?”

This was going to be a long night. “Let’s get a drink.”

We walked into the hotel and found the lobby bar, a dimly lit place called Las Orquídeas, The Orchids, though there wasn’t an orchid in sight. There were, however, lots of empty cocktail tables and chairs, and Sara asked the hostess, in English, to seat us by the window because she wanted a view of her Buick that had seventeen skulls and título de propiedades in the back, though she didn’t explain all that.

We put our backpacks on the floor and sat in facing armchairs, leaving a seat for Felipe to form a triangle.

Sara said, “I was afraid you weren’t going to show up.”

“Where was I going to go?”

“I thought you were going to pick up a woman on the beach.”

Why didn’t I think of that?

“I was also worried you’d get stopped.”

It occurred to me that this mission could proceed without me. “That would have solved at least one problem.”

She leaned toward me. “If you didn’t show up here, I would have searched every inch of this island for you.”

“Same here.”

She sat back in her seat and glanced at her watch, then looked around the lounge. “Most of the guests are in the outdoor bar at this hour, and it’s usually empty here.”

I wasn’t overly impressed that Carlos — or someone — had sent an advance party to scout out the terrain. But I was again encouraged that there was a plan to get us out of here.

Regarding that, assuming Sara and I were the subjects of a police hunt, it wasn’t entirely safe to be meeting Felipe in a public place. The original plan anticipated that our disappearance from the Yale group might trigger a police response, but it would have been a low-priority search for two hot tamales missing from their tour group, and the police would have had fun searching the nude beaches around Havana. But because of shithead Antonio, Sara Ortega and Daniel MacCormick were now suspected of... whatever. And here we were in the bar of the Melia Hotel, and I wondered if our airport photos were appearing on Tele Rebelde.

Well, the lounge lighting was romantically dim, and the last week had changed our appearance a bit, so I didn’t think the waitress was going to start screaming, “Here are the Americanos they’re looking for!” We’d see soon enough.

Sara was staring at me and I flashed a phony smile.

“Where did you go?” she asked accusingly.

“I took a walk. How about you?”

“I stayed where you left me until I got kicked out at five, then I sat in the wagon and cried and worried about you.”

Daniel MacCormick, you are a true and total shit. “I just needed a walk.”

“Don’t do that again.” She added, “You stuck me with the bill.”

“I’ll buy tonight.” Unless Felipe is buying.

A waitress in a sort of sarong came by, wished us good evening, and didn’t start screaming for the police. She asked, “Are you guests of the hotel?”

Sara replied, “We’re at the Sol Club. We’ll pay in CUCs.”

“Sí, señora.”

Sara ordered a daiquiri — just like in Toronto — and I ordered a diet Coke so I could keep a clear head.

Sara said to me, “You should be trying something local.” She said to the waitress, “Please give this gentleman a Cuba Libre.” She asked me, “Have you ever had one?”

I smiled. “Once. On my boat.”

The waitress left to get our drinks and Sara asked, “Do you sail?”

“I’m a fisherman.”

“What do you fish for?”

“Peace.”

“That’s good.”

She looked at me. “I’m Sara Ortega. Do you love me?”

“I do.”

She leaned toward me. “Can we start all over?”

Meaning, can I put all the bullshit behind me? Why not? Life is short. “Sure.”

“The only lies you’re going to hear from me tonight or ever again are what I say to Felipe.”

I remembered a similar promise, but I replied, “Okay.”

“Are we going to be together when we get back?”

“I’d like that... but... you know, sometimes when people are thrown into a dangerous situation together—”

“They see what the other person is made of. I like what I’ve seen.” She looked at me.

“Me too.” I’ve done a great job. Sara, too.

Our drinks came and we touched glasses. Here’s looking at you, kid. Cue the soundtrack.

I said, “I assume I’m supposed to know that you and Felipe are an item.”

She nodded. “I was supposed to tell you.”

“When?”

“After we landed at the airport.”

I seemed to recall that when we took a walk at the Nacional, on our first day in Havana, she’d told me she didn’t have a boyfriend, which contradicted what she’d said on my boat when she told me she did have a boyfriend. But she later confessed — after sex — that, actually, she had a boyfriend. I should have written this down.

She reminded me, “I did tell you.”

“I appreciate your honesty.” I suggested, “Sometimes a name helps.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

Good question. If I’d known I was cuckolding Felipe, a teammate, would I have gone to bed with her?

“Mac?”

“It’s a moot question.”

“You sound like Carlos. That’s what lawyers say.”

“I’ve never been so insulted.”

“Let’s change the subject.”

That’s what women say. But I didn’t say that.

She sat back in her chair and confessed, “I’m a little nervous.”

“Drink up.”

“I think he’s going to take one look at us—”

“He already knows. Or he thinks he knows. Or he’s just pissed off that we’ve been together, day and night, for a week.”

She nodded.

“Let’s stick to business. And the business is getting the hell out of here without getting killed.” I assured her, “He knows that, and that’s his primary concern tonight. You are his secondary concern.”

“You know how to make a woman feel special.”

I agreed, “I’m a hopeless romantic.”

I also mentioned my concern about being recognized if our photos were being circulated, or broadcast on TV.

Sara had obviously thought about that — or been briefed — and replied, “The average Cuban wants nothing to do with the police, and they would only be good citizens if the police were looking for a murderer or rapist. They don’t care about enemies of the regime.” She added, “Most Cubans like Americans.”

“We’re Canadians.”

She continued, “The chivatos are another matter, but as you saw with Antonio, most chivatos would like to shake you down before they called the police.” She also reminded me, “There are few if any chivatos in the resort islands.”

“It only takes one.” I asked her, “What if the Ministry of the Interior has offered an actual monetary reward for information leading to our arrest?”

She didn’t reply immediately, then said, “Well... that would be a problem.” She added, “But we won’t be sitting here long after we meet our contact... Felipe.” She explained, “The tournament has booked an extra room at the Melia and Felipe is supposed to have a key, and that’s where we’re going to hide out — and freshen up — until we’re ready to leave here and get our cargo aboard the boat.”

“Okay. And who stays here to watch our cargo, and who goes up to the room?”

“We can work that out when Felipe gets here.”

That should be interesting. I know I don’t want to shower with Felipe. I asked, “Am I fully briefed now?”

“Felipe has information that I don’t have, such as how to get us and the cargo onboard.”

“Right.” Regarding our vehicle, if one of our amigos back in Havana was voluntarily or involuntarily talking to the police about a black ’53 Buick Roadmaster station wagon, we’d have a major problem, second only to the problem of the police connecting me to Fishy Business. We needed to get the Buick out of sight as soon as possible. And the faster we got on the water, the better.

Sara had seated herself so she could see the station wagon through the window and also the lobby entrance. I had my back to both, so I wouldn’t know when our contact — Felipe — arrived until I saw the happy and surprised expression on Sara’s face. Or not so happy if it was the police.

She kept looking at her watch. “He’s late.”

“He’s probably having a few drinks before he gets here.”

“Is that what you would do?”

“I may have done that on similar occasions.”

She looked at me. “You’re cool without being too macho.”

“It’s okay to be honest. As long as you’re fearless.”

She smiled, then looked over my shoulder, and I knew Felipe had arrived.

Sara said to me, “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you.”

She stood, smiled, and said, “Well, look who’s here.”

I stood and turned around. It was Felipe. What a surprise.

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 he 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 said. “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?”

“They’re still there.” He complained again, “We have to tip the Guarda Frontera every time we cast off and tie up, and we make donations to keep them off the tournament boats.”

Fishing for peace was expensive. “Any mechanical issues?”

“I would have told you.”

We were in a little bit of a pissing match, which we would not be in if Sara were named Steve. Men are assholes.

Felipe took a key card out of his pocket, gave it to Sara, and said, “You go first. Room 318. I’ll be up shortly.” He looked at me. “And you can watch the car. Then it’s your turn to use the room.” He asked, “Is that okay?”

Actually, no. “Let’s finish our business here.”

“What else do you need to know?”

“How was the fishing?”

“It’s been excellent.” He let me know, “We were in third place, but today we’re in second.”

“Congratulations.” Jack has an uncanny knack for finding fish. “Too bad you can’t stay a few more days.”

He smiled, then looked at the key, which Sara had put on the table. He really wanted to get laid.

I glanced at her and saw she was... tense? I think, too, that Felipe was baiting us. Or running a test.

I asked him, “How was the Pescando Por la Paz received here?”

“There were a few government press photographers when we arrived. But no one is covering the tournament. Why?”

Sara replied, “We were worried that the fleet might be kicked out of Cuba.”

Felipe nodded. “Well, that would have left you both high and dry.” He asked, “What would you have done?”

Fucked our brains out until we figured out how to get out of Cuba. “I was thinking we could make it to Guantánamo by land.”

He thought about that. “That’s possible.” He added, “But the question is now moot.”

How could she love a man who said “moot”? I asked Felipe, “Did Jack mention my concern about the police connecting me to Fishy Business?”

Felipe looked at me. “He did, and we made sure that none of the other fishermen mentioned to anyone that Fishy Business used to be The Maine, and we asked all the crews to tell us if anyone came around asking questions.”

“Okay.” Glad Jack remembered. He, too, was motivated — by money and survival. The money wasn’t there anymore, but survival is a good motivator by itself.

I said to Felipe, “You understand that the police in Havana could be making this connection right now, and calling the police in Cayo Guillermo as we speak.”

Felipe had no reply, but I thought he went a little pale.

“Also, I have to tell you — if Jack didn’t — that Sara and I came to the attention of the police in Havana.”

