Red Tide

by W. Dale Justice

  “How we doing?” Sherrod sounded hopeful, grasping for reassurance. He found none in Bobby Lee’s eyes.

  “We have minutes until the engine quits and the lights go out, and less than an hour before we sink. How does that sound?”

  Some men crumble in a crisis. Fear paralyzes their body, and their brain, and they sit idle, waiting for the end, and whatever bad things that means. Bobby’s voice was level, and clear, no hint of the fear that gripped his soul. He was in survival mode, not dying mode. Sherrod stood like a statue, speechless. He gripped the wheel, but stared at Bobby Lee as if looking at a charging lion coming straight at him. Fear made him unable to recognize it as death, nor do anything to take steps to avoid it.

  “Fifteen miles!” Bobby Lee slapped his hand on the dashboard. All was not lost. His action coincided with the engine and the lights both blacking out. Suddenly, there was quiet, the only sounds the rain gently pelting the roof, and the waves slapping the hull. She Got the House was adrift fifteen miles north of Pina de Rio, Cuba’s western most tip.

  USCGC Bertholf Forty Miles North of Cuba

  The Bertholf was the Coast Guard’s newest, and largest Legend Class Cutter, over a football field long. It had been Phillips flag ship from which he commanded the forces fighting the Red Tide, and it was again to be his flag ship as he hunted down the men who contributed to the magnitude of the disaster. A far as Steve Phillips was concerned, these two were directly responsible for the death of seventy pilots in his hodgepodge command. That would not stand.

  As the launch expertly approached the Bertholf, it swung around to approach from downwind to harness the current to gently come alongside the extended boarding platform. Lines were secured, and the passengers climbed the stairs led by Admiral Phillips. At the top of the railing, Phillips stopped at attention, saluted the flag, then the ship’s commanding officer, Captain Beverly Stokes.

  “Permission to come aboard, ma’am.”

  Captain Stokes returned the salute, nodded to the Chief standing by her side, and replied, “Officer on deck!” The chief signaled, and the Admiral was piped aboard with two shrill whistles’ as the assembled crew snapped to attention. The pipe greeting was reserved for officers of flag grade, and dated back to days of wood and canvas ships.

  “Welcome, Admiral, and congratulations. Seems like only yesterday since we last saw you.”

  “Actually Captain Stokes, it was the day before yesterday, Seems I’m making a nuisance of myself, doesn’t it?”

  “Not at all, sir. We are honored to have you back. Will you be taking command, sir?”

  “Not a chance, Captain. This ship already has an able commander. I would like to ask for a ride so we can catch some bad guys. What’s your top speed in weather like this, Captain?”

  “Twenty-eight knots, sir. No one is going to outrun us, weather or no weather. We’re ready when you are, sir.”

  “Let’s get this show on the road, then. They have over an hour jump on us.”

  “Legends begin here, sir.” Stokes replied. It was no coincidence her last comment was also the motto of the ship.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Cuban Straights, Gulf of Mexico

  “Mayday, mayday. Repeat, mayday, mayday.” Bobby Lee held the mike close to his mouth.

  “Won’t the Coast Guard pick that up?” Sherrod had stirred from his frozen terror, and was actually contributing to their survival. Water in the salon had risen another step, as the dawn’s first light tinted the morning sky. It appeared the new day would bring spectacular weather, following last night’s storm. Light of day always boosted spirits.

  “Yeah, they will. And so will the Cuban Coastal Patrol. Pina de Rio is a favorite jumping off point for dissidents to launch rafts bound for Florida. The Gulf current carries them straight there. That means there are regular patrols by Cuban Navy boats to interdict them. I’m betting the Cuban’s get here first. We’re fifteen miles offshore, but the current is taking us back towards Florida.” Bobby Lee replied. The yacht listed badly to port, wallowing in the calm seas like a dead whale.

  “How fast is the current?”

