Mid Ocean

by T Rafael Cimino

  “How tall is it Crossbow?” Bobby radioed again.

  “Thirty, forty, maybe fifty feet.”

  Gordo was never an exact person.

  “Crossbow, you are one south, I repeat, one south. You need to come north.”

  Gordo panned the water surrounding the tower. His heart was pounding through his chest. An ink pen lodged in his shirt pocket seemed to jump with every pulse. There was no one in sight. Alazar took a look at the chart and with a makeshift ruler, plotted a compass heading for his lost uncle.

  “Head north to thirty-four degrees northeast, Crossbow.”

  Gordo acknowledged and turned his boat to the heading. The mistake was all his. His nephew was right and the error could have cost them big. He gripped the boat’s throttles as he braced for the ensuing burst of power. Upon command, the long, sleek craft pointed its bow up and within seconds was on plane, surging through the waves, throwing spray from both sides of the speeding powerboat’s white Fiberglas hull. As it picked up speed it started to leap from wave to wave. Gordo adjusted the trim tabs controlling the boat’s elevation over the oncoming water. His eyes peered through his pudgy face as he squinted trying to avoid any contact with the raindrops, which at that speed, felt like cold, steel needles against his already weather-beaten exterior. The boat’s twin eight hundred horsepower engines turned at an incredible rate as the red light beam of the Elbow’s tower came into his view. He was ready to meet his nephew.

  Bobby Alazar gazed up into the sky and watched as a break in the clouds drifted overhead. Up in the deep blackness, surrounded by small flakes of glistening crystal, flew a white strobe light. Bobby watched as the flashing light seemed to float through the sky like some fictional spaceship bouncing between the stars. Commercial traffic, he thought, Customs would have turned their lights off. Then, without warning, he heard the distant murmur. He went to the bow and immediately retrieved the anchor. His clothes became saturated with salty seawater in the process. He then secured the anchor and rope in a locker located below the deck while trying to keep his balance as the boat rolled with each oncoming wave.

  The craft, adrift, blew about at the mercy of the moderate gusts of wind. Behind the helm and under the protective cover of the canvas top, the young, anxious Cuban secured himself into the tight-fitting bolster seat as he took his bearings and prepared to move the vessel. Grabbing the key switch marked engine one, he turned it. He expected the engine to turn over and come to life. Instead, he heard the high-pitched spinning sound of a starter starving for voltage. A quick look at the voltage indicator confirmed his fear. The gauge registered less than ten volts. Twelve volts were necessary to start the motor. A quick try of engines two and three gave similar results. Bobby realized that the bilge pumps, having to keep up with the torrential rains and spraying seawater, must have run down the three deep-cycle batteries. As he tried to conceive a way out of his predicament, the distant thunder of the Black Duck gained intensity. The Island Girl had three batteries on board, each connected to a separate fuse block. They were located under the center console. Trying to maintain control of himself, he thought for a minute. If I could connect the three circuits, a possibility existed that there would be enough juice to start one of the motors. The charging system could then take over and hopefully start the other two. Bobby quickly dropped to his knees, peering into the small crawl space under the console. The odor of cured Fiberglas was nothing less than intoxicating. Still, he managed to locate the fuse blocks despite the rainwater dripping from his saturated hair and face. They were bolted securely inside to a structural bulkhead. There was no marking though to indicate which block went to which engine. His salt-drenched fingers picked the closest one, trying to loosen the tight brass nuts that held the thick power cables together. The dormant power in the batteries was enough to give him a shock as he joined the cumbersome wires.

  After tightening the last bolt over the connecting wire, Alazar climbed to his feet, keeping his balance as another massive wave rocked the stagnant vessel. He took his position behind the console wedging himself back into the bolster seat. He turned the key for engine two. There was no response, not even a click. When he connected all the circuits to one engine, he must have disconnected the other two. He tried engine one, still no response. Finally, in desperation, his tense fingers turned the key for engine three. The dormant outboard turned slowly at first and then gained speed. Alazar held his breath. This was his last chance. Suddenly, with a burst of fury, the sleeping dog came to life, whining with revolutions, throwing oil-drenched smoke into the dark night air.

  With only one engine, the Island Girl responded sluggishly as it was maneuvered around the tower. The alternator started to charge the electrical system. The lights behind the gauges brightened as the boat’s voltage indicator registered eleven volts. When the voltage got to twelve, he would have to switch back the wires on the altered fuse blocks. The Rolex strapped to his wrist read 4:52 a.m.

  Gordo was within a thousand yards of the Elbow. He scanned the water ahead for his nephew. The Black Duck’s engines were throttled back to a harmonic clapping idle, spitting steamy water out the four highly polished stainless pipes protruding from the transom. Gordo grabbed the microphone.

  “Slingshot, turn on your lights!”

  Bobby responded by triggering a switch labeled NAV LTS giving a quick burst of light. Gordo saw the split red and green lights of the Island Girl off his port bow. It was just past the tower. With a relieved voice, the jubilant Gordo called out again.

  “I see you Slingshot.”

