The Last Witness

[TWO]

Latitude 23 Degrees 32 Minutes 64 Seconds North

Longitude 81 Degrees 92 Minutes 77 Seconds West

North of the Republic of Cuba

Sunday, November 16, 1:35 A.M.

“Damn it, Miguel, that’s got to be them!” First Mate Raul Alfonso announced, peering through binoculars as he stood beside the helm of the Nuevo Dia. “Those Pangas are right on the GPS coordinates they sent. But why two boats? Is one a backup? Or what. .?”

The sky was clear, the winds calm, the sea almost flat. The thin crescent of a new moon hung near the horizon amid a blanket of twinkling stars. The humid air was thick, its salty smell heavy.

The New Day was a faded black, rusty steel-hulled cargo vessel 280 feet in length. In addition to a regular schedule of calling on ports around the Bahamian Islands, she and her sister ship made staggered once-a-week trips to Havana from their home port of Miami. The vessels delivered items deemed by the Communist government of Cuba to be of humanitarian value-for an outrageous import tariff paid by the Cuban exiles in the States who sent them-and thus permissible to enter the sovereign island nation.

Months earlier, in another humanitarian shipment, handheld Motorola two-way radios and Garmin GPS units, possession of which Cuban law considered treason and would result in the bearer’s immediate imprisonment and likely torture, had been smuggled to Cuban fishermen inside fifty-pound bags of dried frijoles negros. Black beans, a Cuban staple, were in almost as great a demand as rice.

A chunky round-faced thirty-year-old Cuban-American, Alfonso stood five-five. He wore a mussed tan uniform, the shirt untucked and his ample belly straining its buttons.

Even with the high-powered optics and the clear weather, he could make out no more than the silhouettes of the two Pangas in the predawn darkness. The narrow, low-profile, twenty-five-foot-long fishing boats, each powered by a single outboard motor, were designed more for calmer inshore waters than for the open sea.

“Perhaps God is with us,” Alfonso said, as he passed the binoculars to the ship’s master.

“Don’t speak too soon, mi amigo,” Captain Miguel Treto replied.

Treto also was Cuban-American. At thirty-three years of age, he looked like a slightly older version of Alfonso, though not nearly as chunky. His tan uniform was much neater.

Alfonso pointed out the pilothouse window.

“Near one o’clock,” he added helpfully, “about two hundred yards out.”

“Got ’em, Raul,” Captain Treto said, almost immediately after putting the rubber cups to his eyes. “But, like what happened last month, they could just be other fishermen. Or, worse, even a trap. Radio the code to confirm that’s really them.”

The previous day, the Nuevo Dia had made the run from Miami to the Port of Havana. The Cuban capital was only ninety miles due south of Key West. Alfonso and the four-man crew had unloaded the cargo of forty-foot-long corrugated metal intermodal containers in just under two hours. Immediately thereafter, with paperwork complete-and none of the crew, including the captain, having been allowed ashore-lines were cast off and the ship headed back to the States.

When south of the Gulf Stream, particularly during the ten-mile approach and departure of the island, it was standard operating procedure for the captain to keep the speed of the twin diesels at a fraction of the usual twenty-knots-an-hour cruise speed. This accomplished a number of things, beginning with better fuel consumption. But more importantly it also bought extra time for the captain to locate any rendezvous target and, during a pickup, for the ship not to draw attention when suddenly slowing or stopping.

Since clearing the breakers at the mouth of the Port of Havana, the Nuevo Dia had been making just over five knots per hour. She now, after four hours, was approximately twenty miles east, not far from Santa Cruz del Norte, the small fishing town (population thirty-two thousand) where the Rio Santa Cruz emptied into the Caribbean.

The lumbering vessel-in addition to her red, green, and white navigation lights burning-had small clear lights on either side of the bow. They illuminated the thirty-six-inch-high rust-stained white letters that spelled out NUEVO DIA on the faded black hull.

If they have binocs, Alfonso thought, they won’t be as good as mine.

And if I can’t make out their details, who knows what they can-or can’t-see?

Alfonso thumbed the handheld’s PUSH TO TALK key three times. That caused three clicks to sound on the speaker of any radio within ten or so miles that shared the frequency. They knew that it was possible that someone in the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias-Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces-could be monitoring radio traffic and would somehow interpret the clicks as being a signal. But, being a very common frequency and not maritime specific-not to mention the laxness of the Tropas Guarda Fronteras, especially at such an early hour-their experience had been that it also was equally entirely improbable.

TGF, the Interior Ministry’s Border Guard, used aging Soviet-built patrol boats to interdict Cubans fleeing the island and anti-Castro agents infiltrating it. But, with failing assets and regular shortages of fuel, they managed to do so only sporadically.

