by Matthew Rief
I packed an extra Sig for myself and an extra Glock for Ange, along with stacks of untraceable ammunition for both. I also grabbed my M4 carbine assault rifle, Ange’s collapsible .338 Lapua sniper rifle, two bulletproof vests, a small case of throwing knives, and a case filled with my favorite intel gathering electronics.
Scott had used to call it saddling up back in the SEALs. Looking over the impressive amount of firepower, I realized that it had been a long time since I’d saddled up to that extent. But going against a powerful sex-trafficking ring, we’d need all the help we could carry.
We had a small special section within the safe. A section we rarely touched. Remnants of our past lives as mercenaries when we’d often had to sneak into countries and infiltrate operations without drawing attention. I grabbed a fake Canadian passport for each of us from a stack. I also grabbed a few wads of Cuban Convertible Pesos, or CUC as they’re referred to. Though Cuba has two main currencies, the CUC is the one most used by tourists.
Once I had everything I needed, I loaded it all up into narrow watertight hard-shell cases. We filled a waterproof backpack with extra clothes and tactical gear, then loaded everything into the truck.
On the drive over to the marina, I asked Ange where Jack was.
“He’s tugging the Calypso to Queen Anne’s Boatyard,” Ange said. “The deck got blown to hell by the grenade, and the engines are shot. He’s taking it for repairs.”
Queen Anne’s Boatyard. That gives me an idea.
“The old fishing trawler still over there on the hard?”
“Far as I know.” Ange paused a moment, then glanced at me and nodded. “I’ll give Nick a call.”
She quickly got ahold of Nick Alto, the owner of Queen Anne’s, and after he verified that the trawler was still there, Ange asked how long before he could get it in the water and ready to go.
“Half an hour,” he replied.
“Do it,” Ange said. “We’ll cover any costs when we get there.”
After hanging up, she turned to me.
“Looks like we’ve got transportation,” she said.
At the marina, we boarded the Baia and loaded up two sets of rebreather gear, along with our fins and masks, into a cart. We also loaded up two sea scooters, underwater flashlights, and drysuits. Once we had everything we needed, I locked up the Baia and turned on the security system.
We carted our stuff to my truck, loaded it up, then took off out of the city.
It took us an hour to drive from Key West to Queen Anne’s Salvage in Marathon. It was a nice place, with a boat launch, rows of boat storage racks, and a twenty-foot-deep channel. Nick had been running the operation for years and had inherited the business from his dad.
I parked the truck in the small dirt-and-sand lot. We walked toward the water and spotted Nick just as they were lowering the trawler into the water. He motioned toward the trawler, then yelled that he’d be right in the office. Just out over the water, I spotted the Calypso being towed toward the dock.
Instead of waiting in the office, we walked over and offered a hand with the straps after the trawler was lowered.
“Thanks for getting her in on such short notice, Nick,” I said as we offered our assistance. “Any word on what’s gonna happen with her?”
Nick was average height and well built. He always wore cargo shorts and flip-flops and always had on a dirty old tee shirt and sunglasses with a strap.
“I got no problem holding on to her until the government decides what they’re gonna do,” he said. “Providing they keep sending the checks.” He looked over the trawler, then added, “She sure is a strange boat. I’ve never seen anything like her in thirty years of examining thousands of crafts.”
He was right. The trawler had originally been constructed by a private military group called Darkwater. Though a rusted and decrepit hunk of metal by all appearances, the trawler had some of the most advanced electronics on earth. And it had two 800-hp Mercruiser engines that could push the heavy craft through the water at up to forty knots.
I’d first encountered it when I was attacked by a Russian Darkwater assassin in Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas. After me and an old Navy buddy dealt with the guy and his posse, the government had taken possession of the trawler. It had been at Queen Anne’s ever since, only going out on a few occasions when we required its particular blend of speed, advanced electronics, and ambiguity.
The Calypso was pulled toward the dock. Jack was standing up in the flybridge, but he climbed down and tossed me a few lines to pull him over beside the trawler. He was wearing nothing but a pair of board shorts and seemed quiet and sullen, nothing like his usual laid-back persona.
I climbed onto the Calypso and pulled him aside.
“You alright?” I asked, taking a look at the damage.
The main deck was cut and torn, the windows shattered to pieces. There was a burn mark crater in the center of the white deck.
“I’m fine,” he said. He took in a deep breath, then sighed. “They find the boat?”
I shook my head.
“That’s what we’re gonna do.”
He nodded.
As we tied the Calypso off, Nick strode over and froze in his tracks when he saw the damage.
“Jackie, what did you do this time?” he asked as Jack hopped onto the dock.
“A grenade blew up on the deck,” he replied flatly.
He clearly wasn’t in the mood for beating around the bush.
Nick stared blankly for a few seconds.
“Dare I ask how in the hell that happened?”
Jack went quiet, then handed Nick the keys and said, “Bit of a long story. Do me a favor and call me when you have an estimate.”
After Nick pocketed the keys, Jack walked over to us near the base of the dock.
“You’re not gonna stay?” Nick said, raising his eyebrows. “Usually you won’t let someone so much as clean the windows of your pride and joy without you looking over their shoulder.”