He nodded, as though Jack had filled him in.

“And now that we’ve disappeared from our tour group, the police will be looking for us.” I also told him, “And the Buick could be hot by now. So if there’s any way we can move up the sail time, I suggest we do it.”

He nodded. “I’ll... check the tide table again... but...”

“Is there a public phone you can use at the marina?”

“There is...”

It was time to get rid of Felipe, and I said to him, “Okay, so you need to return to the boat now, brief Jack, then leave a message here at the front desk for Jonathan Mills. That’s me. The message will be to meet for drinks at the Sol Club, at whatever time you think you can get The Maine into the mangrove swamp. Shoot for ten P.M. You have a depth finder. Also, if you are in the custody of the police, use the words ‘coming storm’ when you call. Meanwhile, get the boat out of the marina, ASAP. And if you see police cars at the marina, you can assume they’re there for you, and you’ll pedal your ass back here and we’ll get in the Buick and try to get across the causeway.” I added, “And make sure Jack is pedaling with you.” My instructions to him were so chilling that I’d scared myself.

Felipe looked more pale and nodded.

“If I don’t see you or hear from you in twenty minutes, tops, I’ll assume you are in the custody of the police, and Sara and I will be heading for the causeway. And you — and Jack — will hold up well under police questioning, to give Sara and me time to get to the mainland.” I looked at him. “Understand?”

He seemed to have zoned out, but then he looked at me and said, “Maybe we should all get on the boat now. I think I can get you onboard without—”

“We’re really trying to avoid interaction with the authorities, Felipe. We and the car may be hot.” I also reminded him, “We have cargo. And we can’t have the border guards looking at it.”

“Leave it.”

Sara said sharply, “We will not leave it.”

I stood. “Time to go. We’ll see you — sooner or later.” I added, “Vaya con Dios.”

He stood, and we made eye contact. He definitely understood he wasn’t going to have sex in Cuba with his girlfriend, and I think he knew why — and it wasn’t for the reasons I’d just laid out.

He took a deep breath, glanced at Sara, then said to me, “I never liked this idea of me being on the boat and you being with Sara.”

“Well, we all have different skill sets.”

“I told Carlos I was best suited to go to Cuba with Sara and find the cave — and that he needed to find a different boat with a Cuban American captain and crew.”

That may have actually worked better. And I’d be sleeping with Amber in Key West, blissfully unaware of the adventure I was missing. I assured Felipe, “Next time we’ll try it your way. But for now, we do it my way.” Regrets? I have a few.

Felipe needed to get the parting shot and said to me, “When we come back for the money, only those who speak Spanish and those who hate the regime need apply for the job.”

Sara said, “Felipe, that’s not—”

He shot her a look and she stopped talking.

Felipe needed some reality, so I said to him, “As you may know, I’m out three million dollars because of Eduardo. So I’m not in the best of moods, and when I step on that boat, I am in command, and I don’t want anyone second-guessing me about the weather, the patrol boats, the fuel, or when or if we use the guns.” I looked at Felipe. “Tell me you understand that. Or you can stay in Cuba.”

Felipe was pissed, and embarrassed in front of his girlfriend. I would be, too. But as I learned the hard way in Afghanistan, there is only one top dog when the shit is flying. And you gotta get it straight who that dog is before it starts flying. “Comprende?”

He was really pissed. But he managed a smirk and said, “Sí, Capitán.”

“Adios.”

Sara was standing now, and she hesitated, then gave Felipe a brief hug and kiss and said something in Spanish. That pissed me off, but maybe she told him to man up and vamoose.

Felipe said, “I’ll see you later,” and removed himself from the triangle, forgetting the room key.

Sara and I stood there, looking at each other. Finally, she said, “You handled that... well.”

“I did.”

“And you saved me from having to... go to the room with him.”

“That wasn’t my purpose.”

“Of course it was.”

Maybe it was. “Have a seat. I’ll tell the front desk I’m waiting for a message.”

I went to the front desk, showed my Canadian passport, and said to both clerks, a man and a woman, “I’m in the lobby bar, with a young lady, waiting for a phone message. Please deliver it to me as soon as you get it.” I incentivized them with ten CUCs each and they assured me they’d find me, even if I was in the baño.

I went back to the cocktail table, called the waitress over, and settled the bill.

Sara said, “We’ll be out of Cuban territorial waters by midnight.”

“We will.” I thought back to my last days and hours in Afghanistan. The short-timers, who’d gone through hell without even a small pee in their pants, were all jittery that something was going to happen before they boarded the freedom bird home. I mean, after you’ve cheated death for so long, you become paranoid, sure that death had just remembered you were leaving.

Sara said, “I think he knows.”

If he did, we might be waiting in that mangrove swamp for awhile. And Jack would be treading water while Felipe was in the cabin opening up the throttle as he took a direct heading for Miami, ahead of the storm and the Cuban gunboats. I mean, the money was still in Camagüey, his girlfriend was screwing around with the captain, and the police were closing in. Felipe would like to say adios to all that shit.

Sara and I sat in silence and waited for the desk clerk or Felipe to appear. Or the police.

I looked at my watch, stood, and said, “Time to go.”

“Where?”

“Let’s find out.”

Sara stood, and we collected our backpacks and walked to the lobby. I checked with the desk, and a phone message had just come in. I read the message slip — Anchors Aweigh. Will Try To Be At Sol Club 10:30 — and gave it to Sara.

She read it and looked at me. “Mac, this could be the last time we can be together. The car is locked. Let’s go upstairs.” She had the key card in her hand.

That was tempting. And it’s sort of an Army tradition that you try to get laid before you try not to get killed. But I wanted to get out of the hotel. “Have you ever done it in the back seat of a station wagon in a mangrove swamp?”

She smiled. “I’ll try anything once.”

We left the Melia Hotel. I took the car keys from Sara, unlocked her door, and got behind the wheel. I fired up the Perkins boat engine, drove down the driveway, and headed west on the beach road.

She said, “This has been the best week of my life.”

Were we in the same place? “Me too.”

“You’ve got balls. And heart.”

“And you’ve got guts and brains.” And I meant it.

“We’re a good team.”

“We are.”

“What time will we be in Key West?” she asked.

“In time for lunch.”

“I’ll buy at the Green Parrot.”

Table for two? Or three? Maybe four with Jack.

“I’ll tell Felipe after lunch that I’m not going back to Miami with him. And I’ll tell him why.”

Then maybe I should buy lunch.

“All right?”

I thought about all this — past, present, and future — and I came to the conclusion that Sara Ortega was my fate. This was where my journey had taken me. And this was good. I took her hand. “All right.”

Chapter 53

We continued along the dark beach road. The sky was looking more ominous, with black smoky clouds racing across the face of the moon.

Sara said, “There’s the sign.”

I slowed down, and my headlights picked out a faded wooden sign: SWAMP TOURS. I turned left onto a dirt road that was hemmed in by thick tropical growth. The road was rough and the steamer trunks started to bounce, so I slowed down and shifted into first gear. My headlights showed a straight path through the ten-foot brush, and I switched to parking lights.

Felipe said it was half a mile to the floating dock, and within five minutes I could smell the swamp, and a minute later I could see the sheen on the water and huge mangrove trees rising from the dark wetlands.

I slowed to a crawl as I approached the water and stopped at the shoreline. Around me was a small clearing — a turn-around and parking area in front of the floating dock. There were no boats at the dock, no vehicles, and no people except us. I shut off the parking lights and we sat there, staring into the darkness.

Sara said, “Back the wagon up to the dock.”

“Right.”

I maneuvered the Buick wagon around in the tight space and backed it up close to the floating dock. I killed the engine and said, “Let’s check it out.”

We got out of the wagon and looked around.

The fleeting moonlight reflected off the black, shiny water, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could see that a thick wall of vegetation crowded the small clearing. Exposed roots from the giant mangroves provided some traction and kept the Buick from sinking into the waterlogged mud.

I walked onto the floating dock, which was not much more than a log raft, held together with rope, about five feet wide and ten feet long, jutting into the swamp. The dock was tethered to stakes at the shoreline by two ropes. It would not support the Buick, but it seemed steady and sturdy enough to allow the transferral of the cargo between the wagon and our boat. I couldn’t help but imagine that the station wagon was a big panel van, filled with a dozen steamer trunks. This would have worked. Assuming we’d made it to Camagüey. And here. Well, we’d never know.

“Okay. This is good.”

Sara was staring out at the mangrove swamp. “Can the boat get through there?”

Hopefully, Felipe had already answered that question for himself.

I looked into the dark swamp. Mangroves grew up to the shore, but there was a channel through them, obviously man-made for boats to navigate the wetlands. It was hard to judge measurement in the dark, but it seemed that The Maine, with a 16-foot beam, could come sternway through the mangrove trees — very slowly and carefully — and reach the floating dock. The problem was not the channel through the mangroves — it was the depth of the bottom, which I guessed hadn’t been dredged because swamp boats were usually flat-bottomed. The Maine, however, had a keel that was about five feet below the waterline. And even if we had seven feet of water at high tide, there were mangrove stumps out there, and roots that could foul the propeller. The good news was that we were light on fuel and cargo. Four thousand pounds of money might have put us too close to the bottom. Every cloud has a silver lining.

“Mac?”

“Well... it’s doable.” Which didn’t sound like a sure thing. I added, “If The Maine can’t get to us, we can swim to her.”

“What about our cargo?”

“Well... I don’t see why we can’t use this dock for a raft and meet the boat in deeper water.”

She nodded.