“Nothing!” Captain Treto said unnecessarily, as they both strained to see out into the dark distance, Treto still using the binoculars.

Then, a long moment later, a beam from a flashlight on the closest Panga lit momentarily, then lit again, and again.

“There!” Alfonso said.

He keyed the radio twice more, and after another moment the light flashed twice more.

“Good enough?” Alfonso said.

Treto grunted.

“Not really,” he said, putting down the binoculars. “Anything is possible.”

“So then what do you-?”

“Here,” Treto said, interrupting him.

He reached under the helm and came out with a dull stainless steel Remington twelve-gauge pump shotgun. Instead of a long wooden stock, it had a compact black polymer pistol grip. And its barrel had been cut short.

“Prepare to take them aboard, Raul,” Treto ordered, racking the foregrip back then forward to chamber a round of double-aught buckshot. He handed the shotgun to Alfonso. “Be quick. But take no chances. If it goes to shit, we open fire, then scuttle the boats with the bodies.”

“And if it’s just Castro’s TGF goons trying to lure us into a trap?”

“Same as always. We say we thought that any small boats way out here had to be in distress-‘We know nothing about anyone seeking exile in the States!’-and were following the United Nations Convention that rendering aid is the ship master’s legal and moral obligation. And I’ll let them hear me call Miami on the satellite phone and repeat that. If that fails. .”

His voice trailed off.

“If that fails-what?”

“Then we pray, mi amigo. We pray.”

He patted his back. “Now go, Alfonso.”

“Aye-aye.”

Ten minutes later, Captain Treto had the Nuevo Dia sitting dead in the water, her diesels idling. He stood just inside the open door of the pilothouse, using the steel wall to conceal himself as he covered Alfonso and the crew working almost immediately below. The butt of a stainless steel Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic carbine with a thirty-round magazine of.223 caliber hollow points and ten-power scope rested on his right hip, muzzle pointed skyward.

The crew tied up the two battered gray Pangas alongside the ship almost at her stern, where the deck dropped closest to the water. Alfonso had the shotgun and a flashlight trained on the boats, the barrel following the beam as it bounced from stem to stern and illuminated those aboard. He and one of the men in the first Panga exchanged greetings in Spanish.

Those boats are packed! Treto thought. But why am I surprised?

Alfonso turned, looked up to the pilothouse, and gave Treto a thumbs-up.

The only damn sure thing we’ve learned to expect is the unexpected.

One guy was all they said to pick up. And now there’s got to be more than a dozen people in those boats. Must’ve paid off the TGF-or took ’em out.

What the hell. The more the merrier.

Singuense un caballo, Castros!

The long, narrow Pangas bobbed and rocked as the men and women aboard moved anxiously, making it difficult for them to transition to the twenty-foot-long ladder hanging over the side of the more stable ship.

But slowly, one by one, they managed.

At the gunwale, two crewmen stood on either side of the top of the ladder. They shone flashlights on the ladder rungs, helping the passengers aboard as they reached the top. Two other crewmen then led them to a bunkroom below deck.

–

Fifteen minutes later, Captain Treto heard the starter on the engine of the first Panga grinding, and after a moment the outboard finally fired up loudly. Two of the ship’s crew then untied the Panga’s fore and aft lines and tossed them over the side. They went to the lines of the second Panga and prepared to repeat the process as the first boat quickly pulled away and disappeared into the inky dark.

A moment later, its engine running and lines retrieved, the second Panga followed.

One pickup down, one to go, Treto thought, glancing at his wristwatch.

Should make it in under two hours.

He sighed audibly, then stepped back inside the pilothouse and stuck the carbine in its rack by the helm.

He put the Nuevo Dia’s engines in gear, set a due north course, and gradually ramped up her speed to twenty knots.

At just shy of four A.M., right at the southern edge of the Gulf Stream, First Mate Raul Alfonso oversaw the securing of a Bahamian-flagged forty-five-foot cabin cruiser alongside the cargo ship.

The cabin cruiser was far more stable than the Pangas had been, and almost as soon as the boarding ladder was put over the side, someone was quickly coming up it, followed by another and another.

Captain Miguel Treto lit a fat cigar as he again watched the boarding process from the pilothouse door.

The cigar barely had an ash ready to fall as he smiled appreciatively at the last of ten young women stepping aboard. Then two of his crew went quickly down the ladder and reappeared minutes later, each struggling under the weight of an enormous black duffel bag on his back.

Just as we were told to expect, he thought. Will wonders ever cease?