  Alazar disengaged the boat’s one running engine, putting it back into neutral. The voltage indicator registered 12.4 volts. He dropped back to his knees, ducked under the console and rearranged the fuse blocks. If he were to make it to the coast of Key Largo three miles away before dawn, he would need all three engines running. He could not screw this up.

  Gordo, concerned about the time, increased the throttles to half stick; just enough power to motivate the overloaded boat without getting it on plane. He headed toward his nephew in a bow-up position. His view was obstructed by the boat’s foredeck. Bobby heard Gordo approach. The engines were revving louder than before. His fingers tingled with an increased shock of electricity as he attached the final wire to the fuse block. Sparks of blue and orange energy bounced off the two ends of wire.

  Still on his knees, he removed his head from under the confining center console. The vibration from Gordo’s high-powered engines engulfed Bobby’s cockpit sending vibrations through his wet knees and up his spine. Climbing to his feet, he turned just in time to see the tower’s red light beam bouncing off the gleaming white hull of the Black Duck. Gordo had miscalculated his distance from the Island Girl.

  Bobby Alazar watched in horror as the massive boat came over the stern of the smaller. The impact was dramatic as the Black Duck’s Fiberglas bottom sliced over the top of the running outboards. It continued on its course, powering over the gunwale and into the cockpit, pinning the younger Alazar against the console before the boat came to a rest. Bobby could not move. The pressure against his chest restricted his breathing. Water started to come over the stern as he felt it lap against his legs. Then, without warning, a breaking mountain of water broke over the stern of the Black Duck pushing it further into Bobby’s space. He felt his ribs splinter beneath his chest as blood replaced his warm breath. As Gordo tried in vain to reverse the massive powerboat, his nephew drifted into a state of darkness.

  Sitting one atop the other, the larger vessel came to rest pushing the Island Girl below the waves, into the dark, cold world below. In a pool of turbulence and floating debris rose the lifeless, distorted body of Bobby Alazar. A flash of red light illuminated the tattoo of tribute embossed on his forearm. In a path of script written amidst a gallant tall ship braving the seas, it read: Monica-Mi Linda, The World Will Be Yours.

  * * * * *

  Acrophobia

  U. S. Attorney Pat Stephens sat nervously in the l
eft front seat of the Bell 206 Jet Ranger as he watched the pilot proceed through his lengthy preflight check. Stephens panned the glowing Atlanta horizon of scattered lights as they sat perched high atop the thirty-two-story United States Federal Building. It was 5:15 in the morning. The drive to his office, located eleven stories below, was quiet and uneventful. His daily commute usually lasted more than thirty minutes. The purchase of his home in Buckhead meant having to cope with such inconveniences. This morning the quiet jaunt lasted less than ten. His Mercedes 300D tooled along the barren highways as he consumed a bagel doused with cream cheese, while listening to an early morning debate airing over a local NPR station.

  Stephens was driven past mere obsession. After completing his undergraduate studies at Princeton, he applied and was accepted to Harvard Law, the first to do so with just a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. After graduation Stephens began a career in public service. He immediately positioned himself in the limelight, putting his undergraduate experience to work for him. The public loved him, as did a few select northeastern congressmen and one senator from Atlanta. It was they who really gave the aspiring Irishman the boost he yearned for. While working as the assistant U. S. Attorney in the New York field office, Stephens aided Senior Prosecutor, John Kenyon, toward a successful grounding of the Gambino and Genovese crime families, which had plagued the New England area for decades. After Kenyon’s death in 1977, Stephens found himself poised for advancement. It came a short time later in the form of a position any twenty-year veteran would have killed for. At thirty-seven, Assistant United States Attorney Pat Stephens was named Special District Prosecutor for the southeastern region of the United States. Based out of Atlanta, his office was responsible for spearheading all of the top federal cases in the fifteen state area. No more bullshit EPA cases. No more tax evasion plea-bargains. If Pat Stephens’s office was on the case, one was going to either read about it in USA Today or watch the repercussions on CNN’s Headline News.

  Stephens lived in the press. His hero, next to his deceased boss Kenyon, was the fictional character Elliot Ness. Let’s do some good, he would say in a corny kind of way as he entered his office of thirteen staff attorneys, eight paralegals, seventeen clerks and twenty secretarial and ancillary staff members. Stephens had the will to succeed and overcome not just minor obstacles, but everything and everyone that got in his way. Still, despite this driving ambition, his raw talent, and a near genius intellect, Stephens had one undeniable flaw: he possessed a dramatic fear of flying.

