by Ed Teja
“I was just thinking that this is a lot of cocaine or would be.”
“It’s a big business.”
Still, it’s one thing to read about the cops grabbing a huge load and another to actually be trying to move about unnoticed with a suitcase full of the stuff. Drug smuggling was hard work.
We drove down to the pier. Bill was waiting. “You’re gonna be cold out there,” he said when he saw the clothes we’d bought. “That’s a cool breeze out on the water at night.”
“If things are on track, I’ll be in a wet suit. Victoria has a jacket. Chris will have to make do.”
“If you don’t need a fashion consultant, just say so.”
“Is Sammy ready? Does he know what to do?”
“Do dogs have lips? Damn right he is briefed and, I might say, eager to rumble with the nasties.”
“Okay.”
Victoria and I carried the suitcase out on the seawall to wait for Chris. The seawall is wide, made of fieldstones held together with concrete. It gives shelter to fishing boats that range from small, family-run trawlers up to giant, Japanese, corporate-owned seiners that are high tech and even have helicopters. The seawall crunched under my shoe. Its concrete was cracked and crumbling. The cracks I assumed came from the earthquake in 1997 when the seawall sank several feet, but the crumbling concrete was more likely due to the concrete not being mixed properly in the first place. In few years, there wouldn’t be any seawall.
Those thoughts did nothing to take my mind off the fact that Chris was late. It was getting dark fast, and we had a schedule to keep. I looked back behind me and saw Bill in the shadows of the building that housed shipping agents and immigration. If anyone was watching us, they would see Victoria and I, like good kids, doing what we were told, waiting alone for our ride to the massacre. This part of the plan was very clean, well-executed and useless if Chris didn’t show—for whatever reason.
I began to curse myself for not having set up some communication with Highball that would let us negotiate if something went wrong and we were unable to make the meeting on time. One thing I didn’t doubt about the man was the fact that he would make good on his threats. Just the thought that he might was too gruesome for words and left me nauseas with helplessness.
Suddenly, the launch came into view as a glint of green on the horizon under the setting sun. It grew as it flew over the water leaving a silvery wake. I breathed a sigh of deep relief and heard Victoria do the same. He wove in and out of anchored boats and cut the throttle as he approached the seawall. He was wearing white, as we were.
We waved. He returned the wave. As he came alongside, I saw that the boat was empty, except for the usual emergency gear and a white sweatshirt. Well, Bill wouldn’t have to worry about Chris getting cold. Chris hopped out onto the seawall, leaving the big motor throbbing and holding the bow painter.
“Sorry,” he said. “Had a hell of a time getting gasoline.”
“Never mind,” I told him. “No harm done. Just hand me the line and walk up to where Bill is.” I motioned with my head. “The giant guy. You can’t miss him.”
“Hey, I’m not giving you this boat,” he protested. “I’m responsible for it. I said I’d drive you, take you to Maggie.” His face flushed with wind and anger.
“Take it easy,” I said, keeping my voice friendly. “You’ll do just that. But first we have to put on a little performance that is essential to keeping Maggie alive. Victoria and I have to leave together, just the two of us, in that boat or Maggie dies. But don’t worry. Bill will explain the magic that gets you back in the driver’s seat.”
He seemed to notice Victoria for the first time now. “Okay,” he said, his voice sullen. He stepped ashore, handing me the launch’s bowline. “Go easy with her until you’ve run her for a bit. She handles a bit quirky.”
I nodded, and he went to join Bill in the shadows.
“Your chariot, my dear,” I said, offering Victoria my hand. She grinned and took it and stepped into the boat, settling herself near the helm. “I sure hope that someone is watching,” I told her.
“Why?”
“This play acting is a lot of work.”
“Just imagine you are taking me out for a nice, moonlit trip,” she suggested. “Just the two of us. That should make it less work.”
I laughed. “But it will also make getting back to the rescue plan a lot harder.”
“Life is so difficult for you, my dear.”