I was tempted to point out that Felipe was more of an optimist than a sailor, but this may have been his only option. And I didn’t like to second-guess men under my command when they showed initiative — even if they had a stupid solution to a problem.

“We’ll see how it goes at ten-thirty.” I looked at my watch. It was now 8:45. We had a long wait. But I’d rather wait here for The Maine than wait in the Melia for the police.

I checked out the ropes that tethered the floating dock and saw they were one-inch hemp lines, easily cut with my Swiss Army knife.

Sara stood on the dock and asked, “If we have to make this dock into a raft, how do we move it into the swamp?”

Good question. The dock seemed too big and heavy for us to move it by hanging on and paddling with our feet against the incoming tide, but I suggested we could do that if we waited for the tide to start running out.

Sara replied, “I don’t want to wait... Maybe we can do what the balseros do when they’re launching their rafts from the wetlands.”

“Which is?”

“They use poles — to push off into the deeper water.”

Right. I think Huck Finn did that. “Okay. Good solution.” I suspected she was smarter than her young boyfriend. Anyway, if we had seven feet of water here at high tide, as per Felipe, we needed at least a ten-foot pole.

I was about to go look for something in the bush, but I noticed that toward the end of the floating dock were two pilings — actually long poles, rising about six feet above the dock, and about the thickness of a baseball bat. The poles had been driven into the swamp mud to tie up boats and to keep the floating dock from swaying in the currents. I went over to one pole and Sara joined me. Together we pulled on it, trying to free it from the muck. We pushed it from side to side, and pulled again, and finally the pole started to rise out of the swamp floor.

We freed it and laid it on the dock. It was about twelve feet long, fairly straight, but waterlogged, so it had some flex in it, which was not good for raft poling. But if we had to use it, it would have to do.

We went to the other piling and after about ten minutes of sweating and swearing we got the pole out of the sucking mud and onto the floating dock. Teamwork makes the dream work.

We wiped our muddy hands on our pants, and I said, “Okay, we’re all set to unload the trunks onto this dock, cut the lines, then pole into the swamp to meet The Maine. But we’ll do that only if The Maine can’t get to us.”

“Should we unload the trunks now?”

“I want to hear my diesel engine before we do that.”

She put her hand on my shoulder and we looked into the swamp, where an evening mist rose off the water. Tree frogs croaked, and night birds made weird sounds, insects chirped, and something leapt out of the water.

“It’s spooky,” she said.

But no spookier than the spidery caves I crawled through looking for UBL. Who knew the asshole was in Pukeistan? But at least in the caves, everyone had everyone’s back. Here, I wasn’t so sure.

She said, “Let’s sit in the wagon.”

I think I promised her a ride in the back seat, but now that I was here, I was reevaluating the situation, and I thought we should keep our pants on. “We need to keep alert. But you go ahead. I’ll keep watch.”

She walked to the station wagon, opened the rear window and tailgate, and pulled out the black tarp that covered the trunks. She spread the big tarp on the muddy ground between the wagon and the dock and invited me to lie down and relax awhile.

There might not be a next time for this, so we made love on the tarp — quickly, quietly, and with our boots on — listening to the sounds of the swamp and the mosquitoes buzzing around my butt. While we were going at it, Sara said, “Keep alert,” and laughed.

Afterward, we sat on the tarp with our backs to the station wagon bumper and shared a bottle of water that she’d gotten from the Ranchón Playa. I thought about the remains of the men that were a few feet from the back of my head. If we all weren’t soldiers once, I might think that I had somehow dishonored the dead; but it could’ve just as easily been me who didn’t make it home. And those who did make it shouldn’t feel guilty about anything. We all understood that.

Sara asked, “What do we do now?”

“We wait.” I looked at my watch: 9:46. We had a long forty-five minutes before I heard the familiar sound of my Cat 800 diesel. Or longer if Felipe and Jack had decided to wait for high tide. Or never, if Felipe had left Jack at the marina and was now on his way to Miami. What I knew for sure was that Jack Colby would not leave Cuba without me.

Sara said, “Tell me that everything is going to be okay.”

I assured her, “Within a few hours we’ll be in open water, on a heading for Key West.”

She took my hand. “That sounds nice.”

Sara Ortega was not a clueless idiot, and she knew this was a very dicey plan. The mangrove swamp could damage the fiberglass hull of The Maine, but not as badly as a rapid-fire cannon. “Do you see that water?”

“Yes.”

“That water is a road that will take you anywhere you want to go.”

She nodded, and stayed quiet for a minute, then asked, “What if they don’t... can’t come?”

Well, that was the other problem. “Jack knows — you never leave a man behind.” I wasn’t so sure about Felipe, however. I mean, without the sixty million... But I was forgetting about Sara. I hoped Felipe still loved her enough to come for her.

She got quiet again, then said, “I’m thinking about the last week...”

“When we get back, we’ll have some good laughs. Even Antonio was—”

“What’s the matter?”

“Quiet.”

We listened and I heard something out in the swamp. It got louder, and we could both hear voices carrying across the water.

Sara whispered, “There’s somebody out there.”

I pulled the Glock from my belt and got into a prone firing position facing the water, trying to peer through the darkness. Sara lay down beside me.

The voices got louder and it sounded like two males, speaking Spanish. I could hear oars splashing in the water.

I saw a movement, then suddenly a boat emerged from the mist, coming toward the shore.

As it got closer, I could see that it was a square-bowed swamp boat, and sitting in the flat-bottomed craft were two men. They saw the big Buick before they saw me and Sara lying on the black tarp, and they started jabbering.

Sara stood and called out, “Buenas noches.”

There was a silence, then one of them called, “Buenas noches, señora.”

I slipped the Glock under my shirt and stood, but I didn’t call out buenas noches in my Maine accent.

The two men, who looked young, jumped out of the boat into the water, then took hold of a bow line and pulled the flat-bottomed boat onto the muddy shore. They made conversation with Sara as they dragged the small fiberglass boat farther inland.

Sara walked toward them, still chatting, and like fishermen everywhere, they showed her their catch, which looked like catfish. And they looked like poor fishermen. But this was Cuba, where everyone had a second job.

The men were barefoot, but they slipped sandals over their muddy feet and pulled the boat close to the Buick and glanced at the tarp.

They conversed with Sara, obviously about the station wagon, and gave me a few quick looks.

One of them went into the bush and came out pulling a small boat trailer. They put their fiberglass boat on the trailer, secured it with a line, and maneuvered the trailer around the Buick and onto the dirt road.

I can’t remember how many times my night patrols had run into locals, and how many times I had to make the decision of what to do with those people. I started with the premise that no one could be trusted, and I worked out a solution from there.

The two young men waved to us as they pulled their boat and trailer — a little too fast — up the road we’d come in on. Buenas noches.

I looked at Sara. “Well?”

“I... don’t know. They seemed... friendly.” She added, “They’re just fishermen.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

“I told them we were waiting for friends to come in from fishing.”

“All right...” But if I had it to do over again, those guys would be looking down the barrel of my gun while Sara tied their hands and feet with their line, and they’d now be resting comfortably in the back seat of the Buick. But you don’t get do-overs.

I looked at my watch: 10:04. Nothing to do now except wait for our ride. And keep alert.

It was 10:30, and though I didn’t hear The Maine, Sara wanted to unload the station wagon. “They’re coming,” she assured me. We threw our backpacks on the dock, then Sara and I lifted the heavy steamer trunk filled with título de propiedades out of the rear compartment, walked it across the black tarp, and set the trunk down in the middle of the floating dock.

On our way back to get the second trunk, I heard the sound of an engine — but not in the swamp. It was on the dirt road.

Sara and I exchanged glances and I pulled my Glock.

There were headlight beams coming through the darkness, and the engine got louder, then the headlights illuminated the Buick and us, and the vehicle suddenly stopped about twenty feet away. Someone shouted something in Spanish. I don’t speak the language, but I know what “Guarda Frontera” means.

Sara said, “Oh, God...”

I jumped on the rear bumper of the station wagon and aimed my Glock across the Buick’s roof at the open Jeep vehicle.

A guy was standing in the passenger side, a rifle aimed at me above the windshield, and he shouted something.

I fired three rounds at him, and the blasts split the night air. I shifted my aim and fired three more rounds through the windshield opposite the driver, then fired my remaining three rounds, right to left, in case I missed anything.

The birds were silent now, and there was no sound from the Jeep except the idling engine. I quickly reloaded my second magazine into the Glock.

The rule is to wait fifteen seconds to see if your kill suddenly springs to life, so I waited, but there was no movement in the Jeep.

I jumped down from the bumper and made my way quickly but cautiously to the military vehicle. The guy slumped in the passenger seat was still alive, but the driver had caught one above his right eye. They were young guys. Maybe twenty.

I reached in and turned off the headlights, then shut off the engine and threw away the keys. I retrieved the rifle from the dying guy, which was an AK-47 with a thirty-round magazine. I found another loaded AK in the rear, along with an ammo pouch and four loaded magazines. I slung one of the rifles over my shoulder and started back toward the Buick, carrying the second rifle.

Well, I’d just committed murder in the People’s Republic of Cuba. Surrender was no longer an option. It never was.

Sara was calling my name, and I said, “I’m okay—” There was suddenly light around me, and I heard an engine behind me. I spun around and saw another set of headlights bouncing over the rough road.

I jumped onto the hood of the Jeep and knelt as I flipped the firing switch of the AK-47 to full automatic. The Jeep was less than thirty feet from me and slowing down as it approached the first Guarda Frontera Jeep. I could hear voices that sounded confused as to what was happening. Well, let me end the confusion. I squeezed the trigger and fired a long burst of green tracer rounds into the windshield left to right. The Jeep veered into the wall of brush and the engine stalled out.