  “Two knots. That’s about a mile and a half every hour. That’s not going to matter much, because we’re going to sink in less than an hour.” Bobby Lee painted a grim picture with some hope. “You need to get below, and find that suitcase of yours full of money that we didn’t give to Captain Ron. We’re going to need to grease some Cuban palms when that patrol boat finds us. Pina de Rio ain’t Havana.”

  “The salon’s full of water.” Sherrod protested.

  “Would you rather dive for it after the boat sinks, Sherry? Sometimes I wonder if you have any nads at all.” Bobby Lee questioned.

  “Ok, I’ll do it. What are you going to do, I mean what do we do? What if the boat sinks before the Cubans get here?” Panic was just below the surface.

  “I’m going to break out the Zodiac that Ron used to get to shore and back. It has a 2.5 HP motor. All we need to do is make sure we have enough gas and supplies on it. Enough to let us get to Cuba if we have to.” Bobby Lee encouraged. “Come on Sherrod, we ain’t done yet. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. Now get a move on.”

  “Ok Bobby Lee, Ok.” Sherrod removed his shoes and rolled up his pant legs to wade down the stairs to the salon. Bobby Lee shook his head as he watched. You’re going to get a whole lot wetter before this day is done.

  Lieutenant Acosta directed his patrol boat northwest. Just after dawn, they caught a partial radio transmission of an Anglo boat in distress. No position, broadcast in English. They were patrolling 3 miles off shore along the Raft Route of northwestern Cuba.

  “Enrique, give me a bearing on that transmission.” he ordered.

  “It was roughly northwest, Lieutenant. That’s all I can tell you until they transmit again.”

  “Alright. Northwest. Let’s see what we can see. Jorge and Ricardo, keep your eyes open for anything on the horizon twenty degrees off the bow, both sides. Call out.” Jorge and Ricardo brought their oversized marine binoculars to their eyes, and began scanning. The patrol boat had no radar.

  Thawing relations between Cuba and the United States since beloved Fidel grew weak with age, and Raul took the office had opened new opportunities. Tourism brought much needed capital with cruise ships and investment from the north. American companies sent emissaries through Canadian and European subsidiaries to plant seeds for future expansion. Rescuing an American yacht damaged from last night’s storm would bring world news coverage, and a fat reward from Raul’s government.

  “We just need to find them before it’s too late.” Acosta knew the Gulf Stream was not in their favor, moving a crippled vessel further away with each passing hour.

  USCGC Bertholf, Cuban Straights, Gulf of Mexico

  The USCGC Bertholf cut through the heavy seas. At 418 feet in length, with a 22-foot draft and displacement of 4,500 Liquid Tons, six to seven foot seas that threatened to overwhelm a pleasure yacht were swatted aside. At twenty-eight knots, the Bertholf cut through the storm like a greyhound.

  The boat they chased was a sixty-five-foot yacht, an impressive and expensive civilian toy capable of twenty knots in calm seas and clear weather, neither of which were present this night. At best, in these seas, she could handle maybe twelve knots. That means, she could travel the 90 miles to Havana in just under five hours. Admiral Phillips just received intelligence that the She Got the House may have been sabotaged by her owner before sneaking out of Key West under cover of the storm. The Bertholf would close on her quarry within three hours, around dawn.

  “Put him up on the screen, Ensign Carson.” Phillips ordered.

  “Yes sir.” A monitor on the bridge came to life, revealing Ensign Carson at Naval Air Station Key West. She stepped aside and spoke to someone off screen. Some shuffling and muttered conversation, then two arms clad in Navy camo blue shoved a disheveled and very wet civilian into the frame, and told him to sit and face the screen. He didn’t loo
k happy.

  “Hello? Sir? Hello? Whom am I speaking to?” Admiral Phillips tried to get his attention to focus on the monitor. The civilian jumped when he realized he was talking to someone on the monitor, but recovered quickly.

  “Ron. Ron Duquesne. Who am I speaking for…to?”

  “My name is Admiral Steven Phillips, sir.”

  “Oh. How you doin’ Admiral?” Ron saluted the monitor horribly.