“Any other time I would, man. But we’ve got something we need to do.”
“Gonna go after the ones who threw the grenade?” When we were silent for a few seconds, he raised his hands in the air. “None of my business. I get it. I’ll send you a quote later this afternoon.”
Jack nodded. “Thanks, Nick.”
Nick motioned toward the trawler and added, “She’s ready to go. Keys are on the dash.”
Jack helped us haul the gear onto the trawler. We checked a few things in the cockpit and engine room to make sure that the vessel was seaworthy. As Nick had said, she was in good order, topped off and ready to go.
I started up the massive 800-hp engines and powered on the electronics, and we cast off the lines. Once we’d moved away from the dock and into the channel, I handed control over to Jack.
“Do we have a heading?” he asked.
“I’m gonna check in with the guys,” I replied. “Havana for the time being.”
He nodded and punched in the destination.
I sat alongside Ange at the table. She already had the laptop open and was researching shipping ports in and around Havana. My phone vibrated in my pocket just as I was about to grab it. It was Wilson over at the CIA. I put it on speakerphone and answered.
“The freighter pulled into Havana Harbor,” he said. “Looks like it’s tying off in Casablanca, a ward on the northern shore of the harbor. I’ll send you the coordinates.”
“Did you continue scanning the straits?” I asked. “Just in case you missed the boat the first time around.”
“We did. But we’re confident that this is the escape vessel. Especially after the incident you were involved in the other night. I’ve called a few of my contacts in Cuba and we’re trying to work out how to go about handling this.”
“Well, be sure and let me know how your talks go,” I said.
He paused a moment. “Uh-huh. And where are you?”
“Just taking a little boat trip.”
He sighed. “Lo
ok, I’m sure Scott told you everything already, so I won’t regurgitate it. Just know that the guys pulling the strings at the top of this thing are multibillionaires. You know the level of power that kind of money can buy, especially in places like Cuba.”
“Got it,” I said. “Thanks for the intel.”
“Just remember your priorities, Logan. The endgame here is putting a halt to a sex-trafficking ring. Not just saving one girl.”
No, Wilson. You’re wrong about that. The endgame for me is both. Two birds with one stone.
A moment after ending the call, Wilson sent us the latitudes and longitudes of where the cargo ship docked. I gave them to Ange while Jack piloted us south into Vaca Key Cut, under US-1, and into the Atlantic.
“I’ve got the location up,” Ange said, staring at the laptop screen. “It looks like some kind of auxiliary shipping station. Maybe even a place for repairs. Relatively off the beaten path, looks like.”
Off the beaten path is good.
She walked over and punched the coordinates into the trawler’s GPS. Once set, she turned and sat back down beside me.
“Bringing her up to full speed,” Jack said.
He slid the throttles forward and the big boat accelerated with ease. Within seconds we were cruising through the water at forty knots.
“ETA in two and a half hours,” Jack said.
TWENTY
Two hours into the voyage, I stepped out onto the bow for some fresh air. It was 1400. The sun was hanging high, but I couldn’t see anything except its outer glow through the veil of clouds. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain had subsided, but the dark clouds up ahead promised a return.
Ange joined me. She walked up with two mugs of coffee, handed me one, then looked out over the water. Though severely overcast and windy due to our speed, it was still warm. The occasional spray of seawater up over the bow felt good.
“I’m not leaving Cuba without her, Logan,” Ange said after taking a sip.
I glanced over at her, then nodded.
We’d only known her for two days, but the time had made an impact. Ange had already looked into adopting her. In her mind, I could tell, she was already ours. Our responsibility. Potentially, one day, our daughter. As hard as it is to believe, I felt the same way.
The cockpit side door opened and Jack stepped out.
“We’re twenty-five miles out,” he said. “Soon we’ll be getting hailed with questions. What’s the plan here, bro? Cuba isn’t exactly the warm neighbor down the street who brings you fresh muffins. They protect and surveil their waters like hawks.”
“If they ask what we’re doing, just make something up,” I said. “Then once you drop us off, you apologize and haul ass out of there.”
“Drop you off? Are you crazy, bro? This is a foreign country, and a communist one at that. They’ll be waiting at the dock before we reach the shore.”
“Who said anything about dropping us off on the shore?” I said.
Twenty minutes later, when we were roughly ten miles north of the harbor, a Cuban Naval patrol boat hailed us asking to state our business. Ange and I had already put our drysuits on over our clothes and were prepping all of our gear at the stern.
We grabbed our cases and the waterproof backpack, then started up our rebreathers. Using the rebreathers would allow us a longer bottom time than scuba. Also, being a closed-loop system, we wouldn’t have to worry about bubbles rising to the surface and giving away our position. When it comes to being stealth underwater, nothing beats a rebreather, and I’d been using them for years, both in the SEALs and many times after.
We were almost finished getting our gear ready when Jack hopped out from the cockpit.
“We’ve got a patrol boat incoming,” he said. “Three miles out and closing in fast.”
Keeping calm and collected, Ange and I picked up the pace and moved everything to the stern. We needed to get into the water fast, but moving frantically and getting our heart rates up wouldn’t solve anything.