I checked the level of gasoline in the boat. One tank was about three-fourths full, the other completely full. I was pleased that Chris had shown the initiative of filling up before he left. I didn’t have time to do it now.
We cast off and motored at a dignified, unhurried pace West, toward Mochima, and then the confrontation with Highball in Tigrillo. My pulse raced, and I began slow, deep breathing to calm myself. Beside me, Victoria pointed to the big yellow moon rising on the horizon.
The mission was underway. No turning back now, for better or worse. Even in the bright moonlight, our wake glowed with the eerie green of bioluminescence. The sky faded into a soft and gentle gray that shadowed the hillsides of the coast, leaving the details of the shoreline crystal clear. It was a perfect night, especially from Highball’s point of view. There wasn’t a scrap of darkness on the water for anyone to hide in, and deep shadow on the land to conceal snipers. We would have to act out our roles on a well-lit center stage.
Bill’s assault was the only bit of sleight of hand that was exposed to view. But even that shouldn’t look suspicious, and with luck, the bad guys' attention would be elsewhere, focused on the drama that would be unfolding on a tiny slip of a beach in the southern bay of Isla Venadas. With luck and perhaps some diversion they would have no thoughts of anything else. If not, it meant trouble for Maggie for sure, but the rest of us wouldn’t fair well either.
Well, it was a beautiful night for dying, as they say in the comics.
We didn’t talk during the trip. Victoria sat close to me, looking forward, her hair blowing out. Every so often, she looked at me and smiled. Once she blew me a kiss. I held our speed down, as we wanted to establish a nice smooth tempo. Hurrying would not help any and only made it easier to make mistakes.
There isn’t much to see along the coast between Cumaná and Mochima nor much chance of being seen. Anyone on shore would have a rough time getting to vantage point on that coastline, that meant that Highball wouldn’t have planted lookouts to see what might happen along those ten miles. Just in case, we planned to rendezvous well out of the range of someone with binoculars.
The launch had a GPS built into the console. These high-tech marvels use information from satellites to give you exact position, and these days almost every boat has one. I punched in the coordinates for the exact spot we would meet Harm, even though I expected to be able to see the old girl quite easily. But it pays to be thorough. I checked the waypoint I had programmed. Ten degrees 23.8 minutes North; 64 degrees 20.7 minutes West. The GPS would beep when we came within half a mile of that exact spot.
The current must have been setting strongly to the West, because we were well ahead of schedule when the alarm went. I cut the power and let the boat drift. The sea was flat calm, and moonlight reflected in silvered patterns. Out to sea I saw the large shape of Harm approaching, her running lights glowing softly. Her bow wake was small, telling me that she was almost drifting too, stalling in order to arrive at the arranged time. I turned to Victoria. She brushed a strand of hair back from her face. I moved closer and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around me and returned the kiss, her tongue probing my mouth.
“It is too good with you for it to never be again,” she whispered. “Be careful.” Then she added, “Vaya con Dios.”
“That’s the first time you’ve spoken to me in Spanish,” I chuckled.
“Come back to me healthy and I will whisper many things to you in Spanish, lots of dirty things to excite you. All of them filth
y things.”
“Now that is incentive. You be careful, too.”
Harm stopped dead in the water. I turned the outboard on and brought the launch alongside to where Sammy was unrolling a boarding ladder. Victoria took the helm while I held the bottom of the ladder steady so that Chris could climb down. He didn’t look happy.
“This is dangerous,” he said.
Observant lad. “Yes, it is.”
“We should have bullet-proof vests.”
“This is a low-budget SWAT team,” I said.
Victoria was more diplomatic. “You don’t need a vest, Chris,” she said, her voice gentle.
“I don’t?” he sounded relieved.
“No. They are professionals. On a clear night like tonight a decent sniper with a mediocre rifle would just blow your head off. A vest wouldn’t help a bit. So why be uncomfortable?”
Chris looked awful. He groaned. “I don’t know about this.”