  “I’m just fine, Mr. Duquesne. Thank you for asking.”

  “Ah. Sure thing.” Ron was clearly impressed, grinning like an idiot.

  “Mr. Duquesne, I understand you were held at gunpoint for some time by two men, and your yacht was stolen, is that correct, sir?”

  “Yes. Yessir. They took my boat. Said they would pay me a hundred grand for her. Showed me the cash in a suitcase. Never did. Took the cash with them and dumped me on the pier like garbage. I paid three times that for that boat. But I fixed them good.” Ron warmed to the topic.

  “Yes, that’s what I wanted to talk about, Mr. Duquesne. How did you fix them good?”

  Ron reached into his pocket, and pulled out he inner parts of the seacock he removed from the bilge, and showed them to the monitor with outstretched palms. Like a proud papa showing pictures of his kids, he grinned from ear to ear.

  “I’m not sure what I’m looking at Mr. Duquesne. What are you showing me, sir?”

  “Seacock. Innards of a seacock. See em’? Pretended I was drunk, and needed to use the bathroom. Opened a hole in the hull down in the bilge fifteen minutes before they sailed.” Ron giggled like a schoolgirl. “Screwed them for screwing me!” he shouted at the monitor.

  “What was the diameter of the seacock shaft, Mr. Duquesne?”

  “Inch and a half.” Ron answered the Admiral. “Sir!” He almost forgot.

  “Thank you Mr. Duquesne. You’ve been very helpful.” He terminated the connection, swiveled in the captain’s chair, and addressed Captain Stokes.

  “Who’s your onboard mathlete and research wiz, Captain?”

  “That would be Carter, Admiral.”

  “Please have Carter research the class yacht Mr. Duquesne owns, the displacement, and the effects of an inch and a half hole in the bottom of the bilge on a boat that size traveling through rough seas at twelve knots. She would have had to take the breakers straight on, putting more pressure on the hull, as she slammed down after each wave. I want to know approximately when that boat is going to sink.” He spun further.

  “Radar, wind and waves are out of the southwest. I want to know where the back edge of the storm is, and plot its progress northeast. Begin scanning for any surface contact in the southwest quadrant. I’m guessing she will make it out of the storm just as she starts to sink.”

  “Helmsman, set a course southwest to intercept the trailing edge of the storm. That’s our destination. Make it happen, people.” A volley of aye aye’s answered the Captain.

  “Ms. Stokes, let’s put the pedal to the metal. I want to catch the whole dog, not just the tail.”

  The beautiful morning weather was brilliant following the storm, with crystal blue, cloudless skies reflecting off the waters’ surface. It was a perfect morning at sea in the Caribbean, except for one small fact. She Got the House was on the brink of rolling over.

  In the past hour, water in the salon had risen another step on the stairs. As the boat rocked in the swell, that water shifted from one side of the vessel to the other in a rush. The added weight, plus the kinetic energy of the water movement would soon cause a capsize. It was a mathematical equation.

  “Time to go, Sherrod.” Bobby Lee headed aft to the Zodiac tied to the stern.

  “Why? I mean we’re still afloat. Why can’t we just wait on the yacht instead of climbing into that Zodiac? You said it only had a quarter tank of gas. How far will that get us?”

  Sherrod was whining, and he knew it. He began this journey whining, found strength and resolve in Key West, and had degenerated back to sniveling during the storm. The revelation the yacht was sinking and the Zodiac’s fuel shortage caused his carefully constructed image to crumble in less than two days on the run.

  “Because when the yacht rolls, we don’t want to be anywhere near it, or attached to it. Now come on.” Bobby Lee replied. He moved swiftly aft, carrying a two half gallon liquor bottles he had dumped, and refilled with fresh water. Sherrod moved reluctantly in his wake, when a distant thumping sound caught his attention. He stopped, and tried to get a bearing for the sound as he turned slowly in a circle.

  “Bobby Lee, you hear that?” Bobby Lee was already in the Zodiac, and strained to listen. The water slapping the side of the rubber craft and yacht made it difficult. Finally, he too heard the thumping, and instinctively looked northwest. A dot appeared in the clear skies headed directly for the wallowing yacht.