Smooth is fast. Fast is smooth.
Jack eased the throttles back to fifteen knots, then carried the sea scooters to the stern.
“Eight miles, south-southeast,” he said, answering my question before I’d even had a chance to ask it.
I ran the quick calculations in my head. The sea scooters could pull us through the water at a max speed of seven knots. But we’d be slower due to the drag of our gear. Figure maybe five for the easy math. That meant it would take us roughly two hours to reach our destination inside the harbor. The upgraded batteries in the sea scooters could last two and a half hours at full speed. It was cutting it close, but we could always kick the rest of the way if one of them died early. The rebreathers would give us over three hours, so time wasn’t an issue with them.
We secured the rebreathers, strapped our gear to the harness, then donned our full facemasks and fins. Jack handed us each a sea scooter and gave us a laid-back salute.
“Go get those assholes,” he said.
Jack didn’t curse often, so when he did, he really meant it.
I peeked over the port bow and could see the customs boat closing in. It was less than a mile away. I gave Jack a fist bump, then nodded to Ange.
“You reading me?” I said, testing the face mask radios.
“Loud and clear.”
We shuffled to the transom and turned around, sitting on top of it. After one more glance at each other, I gave Ange a thumbs-up, then dropped backward into the white bubbly wake of the trawler.
I spun and twisted and sank in the chaotic haze of the churning water. After a few seconds of going with the dizzying flow, I slowed to a stop and was able to take in my surroundings. I looked up, then glanced at my dive computer. I was ten feet down.
Aside from Ange and the wake of the trawler above, there was nothing.
Diving far out in the open ocean, where there’s nothing for miles and endless blue beneath you, can be a daunting experience. With Jack motoring the trawler away from us, we were alone. If our equipment malfunctioned or if we were somehow spotted, we’d be forced to improvise and make do on our own.
“Time to get deeper,” I said, motioning a thumb down while looking at Ange.
She nodded and we both descended to thirty feet.
“You all good?” I asked.
“Never better. Nothing like falling into a blender.”
We powered up our sea scooters, then oriented ourselves using compasses attached to our wrists. We had dive flashlights, but there was no sense in using them. The near-perfect viz allowed the glowing sunlight to illuminate the water around us.
Once ready, we flattened our bodies and held on as we started up the propellers and accelerated through the water. Once up to speed, all we had to worry about was ensuring we were on course and maintaining our depth. I took intermittent glances up toward the surface but knew that someone had a better chance of winning the lottery than spotting us from a boat.
To pass the time, I played songs in my head. “Bad Boys” kept popping into my mental playlist, and I sang the occasional line, which caused Ange to chuckle and then join in. To help get myself into the proper mental state, I also thought about Scarlett. I thought about how scared she was and what I was going to do to the guys who had taken her when I found them.
“We’re nearing the mouth of the harbor,” Ange said.
I didn’t need a GPS to know that she was right. The clear ocean shifted to a brown haze within just a few minutes. Boat traffic increased, mostly small-hulled pleasure craft.
Visibility dropped dramatically as we entered the Canal de Entrada, a thousand-foot-wide, forty-foot-deep channel that connects the Port of Havana to the ocean. Not wanting to be smashed by a passing ship or churned up in its wake, we moved to within just a few hundred feet of the shore and ascended to twenty feet down.
If we’d been on the surface, we would’ve been able to see the Castillo San Salvador de la Punta off to the right and Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Mo
rro off to the left, two impressive stone fortresses that had protected the city for hundreds of years.
We motored toward the shore of the Peninsula de Belot and surfaced under a long wooden dock. Based on the map we’d surveyed and the intel from Wilson, the freighter we were looking for was just a few hundred yards to the east of that current position.
Staying together, we switched off the sea scooters and rose slowly. We surfaced in the shade of the dock and had about three feet of clearance between our heads and the planks. The dock was old and rustic, the support beams covered in thick layers of barnacles and grime.
To our right, we could see the bottom half of a freighter. Ange lowered her mask, finned a few kicks toward it, then nodded.
“That’s the one,” she said. “It’s right where Wilson said it’d be.”
I moved beside her and examined the vessel. Roughly five hundred feet long, it appeared relatively new and was filled to half capacity based on its waterline markings. There was no activity aboard or on the pier beside it.
Directing my gaze away from the freighter, I looked for a place where we could get out and remove our gear without drawing suspicion. A hundred feet down the dock, I spotted an old sailboat that was wrecked beyond repair but still managing to stay afloat. With no sign of anyone on it or nearby, we decided it would suit our purpose nicely.
We swam around to the other side and took another look around, then I climbed up onto the stern. Setting my sea scooter and rebreather aside, I bent down and helped Ange up behind me. We didn’t need to break the lock on the saloon door. It swung lifelessly on its rusted hinge. Moving inside, we pulled off our drysuits, then stashed our dive gear.
“Alright,” I said to myself as I stepped into the tiny head and checked myself in the mirror.
We’d made it into Cuba. Now it was time to find Scarlett and punish those who had taken her. Again, the bad boys song played in my head, and I wondered if it would be stuck there all day.