by Cuba (lit)
the deck.
Ocho dashed below. The old fisherman slumped
over the pump, water sloshed nearly waist-deep in
die bilge. Ocho eased bun aside, began
pumping. He could feel the resistance, feel the
water moving through the pump. He laid into it with a will.
"Sorryea"...the old man said weakly. "Worn out.
Just worn out"
"Go up on deck. Dry out some, disdrink some
water."
The old man nodded, crawled slowly up the
steep ladder. He slipped once, almost smashed his
face on one of the steps. Finally his feet
disappeared into the wheelhouse.
Three rain showers during the night had allowed
everyone on board to drink their fill, to replenish
dehydrated tissue, and when Ocho last looked,
mere were several gallons of water hi the bucket
under the tarp that no one could drink.
Ocho was no longer thirsty, but he was hungry as
hell. There had been no more fish. Without line,
hooks, bait, or nets they were unable to catch fish
from the sea. Unless the creatures leaped onto the
deck of the boat they were out of reach. So far, there had
been no more of those.
The tarp they caught the diswater in gave the
liquid a brackish taste, which everyone ignored.
Still, water on an empty stomach made one aware
of just how hungry he was.
Ocho pumped, felt his muscles loosen up,
enjoyed the resistance mat meant the pump was moving
water. After fifteen minutes of maximum effort
he could see that the
water level was down about six inches. He settled
in to work at a steady, sustainable pace.
The horizon remained empty. Empty! Not a
boat or sail. Endless swells and sky hi every
direction.
It was almost as if the Lord had abandoned them, left
them to die on this leaky little boat in the midst of this
great vast ocean, while planes went overhead and
boats and ships passed by on every side, just over the
horizon.
We won't have to wait long,
Ocho thought.
Our fate is very near. If the chain on this pump
breaks, if we run out of energy to pump, if the
swells get larger and waves start coming aboard, the
boat will break up and the people will go into the sea. That would be
our fate, to drown like all those people who went overboard
that first night.
They are dead now, surely. Past all caring.
Amazing how that works. Everyone has to die, but you
only have to do it once. You fight like hell to get
there, though, and when you arrive the world continues as if you
had never been.
As he pumped he wondered about his mother, how she was
doing, wondered if he should have told her he was going
to America.
An hour later Ocho was still pumping, the water was
down several feet and the boat was riding better in the
sea. And he was wearing out. He heard someone coming
down the ladder, then saw feet. It was
Dora.
She clung to the ladder, watched him standing in water
to his knees working die pump handle up and down,
up and down, up and down.
"It's Papaea"...she said.
He said nothing, waited for her to go on.
"I think he has given up."
Ocho kept pumping.
"Speak to me, Ocho. Don't insult me with your
silence."
Ocho switched arms without missing a stroke. "What
is there to say? If he has given up, he has
given up.". "Will we be rescued?"'
,
"Am I God? How would I know?"
"1 am
sick
of this boat, this oceanff"...she snarled. "Sick of it,
you understand?"'
"I understand."
She sobbed, sniffed loudly.
Ocho kept pumping.
"I don't think you love meea"...she said, finally.
"I don't know that I do."
She watched him pump, up and down,
rhythmically, endlessly.
"Doesn't that make you tired?"
"Yes."
"We're going to die, aren't we?"
He wiped the sweat from his face with
backslash as
free hand. "All of us, sooner or later, yes."
"I mean now. This boat is going to sink.
We're going to drown."
He looked at her for the first time. Her skin was
stretched tightly over her face, her teeth were
bared, her eyes were narrowed with an intensity he had
never seen before.
"I don't knowea"...he said gently.
"I don't want to die now."
He lowered his face so that he wouldn't have to look
at her, kept the handle going up and down.
She went back up the ladder, disappeared from
view.
Ocho paused, straightened as best he could under the
low overhead and looked critically at the water
remaining in the boat. He was gaining. He stretched,
crossed himself on the off chance God might be
watching, then went back to pumping.
The dA's man in Cuba was an
American, Dr. Henri Bouchard, a former
college professor who lived and worked inside the
American Interest Section of the Swiss
embassy, a complex of buildings that in former days
housed the American embassy and presumably
someday would again.
STEPHEN COONTS
The Cubans watched the American diplomats very
closely, so this officer had no contact with the
agency's covert intelligence apparatus on the
island. He kept himself busy watching television,
listening to radio, collecting Cuban newspapers
and publications and writing reports based on what
he saw, heard, and read. His diplomatic
colleagues were congenial and the life was
semi-monastic, which he found agreeable.