“Neither does anyone,” I pointed out. “But we have to get Maggie.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you understand your part?” He nodded. “Do you understand that Victoria is in charge and that you have to do what she says, instantly, even if it isn’t what was planned?” He looked at her for a moment, and then nodded. I looked at Victoria. “Do you have what you need?”
She unrolled her jacket and showed me her 9mm automatic.
“Don’t I get a gun, at least?” Chris asked.
“Do you know how to use one?”
“I’ve shot them before.”
“Pistols?”
“No.”
“You are better off not having one if it isn’t a familiar friend.” I told him. “In a rocking boat there is a chance it can go off accidentally. You have to really know the weapon.”
“And she does?”
I nodded. “Oh, yes, she does.”
He took the helm and I waved a sad wave at Victoria before climbing the ladder, all the time cursing myself for leaving her with such a feeble gesture. No gesture at all would have been better. Sammy, grinning at the top of the ladder, helped me on board. As he and I rolled up the ladder, I felt a shudder as if the ghost of a bad feeling had touched me. I thought we were cutting off an escape path for Victoria and Chris.
As Chris and Victoria roared off in the night, I felt like shit warmed over, but I waved up at Ugly Bill up in the pilothouse. He waved back and I went to my cabin to change clothes. I stripped, tossing the new white things on the bed, wondering if there was a way to give them to someone who wanted them.
White clothes belong on tennis courts, not boats. Then I took a quick shower to make sure there would be no grit on my body to chafe under the dive gear. I toweled dry, put on a black swimsuit and a black tee shirt and left the cabin to check the dive gear. Sammy had it all set up on the stern. He was a diver himself and knew his stuff. He had hooked the regulator and BCD, buoyancy control device, to a single eighty cubic foot tank.
“Good job,” I told him, and went up to talk to Bill.
“That Chris is a strange guy,” Bill said from the chart table as I came in. Harm was making just six knots under autopilot and Bill was drinking a mug of hot, black coffee. He pointed at a second mug. I sat down at the table and wrapped my hands around the mug, letting its heat penetrate my hands.
“He’s afraid,” I said.
Bill gave me a cockeyed look. “Of course, he’s afraid. I didn’t say he was stupid. But the stuff that bothers him about what we are doing him is funny, queer. He got skittish when I told him we had to trade the drugs for Maggie. He turned pale. But when he found out that we didn’t have any drugs, everything was just peachy.”
I sipped my coffee. It was good. “I suppose he could’ve thought we were actual bad guys, if we had drugs to swap. After all, he thinks Tim killed Antonio.”
Bill wasn’t convinced. “Maybe.” After a few minutes he said, “I don’t trust him, though. Maybe he is just weak. I’m glad he doesn’t have to do much but drive the boat.”
Just then Sammy came in. “Everything is shipshape, skipper. Now how is this one?”
There once was a man from Trinidad,
He thought he was tough, yes, oh so bad.
But when he couldn’t get it up,
His girlfriend cursed her luck,
And she went back home, oh so sad.
Bill laughed and slapped the table. “Better, boy, a lot better.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Bill’s teaching me poetry, and we started with the limerick.”
“Oh.”
“One minor thing,” Bill said. “The third and fourth lines are a hair too long. They should consist of only one iamb and an anapest or two anapests. You could just say,”
When he couldn’t get it up,
his girl cursed her luck.
“That’ll do it.”
“Thanks, Bill.”
He went out of the pilothouse, whistling.
“You go to law school, too?” I asked.
“Naw,” he said. “I learned poetry in jail.” He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes to ditch time, Junior.”
“Jail,” I muttered as Bill went to a locker near the helm and brought out my .357 and wrapped it in two zippered baggies, then headed aft. Sammy helped me as I put on the wet suit. I wore my dive watch on my left wrist and strapped a compass on the right. I strapped the dive knife in its plastic sheath on the inside of my right leg.