  As the pilot checked the range of his controls, turning the throttle and pulling up on the collective, Stephens frantically brushed at a stain of cream cheese on his paisley tie. Giving up, he sat nervously in the ergonomically formed seat, clutching the metal buckles of the four-point harness with his sweaty palms. Although he could not see over the side of the building, the intermittent flash of the red anti-collision lights mounted at the four corners of the roof reminded him of how the complex towered into the dark sky. As the pilot stowed the preflight checklist under the right seat, he gave Stephens the thumbs up sign. Stephens reluctantly returned the gesture without letting go of the pair of restraining straps that ran down both sides of his chest. With a few adjustments and the depressing of the right switches, the powerful jet turbine helicopter came to life. First, an intermittent beep, then a high pitched whine followed by the loud clicking of ignition circuits firing across chambers of volatile jet fuel. With the blade overhead beginning to spin slowly, a second burst came from the rear of the craft sounding a lot like a large commercial vacuum cleaner. From there the blades rotated faster until they were almost invisible. Another set of switches were activated and the bright strobe light mounted in the belly of the chopper rang out splinters of double-pulsed light, illuminating the light gray rooftop with white brilliance. Faster yet, the blades spun until the surrounding patches of snow and ice blew away, exposing the painted circle which encompassed a capital letter H affixed to the roof. The pilot watched carefully as he increased the pitch of the blades and maintained the turbine’s revolutions. Gradually, Stephens felt the weightlessness of the craft battling with the forces of gravity as it lifted from the rooftop pad.

  “Here we go,” the pilot said into the intercom mic that was suspended in front of his lips, connected to a set of headphones. A nonverbal nod of his head was all that Stephens could muster.

  As the chopper cleared the edge of the building, Stephens looked down toward the street. It only took a second; Stephens jerked his head back up, trying to reorient himself with the horizon.

  “Relax!” the pilot said with a smooth, rumbling voice.

  “I’m okay. I just don’t like flying at night,” Stephens replied, knowing his fear of flying had no prejudice for daylight hours or the lack thereof. The pilot chuckled.

  “I’d like to think I fly a safe ship; you’re gonna give me a complex.”

  “Oh it’s not you really, you’re doing great,” Stephens said.

  “Well, now I feel better. Look, by the way, if we do crash, and by some miracle we’re not killed on impact, blown to smithereens by the hundred gallons of jet fuel behind that seat back there, don’t exit the aircraft until I give the word. I’d hate for you to survive such a feat and then have you decapitated by these blades,” the pilot warned, pointing up to the spinning main rotor. Stephens grabbed the four-point harness that hugged his chest and looked back at the pilot who continued to talk.

  “Yeah, we very rarely lose one of these but when we do, it’s a real mess. Why just last month...”

  “Look, I know you’re trying to help, but shouldn’t you be radioing the tower or something like that?”

  “Already done, counselor. You’ll find I’m usually ahead of the game. That’s why I get all the choice assignments. Just look at you. They wouldn’t trust the District U.S. Attorney to just anyone now would they?”

  “I guess not, how lucky for me,” Stephens answered sarcastically.

  The pilot was not just any chopper jock. Chester Marks was a veteran pilot with over eighty-five hundred hours behind the stick, most of which were in the Bell 206 Jet Ranger. Unlike most of the pilots he worked with, the thirty-three-year-old had never spent a day in Vietnam. His lack of a military background precluded him from even flying the godfather of all jet helicopters, the Huey. Still, after listening to all the war stories of the trenches in Vietnam, he surmised that L.A. was just as bad as any war zone. Marks developed most of his experience flying air support for the Los Angeles Police Department. To him, the city was one big war zone. His only regret was that the trigger on the face of the stick was connected to the aircraft’s radio system and not to a pair of nose-mounted, fifty-caliber guns. In six years with the LAPD, Marks had seven and a half documented bullet strikes including four .38s, a 9mm, two .45s, and one razor sharp ninja star which imbedded itself into the belly of a Cessna 206 in low-level flight. Marks always wanted to fire back.

  A near fatal crash ended his career with the LAPD and forced him to seek advancement with the Feds. Marks had a tough exterior. Years of being a beach bum on L.A.’s South Shore had taken its toll tanning his facial features over which a noticeable scar grazed his left cheek. It was the result of an injury he had received as a boy; a dog bite, a blemish which imbedded its image into his mind as much as his face.

  Fifteen hundred feet below, the rolling tree-covered hills of middle Georgia slept in silence. The forest came to life with small animals as the chopper passed overhead. Deer, squirrels, and other small wildlife peered upward through the trees at the beating sensation above and the brilliant white flashes that accompanied it.

  Ninety minutes into the flight, Marks descended to an elevation of less than one hundred feet. Despite the fact that this type of flying was more dangerous, Stephens somehow felt relieved with the reduction in altitude. What was before a plush forest of evergreens and abundant wildlife was now wet with clumps of saw grass - a virtual swamp. The Okefenokee. The white strobe glar
ing from the chopper’s belly radiated from the glossy water below. To Stephens, the scene merely reminded him of a made for TV movie he had seen recently where a DC-10 jetliner had crashed into the swampy Everglades in South Florida. What a way to go. To survive a crash as catastrophic as that and then to be eaten by alligator, Stephens thought as his palms flooded with sweat again.

  “Relax, we’re almost there,” Marks said, pointing at the swamp below.

  The final approach was a straight shot. From the air, their destination looked like any inland military installation. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, also known as FLETC, was located next to a municipal airport. Once a naval training center, the converted installation housed hundreds of recruits, all preparing to enter careers within the different law enforcement agencies of the federal government. Simple square block buildings, parameter lights, and rows of barracks covered the two hundred acre complex.