The man who ran the covert side of the business, was
a Cuban who had never set foot inside the
U.s. Interest Section and probably never would.
He owned a wholesale seafood operation on the
waterfront in Havana Harbor. Every day the fishing
boats brought their catch to his pier and every day he
purchased what he thought he could sell. Both the
price he paid and the price he charged were
set by the government: had there not been a black
market for fish he would have starved.
The cover was decent A Cuban fishing boat could
meet an Americaneaboat or submarine at sea,
passing messages or material in either direction.
The spymaster's delivery trucks visited every
restaurant, casino, and embassy in the capital.
With people and things coming and going, the old man could keep his
pulse on Cuba. He was called el Tiburon,
the Shark.
William Henry Chance had no intention of ever
meeting el Tiburon unless disaster was staring him in the
face. The CIA man in the American Interest
Section was another matter.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Chance. Delighted to meet you,
of course."
Dr. Bouchard shook hands
with Chance and Carmellini
as he peered at them over the top of his glasses.
He led them down several narrow hallways to a
tiny, windowless cubicle in the bowels of the building.
"Sorry to say, mis is the office. Security,
you know. They used to store food in here. Damp but
quiet"...He took a stack of newspapers off the
only guest chair and moved
them to Ms desk, extracted a folding
metal chair from behind his desk and unfolded it for
Carmellini, then settled into his ctfair.
The knees of all three men almost touched. "So how
are you enjoying Cuba?"
"Fascinatingea"...Chance muttered.
"Yes, isn't it"..."...Professor Bouchard beamed
complacently. "Six years I've been here, and I
don't ever want to leave. I don't miss the
snow, I'll tell you, or the faculty
politics, feuds, dog-eat-dog jealousy over
department budgetsthank God I'm-out of all that."
Chance nodded, unwilling to get to the point.
"We met once or twice before, I thinkea"...Chance
reminded Bouchard.
"Oh, yes, I do seem to recall... $'e
They discussed it.
"My associate, Mr. Carmellini. I don't
think you've met him."
The pleasantries over at last, Chance edged around
to business. "You have a few items in your storeroom
that we need to borrow, I believe."
"Certainly. The inventory is in the safe. If you
gentlemen will step into the hall for a moment..."
They did so and he fiddled with the dial of the safe.
When he had the file he wanted and the safe
was closed and locked, he seated himself again at his
desk. Chance sat back down. Carmellini
remained standing.
"This is the inventory, I'm sure. Yes. What
is it you want?"
"Two Rugers with silencers, ammunition, two
garroting wires, two fighting knives, a dozen
disposable latex gloves, two self-contained gas
masks"
"Let's see..."...The professor ran his finger
down the list. "Guns, check. Ammo, okay.
Knives ... knives ... oh, here they are.
Wires, garroting, check ... gloves ...
masks. Yes, I think we have what you need. Do you
want to take this stuff with you?"
"I think so. In a suitcase of some kind, if you
can manage that."
"I'll have to give you one of mine. You can'return
it or pay me for it, as you prefer."
"We'll try to return it."
"That's best, I think. The accounting department is so
difficult about expense accounts. You gentlemen
wait here; I'll see what I can do. While
you're waiting, would you like a cup of coffee, a soft
drink?"
"I'm fine caret Chance said.
"Don't worry about meea"...Carmellini said.
"This will take a few minutesea"...the professor
advised. "Would you like to wait in the courtyard? The
flora there is my hobby, and the eagle from the Maine
Memorial is a rare work of art."
"That's the big eagle over the doorway?"
"Yes. After the revolution Castro demanded it
be'removed from the Maine Memorial. That was about the
time he announced he was a communist, before the Bay of
Pigs. Difficult era for everyone."
"Ah, yes. We'll find our way."
"I'll look for you in the courtyard when I have your
itemsea"...the professor said, and scurried off. ,
The eagle was huge. "Quite a work of
artea"...Carmellini muttered.
"Too big for youea"...Chance said.
"I don't know about thatea"...Carmellini replied, and
glanced around to see if there was any way to get the thing
out of the mission ground with a crane. "Run a mobile
construction crane up to the wall, send a man down
on the hook, haul it out. I could snatch it and be
gone in six or seven minutes."
Chance didn't even bother to frown. Carmellini had
a habit of chaffing him in an unoffensive
way; protest would be futile.
'The professor is the most incurious man I've
ever met,"
Tommy Carmellini said conversationally a few
minutes later.