I went to the rail and watched as we rounded Punta Tigrillo at a brisk pace. I estimated our speed at ten knots. If things were on schedule, Chris would be creeping along behind us. I checked my watch. It was nine thirty.
I went back to the gear, and Sammy held the tank while I slipped into the jacket and buckled it. I put on my weight belt and carried my mask and fins near the rail. “Don’t you want a light?” Sammy asked. It was a reasonable question. For a night dive you’d want a light so that, if nothing else, you can see the gauges.
I shook my head. “Not tonight. I can’t risk showing a light,” I told him. “Besides, both the compass and my watch have built-in lights.”
Sammy didn’t like my explanation. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pencil-thin flashlight intended for divers and pressed it into my hand. “Take it,” he insisted. “Don’t use it if you think it is a bad idea, but I’ll feel better knowing you’ve got it.”
I thanked him and put it in a pocket of the BCD that I secured with a Velcro snap. Then I unzipped a larger pocket and put the gun, inside its baggies, in the pocket and closed it securely as well. As we came near my departure point, Sammy undid the chain that closed off an opening in the railing when we were underway. Because Harm was not carrying cargo, she rode high in the water, making it a lot further down to the water than I would have liked.
“It’s a long way down,” Sammy said, echoing my thoughts as he peered down at the black water. “Want me to lower a rope?”
I shook my head. “I can’t go down a rope wearing all this gear. Besides, this will be just like an entry out of a helicopter.” I assured him.
Sammy smiled. “Is that fun?”
I shook my head. “It always hurts. I hate jumping out of helicopters.”
Bill had started slowing. He couldn’t slow as much as I would have liked because that would look suspicious to watchers on shore. Freighters passed through here often, but they didn’t slow down much. That meant I’d hit the water with me moving downward at a good clip and forward at something like eight knots. It would be a rough entry. Sammy shook his head. “Hey, man, are you sure this idea is a good one?”
“It’s a rotten idea,” I said. “But we don’t have many choices. In fact, we have no other choices that I can think of.” He nodded, looking very serious.
Harm had a red light mounted on the stern by a sound-powered telephone that provided on-board communications. It had been installed to let line handlers talk t
o the helm. Tonight, the light served as a signal.
“One minute,” Sammy said, his voice trembling a bit. Out of habit I looked at my watch. It seemed to agree. Then I looked down at the water. I couldn’t see a thing.
The trick on this night, the critical part of my entry, was to take a giant step that would take me well away from the ship. Then I’d have to swim away as fast as possible to keep from getting caught up in the suction from the huge prop and turned into hamburger. I didn’t like hamburger. I didn’t want to be hamburger.
When the light by the telephone blinked twice, Sammy shouted, “Now!”
I went. One thing that gets driven home in SEAL training is not to think when the command comes. You just do it. When the man yells “Now!” whether you are going off a boat or out of a plane, just put one hand on the mask, the other on the gauges, and go. It’s the only way a mission comes off right. It’s the only way you wind up where you are supposed to be, when you are supposed to be there, and it doesn’t matter how scared you are or that you just thought of something you wanted to do first.
I launched myself into the night, and despite the bright moon found myself falling into an inky blackness even before I hit the water.
I entered the water feeling the shock of being wrapped in a cold black blanket. Before I had time to recover my right side slammed into something hard and large. It spun me around. Pain flashed through me like electricity. My mask came loose and filled with water, blinding me. I could feel my body being tugged, and I remembered the propeller.
I kicked as hard as I could to get away from the suction of the propellers. They would chew me up and spit me out and no one would ever know what happened. The pain shot through my body and my disorientation was complete. I could see nothing in the dark. I had to swim like a banshee and hope I was going in the right direction. I also hoped I wouldn’t pass out.
Harm pulled away from me and the turbulence swept by me. I floated free, the water calmed, and I drifted into the half-submerged log that I had landed on. I kicked away from the log, letting a little air into my BCD so I wouldn’t sink while I got my bearings. I forced myself to clear my mask of the water, hoping it would also clear my mind.