I stood on the hood of the first Jeep and looked up the dark road, but there were no more headlights coming.

I jumped down and ran back to the Buick where Sara had already managed to get the steamer trunk full of skulls out of the wagon, and she was dragging it over the tarp toward the floating dock. “Mac! Are you okay?”

“I’m good.” I grabbed a handle and we carried the trunk quickly onto the dock. I slapped a fresh thirty-round magazine into the AK-47 that I’d fired and laid both rifles on the steamer trunks.

I pulled my Swiss Army knife from my pocket and cut the two lines that tethered the dock to the shore. Meanwhile, Sara had one of the poles and pushed off.

The dock floated a few feet, then started back on the incoming tide. I grabbed the other pole and together we pushed off again, then stuck the poles into the muddy bottom and began poling away from the shore.

The floating dock was not floating very fast, and it took all our strength to push against the poles and move the dock a few feet against the tide. But we were making a little progress and the dock was now about twenty feet from the shoreline. A few feet later, the bottom dropped and we had barely two feet of pole to work with, so we knelt to give us more leverage.

I looked up to see how far we’d gotten and saw head beams reflecting off the mangrove trees on the shore. Shit.

Sara saw it too. “Mac... look...”

“See it. Keep pushing.”

We got a few more feet out, but we were barely sixty feet from the shore and already we were getting fatigued. Meanwhile, where was The Maine?

The vehicle that had arrived was obviously blocked by my two kills, but he’d left his headlights on, which was not smart, because I could now see three men on the shore, silhouetted against the head beams. One guy was looking at the Buick and two were looking out at the swamp.

I grabbed one of the AK-47s and got down into a prone firing position. Darkness distorts perception — aim lower than the target you see. I held my fire, waiting to see if they spotted us. Then one of the guys shouted, and I saw a muzzle flash, followed by the buzzing sounds of green tracer rounds going high, and the almost simultaneous pop-pop-pop that the AK-47 makes. I hear that fucking sound in my nightmares.

I steadied my aim and returned the fire, raking the shore with six-round bursts, adjusting my aim as the streaks of my green tracers hit the shoreline. One man screamed and went down. I quickly changed magazines, and noticed that they’d shut off their headlights.

Tracers show where your rounds went, but they also show where they came from, and the return fire was more accurate. A few rounds hit the water in front of me, then one hit the steamer trunk next to me. Sara was still kneeling and pushing with the pole, and she was presenting too good of a target. “Get down!”

She got down a little, but kept pushing off.

There were a few more men on the shore now, and I saw at least six muzzle flashes. The sounds of automatic rifles filled the air and bullets were striking the water around us, and another one hit the trunk. They definitely had our range now, and we were basically sitting ducks, about to be dead ducks.

I was down to two magazines for the AK-47, and after that I couldn’t put out enough suppressing fire with the Glock to keep their heads down.

I took aim at the shoreline, but before I squeezed the trigger, the sky lit up with a flash of heat lightning, followed by a roll of thunder. I am the storm. I shifted my aim to the Buick and squeezed the trigger. A stream of green tracer rounds impacted into the rear of the station wagon, and the incendiary material of the tracers ignited the fuel in the tank and the gasoline exploded in a huge red-orange fireball.

The shooting from the shore stopped, and when the echoes of the explosion died away I heard the sound of a boat engine — my boat, my engine.

Sara and I turned around and I saw the stern of The Maine coming toward us through the swamp mist. The boat was about fifty feet away, and as it got closer I saw Jack kneeling on the rear bench, aiming a rifle — the AR-15 — at the shore, but he was holding his fire, obviously unsure of what was happening. I could make out the silhouette of Felipe in the darkened cabin, and I imagined he was glancing over his shoulder as he steered sternway toward us, maybe with a little guidance and encouragement from Jack.

Felipe was making less than five knots, which would be normal for these water hazards but too slow for getting our asses out of here under fire. In fact, it was probably the gunfire that made Felipe display an abundance of caution. But, to be fair, he was still coming.

Sara was kneeling, pushing off with the pole, and I was dividing my attention between the shore and The Maine. We were in thicker mist now, which was good regarding the guys with the AK-47s, who’d stopped firing, but I wasn’t sure Jack had actually seen us. So I stood and waved silently. Jack spotted me and waved back, and as I dropped to one knee a loud burst of AK-47 fire streaked over my head. I spun around and dropped into a prone position and fired my last magazine at the shoreline, and when my AK clicked empty I could hear the sharp sound of Jack’s AR-15 returning fire. Glad he remembered the extra ammo. Hope he remembered to put his vest on.

I had two magazines of 9mm left and I slapped one into the Glock. We were about a hundred feet from the shore, well beyond the effective range of the Glock, but I emptied the magazine at the shoreline just to be involved. Jack meanwhile was pumping out rounds like he was surrounded by V.C.

I glanced at Sara and saw she was exhausted, barely hanging on to the pole, and I noticed that the incoming tide was carrying us back toward the shore. Shit.

The guys on the shore — maybe four or five of them — were apparently getting over the shock of the explosion and were starting to lay down effective fire. I saw tracer rounds streaking over The Maine, then it looked like a few rounds entered the cabin. I hoped that Felipe didn’t lose his nerve and hightail it out. Would he do that to Sara?

The Maine was less than twenty feet from us, and if we could stop drifting toward the shore we’d meet up in a minute or two, but Felipe was not appreciating the situation and wasn’t moving toward us as fast as the tide was moving us away from The Maine.

Sara suddenly called out, “Felipe! Faster! Faster!”

I don’t know if he’d ever heard that word before in another context, but it worked, and I heard the engine growl and The Maine got closer.

I scrambled over the raft, grabbed Sara, and pulled her behind the two steamer trunks. The AK rounds couldn’t penetrate the wads of paper, but they’d probably go through skulls — just as they had forty years ago in Villa Marista prison. I positioned myself between the trunks and Sara, then pushed her flat on the raft. I heard a round smack into one of the trunks but it didn’t exit, so the trunks gave us some cover, and the dark and the mist gave us some concealment. Theoretically we were not in the line of fire — until we had to get ourselves and the trunks onboard.

The Maine was less than ten feet away now and I could see Jack’s face as he took careful aim and kept up a steady volley of fire, and I could hear the crack of his rounds as they sailed over my head.

Then, for some reason, Jack suddenly stood, maybe to get a clearer shot of the shoreline, and I yelled, “Get down!”

But he kept standing, steadied his aim, and got off a few rounds before a green tracer knocked him off the bench and back onto the deck.

Sara saw what happened and let out a scream, then got herself under control and shouted, “Those bastards!”

Hey, they’re just kids doing their job. Been there. Jack, too. Come on, Jack. Get up. “Jack!”

But he didn’t answer.

The stern of The Maine was only a few feet from the raft now, and I heard Felipe shout, “Jump! Jump!”

I said to Sara, “Go ahead. Quick!”

“The trunks...”

“Go!”

“No!”

Shit.

Felipe shouted again, “Jump! I’m leaving! I’m going!”

Asshole. You’d think he’d never been shot at. The Maine was at idle, and the tide and current were starting to separate us again. I yelled out, “Reverse!” I grabbed Sara around the waist and started to lift her onto my shoulder. A few more rounds hit the trunks, and I saw a tracer hit the stern, putting a dot right above the “I” in Fishy Business. Holy shit.

Diesel doesn’t explode like gasoline but... we didn’t need any more incendiary rounds in the fuel tank.

Time to get aboard before we got shot or left behind. I said to Sara, calmly and slowly, “You have to get up and get on that boat.”

She got into a crouching position, glanced at the two trunks that were between her and the gunfire, then looked at the boat, which was now about five feet from the raft.

I don’t know what would have happened next — Sara jumping for the boat, or Felipe pushing forward on the throttle and leaving us there — but something hit me in the face, and it took a second for me to realize it was a line thrown from The Maine. I grabbed it and heard Jack’s voice. “Secure the line!”

I dropped to the deck, looped the line through the hemp rope that bound the logs together, and shouted, “Forward!”

The Maine began to move forward, and the floating dock was towed away from the shore and the gunfire, and deeper into the mist.

Jack appeared at the stern, kneeling on the bench, and he was staring at me. I called out over the sound of the engine, “You okay?”

“What’s it to you, asshole?”

He sounded fine. “You get hit?”

“Vest.”

Good purchase.

We were clearing the mangroves, and Felipe put on some speed, and within a few minutes we were in the Bay of Dogs, on a westerly heading.

Sara sat up and put her arm around my shoulders. She was breathing hard, but getting it together.

“You okay?”

“I’m okay.”

I glanced up at the cabin and saw that Felipe was checking us out.

It was time to come aboard and I called out, “Idle!”

Jack shouted to Felipe, “Idle!”

The engine got quieter and The Maine slowed.

Jack pulled the line, hand over hand, until the raft was against the boat’s stern.

Sara and I stood, and Jack reached his hand out to her, as he’d done when she first came aboard The Maine — but this time I put my hands on her butt and she kicked her legs out to the stern while I pushed and Jack pulled. She tumbled onto the stern bench, and Jack said, “Welcome aboard!”

She gave him a hug, hesitated, then glanced at me and went into the cabin.

So Jack and I, with two secured lines, pulled the trunks onboard, and he set them on the deck. I pitched the two backpacks to him, scrambled aboard The Maine, then cut the line. Felipe opened the throttle and we picked up speed across the bay, leaving the floating dock behind us.

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 the 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.”

“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.”