"He doesn't want to know too much."
"He doesn't want to know anythingea"...Carmellini
protested. "People who don't ask obvious questions
worry me."
"Hmmmea"...sd William Henry Chance, who
didn't seem at all worried.
The professor came looking for them a half hour
later. After he had scrawled an illegible
signature on a detailed custody card, Chance
offered the professor a photo of a man that his
surveillance team had taken outside the
University of Havana science building. The man
was in his sixties, slightly overweight, balding,
and looking at the camera almost full face. He
didn't see the camera that took the picture, of
course, since it was in the van.
"If you could, Professor, I would like you to send this
to Washington. I want to know who this man is."
"American"..."...Dr. Bouchard asked, accepting the
photo and glancing at it.
"I have no idea, sir. We've seen him around here
and there and wondered who he might be. Would you have the
folks in Langley try to find out?"
"Of courseea"...the professor said, and put the photo
in his pocket.
Toad Tarkington was in a rare foul mood. He
snapped at the yeomen, snarled at the flag
lieutenant, fumed over the message board, and
generally glowered at anyone who looked his way.
This state of affairs could not go on, of course, so
he went to Ms stateroom, put on his running
togs, and went on deck for a jog. The tropical
sea air, the long foaming rollers, the puffy
clouds running on the breeze, the deep blue of the
Caribbeanall of it made his mood more foul.
None of the leads to find the
Colon
had borne fruit. The ship was still missing, the
captain and crew had stayed
aboard her all the time she was tied to the pier in
Guantanamo, the gloom seemed impenetrable. The
air wing was still searching, but as yet, nothing! And of
course the temperature of the rhetoric coming from the
White House and Pentagon was rising by the hour.
Toad was jogging aft from the bow when a
petty officer from the admiral's staff flagged him
down. "The AI'S have a photo of the Coston!"
"Where is she?"
"Aground on a reef off the north shore of
Cuba:"
Toddad bolte.d for the hatchway that led down into the
ship, the petty officer right behind.
The photo was of the
Colon,
all right. The ship looked as if it were wedged on some
rocks, almost as if it grounded during a high tide.
Now the tide was out and the
Colon
was marooned.
"When was this picture taken"..."...Toad demanded of the
air intelligence officers.
"Yesterday."
&n
bsp; "And no one recognized it?"
"Not until today.".
Toad growled. "Have you passed this to the admiral?"
"Yes, sir."
"Show me the location."
The AI pinpointed the location on a sectional
chart.
Toad called Jake Grafton. "I
want to see that shipea"...Jake said. "As soon as
possible. We'll take an F-14 with a TARPS
package."...TARPS stood for tactical air
reconnaissance pods. Each pod contained two
cameras and an infrared line scanner.
Cuba is an island surrounded by islands, over
sixteen hundred of them. Most of the islands on
Cuba's north shore are small, uninhabited,
rocky bits of tropical paradise, or so they
looked to Jake Grafton, who saw them through
binoculars from the front seat of an F-14.
The ship was about three miles offshore, stranded on
rocks that just pierced the surface of the sea. The
breaking surf looked white through the binoculars.
The freighter was plainly visible, listing slightly.
Some of the weapons containers were visible on the main
deck. Jake checked the photo in his lap, which was
taken yesterday by an FirstA-18 Hornet pilot
with a hand-held 35-mm camera. Yep, the containers
visible in the photo were still in place aboard the ship.
Although the Cubans claimed a twelve-mile
territorial limit, the United States
recognized but three.
Nuestra Senora de Colon
was stranded on a reef in international
waters, the AI'S assured Jake. They had
checked with the State Department, they said.
South of the ship was the entrance to Bahia de Nipe,
a decent-sized shallow-water bay.
Was the ship on her way into the bay when she went on
the rocks?
Jake was making his initial photo passes a
mile to seaward of the
Colon.
In the event the Cubans chose to send interceptors
to chase him away, he had a flight of F-14's
ten miles farther north providing cover. Above them
was an EA-6But Prowler electronic warfare
airplane, listening forand ready to jam any Cuban
fire-control radar that came on the air. According to the
electronic warfare detection gear in Jake's
cockpit, he was being painted only by search radars.
That, as he well knew, could change any second.
He had just completed a photo pass from west to east
and was turning to seaward when the E-2 came on the
air. "Battlestar One, we have company. Bogey
twenty miles west of your posit, heading your way.
Looks like a Fulcrum."...A Fulcrum was a
MiGo-29.