  “Sherrod, move your ass. In the Zodiac, now!” Sherrod scrambled towards the boat, tripped, and rolled into the craft and onto Bobby Lee. Bobby

  shoved him off. “Untie us dipshit! That’s a Coast Guard SAR Dolphin.”

  “You mean a helicopter? This far from shore?” Sherrod questioned.

  “That chopper was launched from a ship, which means they have us pinned by radar. We gotta’ go.”

  “But the chopper can follow us, can’t they?”

  “Yeah, but unless they fire on us, they can’t stop us. They won’t do that unless they can make a positive identification, and probably won’t even do it then.”

  Ron, the yacht owner, like so many of his peers did not have a life raft on his vessel, instead choosing to purchase a smaller ship to shore inflatable Zodiac with a Yamaha 2.5 HP motor. A life raft had no propulsion system, but contained life-saving emergency supplies, and a powerful rescue beacon to summon help and pinpoint the distressed boat’s position. Ron instead selected a boat for quick trips to shore, as he never had any intention of sailing the She Got the House into blue water far from shore.

  “We should have left earlier, Bobby Lee.”

  “I told you, we don’t have enough gas in this Zodiac to reach Cuba. We’ve drifted away from Cuba a good two miles since we lost power. I make it eighteen miles to Pina de Rio. We got enough gas to cover maybe half that distance.” Bobby explained.

  “Then what?”

  “Then we’re inside the internationally recognized twelve-mile limit. We will be in Cuban territory. Ain’t no US military vessel or aircraft going to enter that space without permission.” Bobby Lee pulled the starter rope, fired the outboard, and turned away from the floundering yacht headed south. The Zodiac began cutting through the swells.

  Lieutenant Morrison piloted the Search and Rescue Dolphin from the USGC Bertholf, and plotted his course to the yacht. The Bertholf had a compliment of two such birds, as well as the latest A11 SPS-7 Surface Search Radar. The Coast Guard’s newest cutter was far beyond the typical coastal patrol cutter’s in its ancestry. The Bertholf was a blue water ship. The sophisticated radar had pinned the yacht’s position almost three hours ago, but waited until the backend of the storm was cleared before launching the SAR helicopter. During that three-hour chase, the Bertholf’s 28 knot speed through rough seas had cut the yacht’s head start to a dozen miles. She could cover that distance in the next thirty minutes. The chopper was launched to say “hello” to the fugitives.

  “Bertholf, this is SAR Dolphin 2. We have a visual on the yacht. It appears close to a rollover. Subjects Laurel and Hardy have launched a Zodiac, and are running for Pina de Rio. Over.”

  Laurel and Hardy, a vaudeville act and early movie duo featured a large overweight actor partnered with a skinny milk toast guy that couldn’t get any scheme or plan to work out right no matter how much they tried. These were the code names given to Bobby Lee and Sherrod based upon their physical resemblance to the two vaudevillians, and upon the comedy of errors that befell all their plans as they tried to make their getaway.

  “Copy Dolphin 2. What’s their estimated speed. Over.” Captain Sto
kes replied.

  “I’ll tell you exactly in about 20 seconds. I’ll be on top of them, and can pace them. Over” A few seconds passed. “Bertholf, they’re making about seven knots. Not exactly a cigar boat. Over.” Morrison reported.

  “Captain Stokes, what’s our ETA to intercept?” Admiral Phillips asked.

  The captain replied after a brief conference with Seaman Carter. “At our current speed, less theirs, we should catch them right at the international twelve-mile limit.”

  “That’s cutting it very close, Captain.” Admiral Phillips commented. “anything we can do to slow them down?”

  “SAR Dolphin 2 can buzz them, sir. Maybe try to get them to zig zag a bit.” Stokes replied.

  “Too risky for the pilots. I’ve already lost seventy-three in the drink since this campaign started. I’m not about to lose any more.”