Again she nodded, but pointed out, correctly, “The Zhuk is going to shoot at us.”

“And we’re going to shoot back.”

She had no comment, and I had nothing to add, but Jack said, “We’ll both be moving and shooting from unstable platforms.”

Sara comprehended that and nodded.

I added, “It’s sort of like a drive-by shooting on a bad patch of road, and both drive-bys are moving toward each other, so it won’t last long, and when we pass in the night, he has to turn around to pursue, but he loses a lot of speed in the turn, and we’re still making twenty-five knots.” That, of course, assumed his twin machine guns didn’t kill us all.

Again she nodded, but didn’t comment.

I looked at the radar screen and saw that we were about five nautical miles from the Stenka, who was in pursuit, but who hadn’t gained any ground on us, so maybe he wasn’t able to get full speed out of his engines — or he was lying back, waiting to see if I made another crazy move.

The Zhuk was coming at me full barrel, though he was heading into the wind and waves, and maybe not making twenty-five knots. In any case, our closing speed was maybe forty knots and we would meet in about five minutes.

I asked Jack, “What’s the ammo situation for the AR?”

“I got ten empty mags that need reloading.”

“See if you can do that in three minutes. And get yourself into a firing position through the forward hatch.”

He disappeared below and I said to Sara, “I need you to go below, get a Kevlar vest, and bring one for me.” I handed her my Glock. “And get fresh magazines for this.”

She nodded and disappeared below.

The Maine didn’t have an anemometer, so I couldn’t measure the wind speed or direction, but I was guessing the winds were about twenty knots, still blowing westerly, and I could see that the waves were cresting at about six feet and not breaking over the bow. But the bow was rising on each wave, and Jack would only have a clear shot ahead when the bow pitched down. The good news was that the Zhuk had the same problem with his twin machine guns mounted on his forward deck.

I looked at the radar screen and saw that the Zhuk was now three nautical miles ahead and still coming straight at us. He was playing chicken with me, which was my game — or more likely he thought that I understood I was finished and I was going to surrender. But if he thought that, he was being too rational.

I saw the vent hatch rise up on the bow, and I expected to see Jack squeezing himself up with his AR-15, but it was Felipe whose head and shoulders appeared, and I could see he had the five-round automatic shotgun that was loaded with deer slugs. This may be the worst and most inaccurate weapon you can have in this situation, but it was better than a.38 revolver, and maybe even better than a Hail Mary.

Felipe looked back at me and gave me a thumbs-up. Apparently he’d come to the only conclusion he could come to. Or he’d had a chat with Sara, who’d straightened him out. I knew Felipe was standing on something in the lower cabin, and I hoped it wasn’t Jack’s shoulders. But where was Jack?

I looked at the radar. We were about two nautical miles from meeting the Zhuk. I couldn’t see him in the dark and stormy sea, and he couldn’t see me, but we both knew, thanks to technology, that we were on a collision course. In a minute or two, we’d both revert to something less sophisticated — bullets and balls.

I glanced again at the radar and saw that the Stenka was still about five nautical miles behind us. He couldn’t turn his 120-foot boat as fast as I could turn, so I guessed that the Stenka captain, knowing he had more speed than his prey, was just waiting to see if I broke to port or starboard — then, when he got in range, he could open up with his radar-controlled cannons without taking a chance of hitting the Zhuk. Or, like the Zhuk captain, the Stenka captain was thinking I was going to raise the white flag. I mean, why else would I be heading toward the Zhuk?

Jack appeared from below carrying a canvas bag of loaded magazines and the AR-15. He shouted over the wind and breaking waves, “I’m going up the tower!”

Meaning the tuna tower, which was eight feet above the cabin roof and about twenty feet above the water.

I didn’t think that was a good idea, with the tower swaying about 20 degrees from side to side, but he’d have the advantage of not having the bow rising and falling in his line of fire. I would never order a man to do that, but before I could think of a reason why he shouldn’t become the best target on the boat, he disappeared onto the deck and climbed up the side rungs to the tower. “Good luck.”

Sara came up the staircase wearing a Kevlar vest and carrying another one that she handed to me.

I put on the vest and motioned to the windshield, which had three separate framed windows that could swing out on hinges and lock-arms. “Unlatch the window on the left, and when I give you the word, push it out, and it’ll lock into place. You stand in the stairwell and take aim out the window.”

She nodded and unlatched the window over the stairwell, then drew the Glock from her waistband.

“Don’t fire when the bow starts to rise.” I was going to add, “You might hit Felipe,” but I figured she was smart enough to know that, so why mention it?

I glanced at the radar. The blip that was the Zhuk was about five hundred yards from us, dead ahead. Felipe was still standing in the hatch, his elbows on the bow deck, and the shotgun aimed straight ahead. Jack would be at the top of the tower by now, and Sara was standing beside me with the Glock in her hand and extra mags in her pockets, waiting for the word to fire. I was at the helm.

The Zhuk captain must have realized that I was not running to him to surrender my ship and crew, and I saw the double flash of his twin machine guns, then the streak of green tracer rounds that went very high because his bow was rising, but his gunner adjusted — or overadjusted as his bow fell — and the next streak of tracers went into the water about a hundred yards in front of The Maine.

The tracers showed where the Zhuk was, and I could hear Jack popping off a rapid succession of single shots from his firing perch.

Felipe couldn’t see much from the pitching bow, but he did see the tracers, and he got off five rounds as the bow settled down, then reloaded as the bow rose, and waited to fire again.

Jack was popping off rounds as though he could see the target, and maybe he could from up there, but I couldn’t see the Zhuk and I glanced at my radar. The blip was so close that I should be able to see him. I looked out the rain-splattered windshield and there he was — a black silhouette on the black horizon, and coming fast.

I called to Sara, “Fire!”

She moved quickly to the window, pushed it out, and raised the Glock with both hands as I’d taught her. The wind and rain were streaming through the open window, and as the bow dropped she emptied the nine rounds in a few seconds, but instead of dropping below the windshield to reload, she stared straight ahead at the oncoming ship.

“Bastards!”

“Get down!”

I saw that Felipe hadn’t been hit by enemy fire — or friendly fire — and he was firing at the Zhuk, which I noticed was not firing back. And the only reason for that would be because the gunner had been hit. In fact, I heard Jack shouting at the top of his lungs, “Got him! Got that asshole!”

The twin guns would have an armored shield, but Jack had the high ground and apparently he’d scored a hit. The Zhuk, however, had no shortage of gunners, and as we got within a hundred yards of him, the twin guns opened up again, and the tracers went high as his bow rose. But this gunner didn’t overcorrect, and he kept a steady stream of rounds coming, and as his bow settled down, so did the tracers, and suddenly the cabin was filled with the sound of breaking glass and impacting bullets.

Sara screamed, then dropped into the stairwell, but she didn’t appear to be hit. I caught a brief glimpse of Felipe and he was still firing. Sara was sitting on the steps now, slamming a fresh magazine into the Glock. She stood and emptied her second magazine at the looming ship.

The next burst of machine-gun tracers went high, not because the Zhuk’s bow rose, but because that’s where the gunner was aiming, so he must have caught sight of Jack in the tuna tower.

We were on a collision course, and the collision was going to happen within the next ten seconds, and I knew I wasn’t going to change course because The Maine and everyone on her were as good as dead anyway. So he was going to change course, and all I had to do was wait to see if he was going to break to port or starboard.

We were within fifty yards of each other now and I could actually see the windows on the high bridge where the captain was either at the helm or giving orders to the helmsman. Easy shot if I had a rifle. But I didn’t, and I didn’t hear Jack’s AR-15. I did, however, hear the twin machine guns open up, but The Maine was so close to the Zhuk and his forward deck was so high that the gunner had to depress his barrels to the max to get a burst off, and the tracers streaked over the cabin and impacted on the rear deck. And that was his last shot at me because the Zhuk suddenly veered hard to port to avoid a collision, and I caught a glimpse of his twin machine guns as the gunner swung them to starboard to try to get a burst off, but I was moving fast along the starboard side of the 80-foot Zhuk, so close that I could see men on deck.

Just as I reached the stern of the ship, I cut hard to starboard, directly into his wake, which sent The Maine airborne, and when we came down it felt like we’d hit a brick wall and The Maine bounced wildly. The rear gunner was either not at his station, or if he was he didn’t know what was happening or it was happening too fast for him to react, and his stern swung to starboard, away from me, as the Zhuk continued its swing to port.

The Maine was more maneuverable than the bigger ship, and I cut hard to port so that my stern was lined up amidship to the Zhuk, and moving away from him. His forward- and aft-mounted guns could swing only one hundred and eighty degrees, so there was a blind spot about forty feet wide at his midship point, and I kept glancing over my shoulder, trying to stay perpendicular to him as he continued into his port turn. The Zhuk’s crew, however, armed with AK-47s, had no blind spot and I could see muzzle flashes from the forward and aft decks, but the tracers were going wild as the oncoming waves started to slam against the starboard side of the Zhuk. The captain changed course to get his stern lined up so that his rear gunner had a shot at me, but I changed course to keep that from happening, and it was a little like a dog chasing its tail except that the tail — me — was getting some distance from the dog’s teeth.

He finally gave up on trying to outmaneuver me, and came around hard so that he was now following me as I took a direct northerly heading toward international waters, which were about eight miles ahead — maybe twenty minutes if I could maintain twenty-five knots.

