Coonts, Stephen - Jake Grafton 7 - Cuba

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.