I couldn’t visually see the Zhuk in the darkness now, but he’d lost some time and distance with his maneuvers and my radar showed he was about five hundred yards behind me. And that’s where he’d stay if we both maintained our max speed. But with this weather, the Zhuk, which was big, could more easily cut through the waves and might be able to maintain a speed that The Maine couldn’t match. If I saw him gaining on me, I could run a zigzag course — like trying to outrun a big, fast alligator — and because the Zhuk wasn’t as responsive as my smaller boat, that might slow her up more than it slowed me up if he tried to mirror my moves. Works with an alligator.

Meanwhile, he was apparently pissed off and he’d decided to open up, but from five hundred yards in the dark rolling sea, his tracer rounds were all over the place, and mostly falling into the sea behind me.

I looked at the fuel gauge and saw we’d burned some diesel, but we could still make it to Key West — or if I had to, I’d head for one of the closer Florida Keys, maybe Key Largo, or even Andros Island in the Bahamas. I didn’t have to make that decision yet, and maybe not at all. Key West was where I started, and that’s where I wanted to finish. We weren’t out of the woods yet, but I could see daylight ahead.

But then I saw something else. I’d adjusted my radar to get a tight picture of the Zhuk coming at me, but now I readjusted the picture to twelve miles out to see where the Stenka was, and I saw a blip to the east — the only blip on the stormy sea — and it was on a course to intercept The Maine, so it had to be the Stenka, and it was about eight nautical miles away. Shit.

If I maintained a due north heading, I’d be out of Cuban territorial waters in less than twenty minutes, but the Stenka might get within cannon range before I crossed that boundary. If I changed course to head northwest toward the Keys, I’d be in Cuban waters longer than I wanted to be, but I’d also be running away from the Stenka and also ahead of the storm. I kept looking at the radar blip, trying to do the math and the geometry, like thousands of sea captains before me. You only get one shot at this, Mac.

Sara was sitting in the chair beside me, and she may have been there awhile, but typical male, I was so wrapped up in my own problems, I didn’t notice.

I said to her, “How you doing?”

She nodded.

“Can you do me a favor? Go see if Jack... Go see how he is...”

“He’s alive,” said Jack as he came into the cabin, drenched from the rain. Then he turned around, went out to the deck, and threw up over the side. That happened to me once when I came down from the tuna tower in rough seas. Not the worst thing.

I noticed that Felipe had disappeared from the hatch, and he appeared from below with a bottle of Ron Santiago, which I’m sure he had already sampled. He passed the bottle to Sara, who handed it to me. I said, “I’m driving.”

Sara took a gulp.

Jack came into the cabin, and Sara offered him the bottle, but Jack looked a little green and went below. I heard the head door open, then close.

Felipe was starting to notice that the cabin windows had holes in them and that some of the wood and plastic was chewed up. He said something in Spanish that I guessed was “Holy shit.”

Felipe moved behind the chairs, between Sara and me, looked at the radar, and pointed. “Is that the Stenka?”

“It is.”

“Shit!”

“And behind us is the Zhuk.” I let him know, “You did an excellent job, amigo.”

He didn’t reply immediately, but then said, “I think I got the gunner.”

Jack was halfway up the stairs now and said, “I nailed that bastard right between his fucking eyes.”

Which was more likely, but for all anyone knew, Sara had one of those impossibly lucky shots that no one would believe, including the guy who caught the bullet.

Felipe asked, “What are we going to do?”

I reminded him, “We are going to let the captain make that decision.”

He didn’t reply, but kept looking at the radar screen. He said, “The Zhuk... he seems to be too far behind...”

“He’s gaining on us, but not fast enough to get into firing range unless he keeps following us into international waters.” Which he’d do, because the Zhuk captain was very pissed off and he had a score to settle, and he had superiors to answer to who I was sure were reaming his ass in Spanish over the radio. I’ve been on both ends of radio transmissions like that.

Felipe concluded, “If we maintain this course, the Stenka’s cannons will get within effective firing range of us in... maybe ten minutes.”

“Who told you about thirty-millimeter cannons?”

“Amigos.”

I need a few amigos like that. “What’s his effective firing range?”

“Four thousand meters.” He did the math and said, “About two and a half miles.” Felipe also pointed out, “He could begin firing even sooner.”

Right. The Stenka’s rapid-fire cannons could put out a lot of shit from the twin barrels, and even if it wasn’t accurate fire from a long distance, something could hit you. Or you could be having an exceptionally good day and you could sail through the shit storm. It could go either way.

Felipe gave me his unsolicited opinion. “We need to turn away from him.”

That seemed obvious, but I pointed out, “If we keep a straight course north, we’ll be in international waters in maybe ten minutes.”

Felipe informed me, “He doesn’t give a shit. That bastard would follow us to Miami if he thought he could get away with it.”

“I know that,” I assured him.

Jack also gave me his unsolicited opinion. “We gotta head west.”

“Sara?”

She agreed with Jack and Felipe, but also said, “Do what you think is best.”

Well, there was no best. I reminded everyone, “If we head west, we’ll be running along the coast of Cuba, and if we do that there will be other Guarda Frontera boats sailing out of their ports that can intercept us along the coast.”

No one had any opinion on that, so I continued, “But if we continue north, away from the coast, the only patrol boats we need to worry about are the two that are already on our ass.”

My crew understood the dilemma. And that’s all any captain can ask for. I turned on the radio, which was still on Channel 16, and listened, but the Cuban patrol boats had gone silent. Basically, they had nothing to say to me, or to anyone else who might be listening to Channel 16.

I handed the mic to Felipe and said, “Broadcast a distress message, give our location, heading, and speed, then repeat it in Spanish for our Cuban amigos behind us.” I added, “Say we are being pursued by Cuban gunboats.”

He took the mic and asked, “Our current heading?”

“No. We’re taking a heading of... three hundred degrees.” I turned the wheel to port and picked up a heading that would take us northwest, toward the Straits of Florida. This heading would keep us a little closer to the Cuban coast than I wanted and keep us in Cuban territorial waters longer than I liked. But it was the most direct route home.

Felipe began broadcasting, first in English, then in Spanish. English is the international language of the sea, but I wanted to make sure that the Guarda Frontera understood, in Spanish, that we were ratting them out. So even if we didn’t make it, they couldn’t claim, “No comprende.” But to put myself in their position, they were justified in pursuing and firing on a boat full of murderers.

Meanwhile, the Zhuk had changed course in response to my change of course, and so had the Stenka. The Zhuk was gaining on us a bit. Now that I’d changed course and was moving almost directly away from the Stenka, he wouldn’t be in firing range for about fifteen or twenty minutes if my calculations were correct. All we could do now was maintain this heading and hope that the Guarda Frontera boats received orders to give up the pursuit. I mean, hopefully the regime wouldn’t want to cause an international incident on the high seas. True, we were no longer innocent tourists — we were wanted killers — but the bastards in Havana had to decide how to deal with that problem at one in the morning — militarily or diplomatically. I hope they were having as bad a night as I was.

I turned on my chart plotter for the first time and pulled up a view that took in Key West, which was about three hundred and fifty kilometers away — about two hundred miles. I corrected my heading and hit the autopilot, which would continue to correct for drift caused by the weather and currents.

I had the wind at my back, riding ahead of the storm, which I assumed was still tracking on a northwesterly course, and I was getting a full twenty-five knots out of The Maine.

The chart clock said it was 1:57 A.M. I should be in Key West by 10, maybe 11 a.m., and in the Green Parrot for lunch. If anyone had an appetite.

The only problem with this plan was the two Cuban patrol boats, which I assumed still wanted to blow us out of the water.

I glanced at my radar screen. The Zhuk was still gaining on me, but he’d have to follow me halfway to the Keys before I was in range of his machine guns. And he might do that. I didn’t think I wanted to take him on again. God gives you only one miracle to save your ass. The next one is on you.

The real problem was still the Stenka. He was doing about forty-five knots, and I remembered him anchored outside the marina — a big bastard, bristling with mounted machine guns, and two gun turrets, fore and aft, that housed the twin rapid-fire cannons. I also pictured him now, cutting through the waves, and the captain staring at his radar, watching the distance between him and me beginning to close.

I looked again at the chart plotter. I was already too far west to shoot for Andros Island. I would have had to do that soon after I’d exchanged fire with the Zhuk. Now I was in the middle of nowhere, committed to my heading for the Keys, which was the closest land — if you didn’t count Cuba.

We’d crossed into international waters about fifteen minutes before, and as I suspected, the Guarda Frontera boats also crossed that line without a pause. They were in hot pursuit, and international waters didn’t mean much except that anyone could go there without permission. U.S. territorial waters began twelve nautical miles off the coast of the Keys, and no matter how I did the math, it didn’t look like we were going to get that far before the Stenka caught up to us.

Jack came into the cabin. “How we doing?”

“What’s the radio frequency for Dial-a-Prayer?”

He looked at the radar. “I think you need a higher frequency.”

“Right.”

“You got any more tricks up your sleeve?”

“I’m thinking.” I asked him, “What’s happening below?”

“Sara’s in the port stateroom, maybe catching some Zs. Felipe’s in the galley lightening our load of rum.”

“He earned a drink.”

“You want one?”

“No. But you go ahead.”

Jack remembered one of his T-shirts and said, “I only drink a little, but when I do, I become a different person, and that person drinks a lot.”

I smiled. “I’ll take a smoke.”

He fished his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, and I could see he was in some pain from where the AK round smacked his vest.

I took a cigarette and he lit me up with his Zippo, then lit himself up and said, “These things are gonna kill me.”

“You should live so long.”

He looked at the fuel gauge, checked out the radar again, then the GPS and chart plotter, but didn’t say anything.

The seas were getting calmer as we traveled west, and outside the windshield I could see stars peeking through the racing clouds. We had the wind at our backs, and The Maine was making good time. But not good enough.

My radar was set for six miles, to keep a close eye on our pursuers, whom I’d code-named Asshole A and Asshole B. Asshole A — the Zhuk — actually seemed to have lost ground, and it occurred to me that he may have a fuel situation. If he wasn’t topped off when he left Cayo Guillermo for his nightly patrol, he’d need to calculate how far he could follow me before he ran out of gas in the middle of the ocean.

I glanced at Asshole B — the Stenka — and saw he was chugging along, making maybe forty-five knots, and closing the gap. This asshole wanted to kill me.

I adjusted my radar to take in the whole fifty-mile radius of its range, and Jack and I looked for other ships out there, but I saw only two — one to the west heading west along the shipping lane through the Straits of Florida. The other ship was on a heading that would put it into Havana Harbor. The storm had pretty much cleared out the sea to the east and no one was in our vicinity. Even the drug runners were taking the night off.

I said to Jack, “Broadcast a distress call.”

He took the mic and began broadcasting, giving our position and heading, and who we were, and the nature of our problem, which he described as two fucking Cuban gunboats trying to kill us.

I advised him, “Say we also have a fuel situation and an injured crew member.”

“Who’s injured?”

“You, asshole.”

“Right.” He glanced at the fuel gauge, then continued his transmission.

The rules of the sea — the customs and traditions — say that you need to come to the aid of a ship in distress. But if the distress is a shoot-out on the high seas, there might be a lot of sea captains who’d rather avoid that, on the theory that your distress was not the elements, or an act of God, and not the kind of distress that obligated them to risk their own asses or the asses of their crew or passengers. The fuel situation, however, and the injured crew member might awaken a captain’s sense of brotherly obligation. I suggested, “Tell them we’re running out of booze.”

Jack, whose dark humor is darker than mine, asked me, “Should I say we came in second in a Cuban fishing tournament?”

“Worth a try.”

Jack transmitted again, sticking to the facts, but no one replied. I mean, we could have not mentioned the Cuban gunboats, but that’s not fair. If you ask someone for help, you need to lay out the dangers. If I’d heard this transmission... it would depend on whom I had aboard. Or I might wonder what the ship in trouble did to get chased by Cuban gunboats. Or I might think it was a hoax, or a trap to pirate my boat. Lots of stuff happens on the high seas that wouldn’t or couldn’t happen on land. It was a different planet out here; a watery grave, waiting to receive the dead and the soon-to-be-dead.

I said to Jack, “Okay, we’ll try again later.” Meanwhile, I’d listen for a response. I said to Jack, “I need a damage report.”

He replied, “It is what you see.”

“What do I not see?”

“You don’t see that a few rounds passed through the head, and I think the fresh-water tank sprung a leak.”

“How’s the beer?”

“Good. But I think we have a small leak in the fuel tank.”

I glanced at the fuel gauge and nodded. If we had daylight, I could see if we were leaving a diesel slick behind us. I wasn’t sure if we were leaking diesel or burning it in the rough sea. In either case, Key West was looking less possible. But Key Largo was still within reach if the fuel gauge stopped going south. Fuel, however, was the least of my problems. The Stenka was still the main problem, and he was gaining on us. I tightened the radar image. He was three nautical miles behind us.

Sara came into the cabin, and Jack, who looked like he was about to pass out, said he was going below to make some coffee. “You want some?”

“Sure.” I asked Sara, “How’re you doing?”

“All right.”

“How’s Felipe?”

“He’s in a stateroom.”

I let her know, “He did good back there.”

She nodded, and sat in the chair next to me, noticing that I’d turned on the GPS and chart plotter, which reminded both of us of our sunset cruise when we’d looked at Havana Harbor. If we knew then what we knew now, we’d probably both have said buenas noches and have a good life.

She said, “Talk to me. What’s happening?”

“Well, we’ve come about eighty miles since our encounter with the Zhuk, and we have maybe a hundred twenty to go before we get into U.S. territorial waters.”

She nodded. “Will they follow us?”

“They will break off five or ten miles before they reach that line.” I explained, “Closer than that is a provocation, which will likely lead to a radio warning, and may cause the Coast Guard to send a cutter out.”

“Okay... so we’re halfway home?”

“We are,” which was true in terms of navigation.

She looked at the radar screen. “They seem closer.”

“They are.”

She didn’t comment.

We sat at the control console, side by side, looking through the bullet-pocked glass at the clearing sky. The sea was calming down and it was turning out to be a nice night.

It was 2:46 A.M. now, and if I could maintain twenty or twenty-five knots, and if the fuel held out, and if the Stenka didn’t get in firing range, we’d be okay for a mid-morning arrival at Charter Boat Row.

I heard something coming out of the speakers, then Bobby Darin started crooning, “Somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere waiting for me, my lover stands on golden sands...”

I would have preferred my Jay Z CD for morale boosting, but Jack wanted to use my CDs for skeet shooting.

So we cruised along, like this was a sunrise cruise, or a ship of fools singing in the dark.

I looked at my radar. The Stenka was closer, but I noticed that the Zhuk seemed a bit farther. Then, as I watched, the Zhuk changed course and took a southwesterly heading, toward the Cuban coast. I looked at the chart plotter. It seemed that if the Zhuk maintained his new heading, he’d sail into Matanzas Harbor. I assumed he had a fuel situation. Why else would anyone go to Matanzas? I mean, I’ve been there. The place sucks. But don’t miss the pharmacy museum.

Sara asked, “What’s happening?”

I explained, “The Zhuk has broken off the pursuit.” I added, “Must be low on fuel.”

“Good.” She added, in case I forgot, “God is looking out for us.”

“Ask him about the Stenka.”

Jack came into the cabin with my coffee and I advised him of the Zhuk’s change of course, and also asked him to play a CD that was recorded in this century.

He ignored that and said, “Maybe the Stenka is going to break off.”

I looked at the radar screen, but the Stenka held his course, and as I tightened the image, I estimated that he was about two miles behind us — and we were within range of his radar-controlled 30mm cannons.

I said to Jack, “Take the helm.”

I got up and retrieved the binoculars from a well on top of the console, then exited the cabin.

Sara called out, “Where are you going?”

“Be right back.”

I climbed the side rungs up the tuna tower and stood holding on to the padded bolster, which I felt had a hole through it. Jack was a lucky guy.

I focused the binocs on the horizon to the east. I couldn’t see the Stenka, but I saw his running lights, so he wasn’t running dark as we were, and there was no reason he should run dark; he was the meanest motherfucker on the water.

I kept looking at the lights on the horizon, then I saw the unmistakable flashes of rapidly firing guns. Holy shit! I called out, “Evasive action!”

I expected Jack to hesitate as he comprehended that order, but The Maine immediately cut hard to port, just as I heard the sound of large-caliber rounds streaking past the boat, then I saw them impacting into the sea and exploding where we would have been.

The Stenka captain wasn’t using tracer rounds, which he’d only use if he could see his target, and with the radar controlling his guns the only thing he wanted to see now was an explosion on the horizon. Meanwhile, I heard Bobby Darin belting out “Mack the Knife.”

The Maine cut to starboard, held course for a few seconds, then cut to port again. Jack was running a tight zigzag, which hopefully was too erratic for the radar-controlled guns to keep up with. But that didn’t stop the Stenka from trying, and I could see the guns on his forward deck lighting up, and now and then I saw the point of impact on the water where the multiple rounds hit and exploded, then I heard the faint sound of his guns, like rolling thunder on the horizon.

There was nothing more to see here, and I started to climb down the tower as The Maine kept changing course quickly at twenty-five knots, making the boat roll hard from side to side. I nearly lost my grip a few times, but I got down to the side rail and jumped onto the deck and shoulder-rolled to starboard with the deck, then rolled to port when The Maine quickly changed course.

I couldn’t stand, so I scrambled into the cabin on my hands and knees and pulled myself into the chair where Sara had been. I assumed Jack had ordered her below.

Jack was standing at the helm, so I let him keep the wheel because he seemed to know what he was doing, and what he was doing was cutting the throttle as he changed course, then opening the throttle, so he was varying our speed and our course at the same time. He was also singing a duet with Bobby Darin: “Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear, and he—”

“Jack, shut the fuck up!”

“Okay.”

I had no idea if the fire-control radar system was sophisticated enough to keep up with the changing target, but if those twin cannons were also employed as anti-aircraft weapons, they could react quickly. And yet we hadn’t been hit yet.

Jack glanced at me. “You got any suggestions?”

“Yeah. Don’t get hit.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll take the helm.”

“I got the rhythm and I don’t want to lose it.”

“Okay... Tell me when you get tired.”

“We don’t have that long.”

All of a sudden, a deafening explosion cut through the noise of the sea and the engine, followed by another explosion that shook the boat and knocked me to the deck.

Jack shouted, “We’ve been hit!”

I could see down the steps, and saw smoke and fire in the lower cabin. I got to my feet, grabbed a flashlight and the fire extinguisher from the bulkhead, and charged down the steps into the smoke. The only good news was that the entertainment system was silent.

I didn’t see Sara or Felipe, but I did see that the galley was ablaze and I emptied the fire extinguisher at the flames, then grabbed the galley extinguisher and emptied that, which killed the fire. The smoke was thick, but I could see a gaping hole in the starboard hull of the lower cabin, and smoke coming through the door of the starboard stateroom where the second round must have hit. The wind was streaming in through the hole above the galley, dissipating the smoke, and I ran into the starboard stateroom, which was dark.

There was a six-inch hole in the hull above the berth, which was empty, but then my flashlight fell on Felipe, who was on the floor. I didn’t see blood and I saw his chest heaving, so I left the room and kicked open the door of the portside stateroom. Sara was curled up on the floor and I knelt beside her. “You okay?”

She looked up at me, eyes wide, but didn’t reply.

“Get a life vest on and come to the bottom of the stairs, but stay below until you hear from me. Understood?”

She nodded.

I was about to leave, but I asked her, “Where’s your Glock?”

She didn’t reply so I shined my light around the stateroom and saw the Glock on the berth. I didn’t want her using it on herself, so I took it and said, “Felipe is in the other stateroom. See if he needs help.” I added, “There’s a first aid kit on the bulkhead in the head — the bathroom. Okay?”

She nodded and started to get to her feet.

I left the stateroom, stood under the hatch, and emptied the Glock into the Plexiglas to vent the smoke.

I went up to the cabin where Jack was still standing at the helm, and I saw he was lighting a cigarette with his magical Zippo, while turning the wheel left and right. He asked, “How’s it look below?”

“Under control.”

“Everybody okay?”

“Felipe might not be.” I told him, “Go below and check him out. Get the first aid kit, and get life jackets on everybody.”

“We abandoning ship?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s still floating, Mac.”

“It’s a fucking target, Jack.”

“So you wanna get eaten by a shark, or you wanna die in an explosion? Which?”

“I want to get into the water before the Stenka blows up The Maine.”

“Okay. You think we’ll be picked up by a luxury liner or by the Stenka?”

“Go below!”

“Don’t forget the sharks.”

He moved aside, I took the wheel, and he retreated below.

I continued the evasive action, cutting the wheel from port to starboard, and I also varied the time between turns. I left the throttle alone, so we were making maximum speed in the hard turns, but the maneuver caused the boat to heel sharply. I didn’t know how best to confuse the radar that was directing the guns, but I had to assume there was some mechanical lag time between the radar locking on and the gun turret moving left or right as the twin guns elevated or lowered to follow the radar-acquired target. Also, there’d be some lag time as the projectiles traveled four thousand meters. I also didn’t know if the guns were fired automatically with the lock-on, or if they were command-fired by the captain or a gunner. All I knew for sure was that the twin 30mm cannons could be outmaneuvered. That’s why we were still alive. But we’d gotten hit, and the odds were that was going to happen again.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t see any rounds impacting on the water, and just as I thought the asshole may have run out of ammunition, I heard what sounded like a flock of wild geese with rockets up their asses streaking overhead. Shit!

Jack stuck his head up the stairwell and said, “Felipe’s okay. But he has a suggestion.”

“What?”

“Transmit a surrender to the Stenka, come around, and head toward him.” He added, “He says he’ll do it in Spanish.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself in English.”

“Sara sort of told him that already.”

“Good.”

Jack also informed me, “It’s a fucking mess down here.”

“Everybody have life jackets?”

“Yeah.”

“Everybody topside.”

“You want a drink?”

“Later. Move it.”

Jack, Sara, and Felipe came into the cabin and I said, “Go out to the deck, and if we get hit again and if there’s a fire, or if we start taking water, we all go over the side.”

Sara said to me, “I told you, I will not let them capture me.”

I assured her, “They won’t see you in the water.”

She seemed to recall my spiel on our sunset cruise and said, “I will not be eaten by sharks.”

Felipe looked like he was in a daze, but he said to me, “You have to surrender. I’ll transmit—”

“Forget it!” We seemed to be running out of bad options — surrender, abandon ship, get eaten by sharks, or get blown up. And when you run out of bad options, it’s okay to do nothing and let fate do something. I said, “Move out to the deck—”

I heard the explosion at the same time that I saw it, and the top of the bow erupted into a ball of fire. Debris flew into the windshield and I instinctively ducked as I held on to the wheel and held the boat in a sharp port turn.

I stood and looked at the damage. A hole the size of a pie plate had appeared in the white fiberglass bow deck a few feet in front of the hatch. If anyone had been in the cabin below, they’d be dead or badly injured.

Jack ran below to check for fire, then came up and said, “We’re okay.”

Relative to what?

I realized I’d been in my port turn too long, and I could almost see the barrels of the twin cannons tracking me. I cut hard to starboard, knocking Sara and Felipe off their feet, and sending Jack tumbling back into the cabin below. Again, I heard the flock of wild geese, but this time they were off my port side and I knew they’d have caught me broadside if I’d continued into my left turn. I resumed my evasive zigzagging, thinking of that alligator on my ass. Alligators never give up, because they’re hungry, so you can never give up, because you want to live. Eventually somebody makes a mistake and loses. It can’t go on forever.

Sara and Felipe were on the rear deck now, lying face down with their arms and legs spread to keep from rolling as I took The Maine through its wild maneuvers. Jack was in the chair next to me, lighting up. It occurred to me that I’d missed an option, which was to just cut the throttle and drift until a full salvo of 30mm rounds obliterated The Maine and us. I looked at the throttle and Jack saw what I was thinking.

He asked, “You want a cigarette?”

“No.”

“They’re gluten-free.”

“I gotta tell you, Jack, your sense of humor is annoying.”

“You shoulda said something.”

“It just occurred to me.”

“Yeah? And you know what just occurred to me? It occurred to me that I told you this Cuba shit was fucked up.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Yeah. Lotsa shit seems like a good idea at the time.”

“Why don’t you go out on the deck and keep our passengers company?”

“I like it here.” He added, “Pay attention to what you’re doing, Captain.”

“You’re distracting me.”

“And don’t even think about touching that throttle.”

I didn’t reply.

I kept at my escape-and-evasion game, trying to vary my maneuvers, but I realized that by trying to veer away from a salvo of cannon shells, I could just as easily run into them. This was not as skilled a game as I was trying to convince myself that it was; a lot of this was just luck. This was really my lucky day.

Felipe had apparently come to a different conclusion, because he was in the cabin now with the Smith & Wesson in one hand, hanging on to the door frame with the other. “Give me the mic.”

Jack said to me, “Ignore him and he’ll go away.”

I ignored him, but Felipe said, “I’m counting to three. If you don’t give me the mic—”

“Felipe,” I said calmly, “I am not giving you the mic. We are not surrending the ship. We are—”

“One.”

Jack said, “Put the gun down.”

“Two.”

Jack added, “You get one shot, asshole, then the guy you didn’t shoot is going to take you down and shove that gun so far up your ass that the first round’ll blow your tonsils out.”

Felipe processed that and I glanced back to see his gun hand shaking. “It’s okay, amigo. We’re all scared. But we’re doing okay.”

Well, not that good. The Stenka captain had changed to tracer ammo, probably to add a little mind-fucking to the game, and we all saw the streaks of green tracers flying along our starboard side, not twenty feet away. I saw them drop into the dark sea in front of us, and I counted eight explosions. Holy shit...

I turned hard to starboard and the next flight of green streaks sailed about five feet above the cabin. I liked this game better when I couldn’t see how close they were coming.

Another flight of eight green tracers streaked toward us and hit the water about ten feet from the stern.

Jack said to me, “Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’ and pay no attention to the incoming.” He reminded me, “You can’t stop it and you can’t change its trajectory. You just gotta keep runnin’ and swivelin’ your hips.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

I didn’t look back at Felipe, but Jack was keeping an eye on him and I assumed Felipe was having a catatonic moment. I did glance back at the deck and saw Sara still sprawled out, blissfully unaware that the Stenka was now showing us what we couldn’t see before. As I was about to turn my attention back to the wheel, I saw streaks of green coming right at our tail and two cannon shells impacted in the stern and I heard a muffled explosion, followed by the sound of the sea, but not the sound of the engine. We were dead in the water.

Sara seemed almost unaware that we’d been hit, but then she realized something was different and she got slowly to her feet and started coming toward the cabin. Behind her, I saw smoke from the engine — but no fire.

Everything seemed to go silent, and I heard the waves and the wind, and the firing from the Stenka seemed to have stopped. I looked out at the horizon and saw in the far distance the Stenka’s running lights coming toward us. He should reach us in about ten minutes. Which was enough time to go to Plan B. Whatever that was.

I looked at Jack, but he had nothing to say except, “Shit.”

Sara looked at me and I said, “Sorry.” I thought a moment, then said, “The captain will stay with the ship. You will all abandon ship now.” I also said, “Good luck.”

But no one was moving from the cabin.

Jack said, “We all go together, or we all stay onboard together.”

Felipe spoke first and said, “I’m staying onboard.”

Sara said, “I will not be captured. I’m going into the sea.” She looked at me. “And you’re coming with me.”

Jack said, “I’m not sure what I’m doing, but I want a hand to bury those... those remains at sea.”

So we all went out on the deck and Jack and I lifted the steamer trunk by its handles and rested it on the gunnel.

Sara said a prayer for the dead that began with, “Heavenly Father,” and ended with, “we commend the souls of these brave men into your hands.”

Jack and I were about to tip the trunk over the side when we both heard a familiar sound and looked out at the horizon. Coming toward us from the north, a few hundred feet away, and not fifty feet above the water, were two huge helicopters. I recognized their profiles as Black Hawks.

They tipped their rotor blades, then turned east toward the Stenka.

One of them fired a long stream of red tracers across the sky, his way of saying to the Stenka’s captain, “Game over. Go home.”

The other Black Hawk turned and came toward us and I saw a big rescue basket hanging from a line below the open door.

We pulled the trunk back onboard, but no one had anything to say until Sara said, “We’re all going home. Together.”

Apparently this was true.